June 7, 2026 - The High Cost of the Wrong Ship

A series on a book of the Bible that you know about. It's familiar to many. In fact, it's so familiar. Let's see if we can get the high points. Somebody just shout out like in your best outside voice. The story of Jonah is about what? Fill in the blank. - Redemption. - Redemption. Who are the main characters in the story of Jonah? Hint, it just said it. Who are the main characters? - Jonah. - Jonah, okay, and there is a fish of some sort, a fish. A great fish, a whale of some sort. I may have Googled this week. Recent occurrences of people being swallowed by whales. If you Google that, that's a fun Google search. I want you to know. Lot of AI generation out there in the world. So Jonah, a great fish, and Jonah was a prophet, right? And God told Jonah to do something. God told Jonah to go one direction, and he went another direction. Now, most people would say that this story is a fish story. Have you ever heard of fish story? You know, I learned this early on in Hayward. I caught a fish up in Hayward years ago, and I took a picture with it, and I posted it on social media, and an elderly guy in the church pulled me aside, and he said, "Chad, chad, chad, "let me help you with some things." You need to hold that fish way closer to the camera so that it'll look way, way bigger than it really is. So you all have told fish stories, right? Bill Becker's fishing this week up in Canada. He told me, and I told him, I fully expect a fish story about the one that got away. I met a guy at a dinner. It was at the dinner for the jail ministry that Todd Colhep is part of, and a wonderful dinner. And I'm sitting there at the table, and to my left was a man who used to be state representative, and he's from Altoona, I think, or Chippewa Falls, and at the table where I was seated. And so I was really impressed, like talking to him about that. And then one of the other guys said, "You know, as impressed as you are with that, "you need to know, he invented the best-selling lure "that's ever been used for catching muskies." And I said, "You invented the hog-wobler." I don't know, I don't know my dad's birthday, but I knew the hog-wobler. And I said, "You invented the hog-wobler," and he said, "I did." And I said, "Have you ever been muskie fishing?" I said, "Oh, yeah, I've been muskie fishing." And I said, "One time, one time." And I told him about this. I told him about going out, and he was my birthday. And he said, "Did you catch anything?" Oh, man, I said, "The seas were rough that day." And I said, "We were out there in the seas. "We're trolling all day long." My wife brought bananas, which I told you, "You're not allowed to have bananas in the boat "because it's bad luck or something." I don't know, but we're trolling along, and I said, "They have this fish on the line." I told this story so big. I didn't catch the fish. Literally, it went. It happened all in about 10 seconds. But as I told this story to this guy, I might as well have been catching Jonas Whale. I'll tell you right now. So we all have heard fish stories, but this is not a fish story. This is a story about how we respond to God when God gives us directions. And this is a story about what happens when we run from God. And I'm gonna say this, I will probably say this plus or minus 500 times in the next six weeks. You will learn through the book of Jonah that you can run from God, but you cannot outrun God. That is not original with me. I don't know who said it first, but I've heard it said a lot of places. You can run from God, but you can outrun God. Jonah's the kind of book that if you read it slowly and honestly, you will find yourself saying, "ouch," because you will see yourself in it. Remember when you were in high school or middle school or elementary school, and you got your college yearbook, do you remember getting your college yearbook? And you sat down with your college yearbook or your high school yearbook, your middle school yearbook. Who's picture did you look for first? Do you remember this? You look for your own. Your own. You wanted to see how many times you were in that book. You will see yourself in this book. You will see yourself in this book of Jonah. And when you do, you might winse a little bit like, "Ooh, that is not the best picture of me." I don't know, I don't like the way that I look in that photo, because whether we like it or not, all of us at some point has run from God. Need to. All of us have run from God and you can run from God, but you cannot outrun God. And so today, we're gonna talk about the high cost of the wrong ship, the high cost of the wrong ship. And what we're gonna do today is we're gonna slow way down. At first when I looked at Jonah, I thought, "Well, four chapters, four weeks, we're good to go." And then I was like, "No, we're gonna slow down." And we're gonna walk through this thoroughly. So we're gonna start with the first three verses. They're in your Bible. If you have one, otherwise they'll be on the screen. Here's what the word of the Lord says. The word of the Lord comes to Jonah, son of Amitai. Go to the great city of Nineveh. This will be on the screen. 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. And he went down to Japa where he found a ship bound for that port. And after paying the fare, he went aboard and he sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. Three verses. Three verses and this story has started. It's a picture like an engine and a tractor that fires up at the beginning of the day. That's what's happening in these three verses. God speaks, Jonah runs, and the story begins. And again, it would be tempting to run ahead and say, "Well, I know what happens. Jonah gets swallowed by the whale. Jonah's in the belly of the whale." And did this really happen? And what about this? And how is this? And they were about this? And then I know how the story ends. Don't skip ahead to the end of the story. Because I think we've heard this story so many times that we blow past it. We say, "I just wanna skip to the part that I hold on to." So we're gonna go slow today. Here's the question today. Have you ever had an inner nudge? Have you ever had an inner kind of nudge? Have you ever had a moment maybe early in the morning or maybe for the houses awake in the morning where you felt like I really need to do this. I really need to go this direction. Maybe it was early in the morning, maybe it was late at night. Maybe it was like on a Tuesday while you were doing dishes. You have a dish that you have an inner nudge. Maybe you're sitting in traffic, maybe you're working on something at your house. In the middle of that, it's like you feel this prompt, this, what do you do with that? I've told you before about a friend of mine from years ago, her name was Lena Ali. And Lena was an elderly woman who lived in a mobile home park across the street from our church. And Lena Ali was watching the Chicago Cubs. God bless the America's team. Watching the Chicago Cubs play baseball. And as she's watching the Chicago Cubs play baseball, she fought to herself for the first time in ever. She had a nudge, a prompt. She had a prompt that said, "If I die today, I don't know that I'm not right with God. What do I do?" And Lena Ali got up off the couch and walked across the street to Westview Wesleyan Church in Jonesboro, Indiana and knocked on the door and a pastor by the name of Carlos Fletcher said, "What can I help you with?" She said, "This is really weird. I've never been to this church. I've lived in this mobile home for years. But I just had this prompt in my heart that I'm not ready for heaven." And she said, "What do I do?" And that day, Carlos Fletcher prayed with Lena Ali to become a follower of Jesus. It was an inner nudge and inner prompt. The prompt doesn't necessarily have to be dramatic or loud, but it's there. I need to respond to that person. I need to reach out to that person. I need to go in that direction. Maybe you've had a nudge or maybe you've had a nudge so many times and you've ignored it that the nudge isn't quite as obvious anymore. But Jonah had this nudge and I don't know what you do with the inner nudges. Let me tell you what I do with the inner nudges that I think are from God. First, I come up with all the reasons why I'm not a candidate for that nudge. I think, well, God nudged me. He meant to nudge them. He did not mean. I'll tell you, why not mean, why not yet, and why not now? That's what I do. I'll tell you, why not me? I'm not gifted enough, talented enough, whatever it may be. Why not yet? I can give you, I don't have all the resources. Why not now? I can come up with all those things. And the moment passes. This is a story, Jonah, is about what do you do with a nudge from God? And God asks you to do something and you don't wanna do it. You don't wanna do it. Like, let's be honest. Like, I know that we're all good people in this room. And I don't know about you, but I know me. I know that in this room, I know that in this room, there's people that at some point, if experienced a nudge, because I have. And at some point, we've ignored that nudge and we've said, God, I don't wanna do that, fill in the blank. I don't want to do that. Jonah is a mirror into our lives and helps us see ourselves for who we really are. So let's walk through the story and then I'm going to ask you three questions and then we'll be done. So let's jump right in. Here's the first part, the call, the call. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amitai. When I was reading this this week, it jumped off the page, those first five words, the word of the Lord came to Jonah. I read this week that Hebrew writers, when they wanted to get people's attention, when they wanted to people know to know, to pay attention, to sit up straight, to listen to what's about ready to come, they would write those words, the word of the Lord in Hebrew, it is devar Yahweh, the word of the Lord. If this isn't a rumor that's going around, this isn't like, "Oh, you might think about this, Jonah." No, this is the word of the Lord coming to Jonah. This is God saying, "Jona, pay attention. Jonah, sit up straight. Jonah, if you journal, get a pen in your hand and write down what I'm about ready to say to you." And not only that, it wasn't just the word of the Lord came to some nebulous individual. It came to an individual. Jonah, son of Amitai, it didn't come to the word of the Lord came to the prophet. It didn't come to the prophet. It wasn't the word of the Lord came to like Christian number 124. It was specific. You say, "Well, who is this Jonah?" Jonah was not a beginner. This was not his rookie year. Jonah was a working prophet during the reign of King Jeroboam. Second King tells us that. Jonah had a track record. Jonah had history with God. Jonah knew what it was to hear the word of the Lord in his life and then to respond to it in some way. And there have been times in Jonah's life when he responded to God and God moved in powerful ways. So Jonah knew what was going on. This wasn't fuzzy for Jonah. This was clear. And here's Jonah right in the midst of all of this. The word of the Lord comes to Jonah. And it was clear. Have you ever tried to find clarity for what you want? Let me think of the best way to explain this part. Sometimes we try to talk ourselves into certain things. We try to talk ourselves into certain things that would be clear and from God. And so I read this week about a man who told his coworker, he told his coworker, "Ask him. He said, "Why do you keep trying to get doughnuts before you come to work if you're trying to be on a diet?" And the man said, "Well, here's what happens." He said, "Every morning I say, "Lord, I go to the doughnut shop." And I say, "Lord, if you want me to have doughnuts today, I want there to be a parking space right in front of the doughnut shop that's available and empty." And if there is, it's from you. And if there isn't, it's not from you. And he said, "Would you believe that after driving around that doughnut shop for eight times there was a parking spot right in front of that door?" Sometimes that's what we do with God. Sometimes though, it is really clear. And Jonah's direction was really clear, really, really clear. And then comes an assignment. An assignment, it'll be on the screen. This is Jonah's assignment, should he accept it? Because its wickedness has, here's the words, have come up before me. The picture is like that it's bubbled up before God. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. And Assyria was the superpower of the ancient world. They had a legendary military. They were cruel beyond measure. They were cruel in a way that many people said was absolutely unspeakable. They destroyed the entire Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC. They wiped out ten tribes completely off the planet. They destroyed them. So to tell an Israelite prophet, to go to preach to Nineveh, would be like telling a survivor of the Holocaust in Germany to go and preach to Berlin. You'd say, "Well, I'm not going to do that." Do you know what they did to the people there? Do you know how they treated us there when we were there last? This was not an inconvenient travel assignment. This was not a, "Hey, you know, this is something I want you to do." And it's going to be mildly uncomfortable. This is going to be deeply uncomfortable for Jonah. This is the thing that would have caused the most suffering in the lives of the people that he knew. And now God is saying to Jonah, "I want you to go over there and I want you to preach against it." "I want you to go to the great city and preach against it because its wickedness has come up against me." And even more, even more, part of the assignment was, "I want you to preach against it because I want you to warn them." "I want you to warn them that what they're doing is wrong and I want to be able to show mercy to them." Now Jonah would have freaked out at this point. At least I would have. Mercy to them. How can God provide mercy to the group of people that are the worst people imaginable on the planet? How could God provide mercy to this person? How could God provide mercy to this group of people? They're so wicked, they're so wrong. They do you know what they did? They wiped out my ancestors, God. They wiped them off the planet. They erased them from the face of the earth. And now you want me to go and preach because perhaps your mercy may be for them. I think Jonah knew full well what was in store. One commentator says, "God's grace always travels farther than we think it should." It goes to the people that we've written off. It goes to the communities that we've given up on. It goes to the individuals who have done the very things that in our most honest moments we believe would disqualify a person from ever having God's attention. And God says, "I want you to go to them." The writer continues, "Every time it does, there's a little bit of Jonah in us that wants to say, "Not that far, God." Not for these people, God. Not for them. Not there. I read this week a story in one of Max Lucato's books about when he was talking about the grace of God and the amazing grace of God that works in people's lives. And he said that he had a problem with one thing that he had read. He read that Jeffrey Dahmer, the mass murder, the horrible, I mean the atrocities he committed were beyond belief. And he said he had a problem. And the problem was that he read that before Jeffrey Dahmer died, he made peace with God. And he surrendered his life to Jesus Christ on death row before he was executed and put to death. And Max Lucato said, "I don't know how I feel about that. I don't know how I feel about Jeffrey Dahmer receiving grace from God. The guy who did all these horrible atrocities. And then he said, "Then I wrestle and realize that the same grace that saves me is the same grace that saves him. It's the same grace that saves us." And all that comes to Jonah was specific, not fuzzy, and it was motivated by grace. Jonah responds to this call. It'll be on the screen. There's a little three letter word there that you ought to underline in your Bible. This is a very key word. This is a hinge word. If you think of this story, picture a door here and a door here. The word "but" right here is a hinge. But Jonah, let's say these words together, what does it say? He ran away from the Lord and he what? He headed to. I just wanted to hear you all say Tarsish. So go ahead. He headed to Tarsish. But what did he do? He ran away from God. And he headed for Tarsish. He went down to Japa. He said, "Here's what I'll do." Formulated a little plan. I don't know how long it took him to calculate the plan. I don't know how long it took him to figure it out. But he thought to himself, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go down to Japa." Japa was just a few miles down the road. It wasn't far. And he found a ship. He's walking around Japa, looking around. There's sailors with their bags. There's smell of fish in the air. And he finds a ship and he goes up and he says, "Where are you headed?" And one guy says where he's headed. And he said, "Where are you headed?" And one guy says, "Where are you headed?" And one guy says, "Where are you headed?" And one guy says, "Where are you headed?" And he bought the ticket and he went aboard the ship and he sailed for Tarsus. And why did he sail for Tarsus? Read these last words. He sailed for Tarsus to do what? He too. - Yeah. To flee from the Lord. Listen, friends, Joan is about ready to learn something. He's about ready to learn that you can run from God, but you cannot outrun God. He's about ready to learn that you can run from God as hard as you want, for as long as you want, and it directly opposite the direction that he's calling you to go as you want. He can give you a clear word, a clear assignment, a clear way to go, and he, you can run from God, but you cannot run from God. See, Jonah wasn't just trying to run from the assignment that he had been given. Jonah was running from God. You say, "Well, how far was he running?" I found a map this week. I thought this was fascinating. God called in, he was in Japa, and where he got on the ship, and God called him to go to Nineveh. That's like 550 miles down the road. That's not far. He got a skip over there, but instead, he got on a boat, and he headed the exact opposite direction to what was the end of a known world at this point. He headed to Tarshish, 2500 miles in the whole of a boat. Jonah wasn't taking a detour. Jonah wasn't taking the scenic route. Jonah wasn't saying, "Oh, honey, let's just go for it. "Let's take a different way home today after church." No, Jonah was running the exact opposite direction, and Tarshish wasn't a bad place. It was a good place. It was a fine enough place. It just wasn't the place that God had called Jonah to go. Most of our Tarshish places in life are not bad things. They're good things. They're legitimate things. They're things that we can get excited about, but they're not the thing that we're supposed to do. They're not the direction that God has called us to go. And here we see Jonah. What does he do? He runs away from the Lord, and he heads west, and he goes down to Japa, and he finds a ship, and he pays the fare, and he gets aboard the boat, and he heads west. I thought this was interesting. I read this this week. Jonah didn't just drift onto this boat. Jonah pulled out his wallet. He counted out the silver coins. Today, we would double click on the side of our phone to approve the apple pay. Today, we would enter the credit card, and we would click, confirm, bookie, and after we confirm that we are a human, indeed. Every time we choose comfort over calling, we are actively financing our own escape from God. We are paying the fare. Jonah didn't just stumble onto the ship. He went looking for it. He didn't just say, "Well, I'm here. "I had to go hop on this ship." No, he said, "I'm going." He had a plan, and he had resources, and he was committed to it. And friends, this happens in our lives all the time. All the time. All the time, we say, "God, God says, "I want you to follow me in this way." No, I want to do this. God, I want you to follow me in this way. I want you to do this. No, no, no. I'm going to go this way. I'm going to tell you a really vulnerable story here this morning. Many years ago, that same church that I told you about earlier, Coldwater, the church grew, and the church began to thrive, and we had a youth group, and we had a ministry for kids, and we had crying babies in church. It was fantastic. There were weeks I would walk in, and somebody had an empty, the diaper pale in the church, and you could smell the diapers, and at first I'm like, "Who didn't take out the diapers?" And then I was like, "Praise the Lord, "we've got diapers in church." Like, I was glad for that. During that time, my phone rang. And on the other end of the line was a pastor from down the road, and he passed through the church that was big, and they wanted to be even bigger, and he called me and he's like, "Chad, "I think you're the one to help us get from here to there." And I was, this was 30 years ago in my life, 30 years ago, and I remember saying to this guy, I'm like, "Hey, I'm interested. "Let's talk more." And the more we talked, the more interested I was. And I ended up telling Julie, I'm like, "Hey, I think we're supposed to leave this church." And I think we're supposed to go there to be on staff at that church. And Julie said, "I don't feel good about that." I don't know how I feel about that. I called my dad on the phone. I'm like, "Dad, I think this is really exciting." "Listen, listen, listen." And my dad said, "I don't think that's a good idea." "Chad, I don't think you should do that." I called my district superintendent on the phone. His name was Ron Kelly. I called him on the phone. I told him, "Listen, here's what I'm gonna do. "I'm gonna resign my church. "I'm gonna leave my church. "I'm gonna go that church." And Ron Kelly said, "Chad, I'm just telling you, "I don't think that's a good idea, Chad. "I don't think you should do that. "I think you should stay right where you are." I remember that day. I hung up the phone. The phone rang again. It was the same district superintendent. He said, "I've never done this, Chad. "I'm just telling you again. "Don't do this. "Don't do this." And I remember saying, "No, this is God. "Like this is the way we're gonna go." And really what it was with my own pride. And I'll tell you what, we went to that church. We left cold water and we went to that church. And I remember sitting on the floor of our apartment three weeks in one day I went home to grab some lunch at lunch time. And I remember sitting on the floor of that apartment and I was sobbing. Just sobbing and I said, "God, what have I done?" 'Cause I just sailed to Tarsish. I went straight to Tarsish. What have I done? I told Julie during that time I said, "I promise you, "we will never make a decision about where we live together "as a family without you." Like the only, I told her, I said the only people that God has to talk to is you. And me, like Jesus needs to talk to both of us and we're good. Like if we're, we will be in agreement or whatever we do. And from that day on we were always, we've always been in agreement about where we've been and how God has led us. But I'll tell you, it's a very real thing to get on a ship and head to Tarsish and it's a very painful thing. It's a very, very painful thing indeed. So here's some questions and then we'll be done. What's the word that keeps coming to you? What's the prompt that maybe God is providing in your life that keeps kind of bubbling up in your life? Maybe there's something that God keeps saying to you. He said, "I want you to follow me in this way. "I want you to trust me in this way. "I want you to step out in this way." What has God already told you? What is the persistent specific recurring sense of call that keeps surfacing in your life no matter how many times you set it aside. Take that right there and hold it in your hand. And then ask this question, this is a rough one. Who or what or where is your Nineveh? You got a Nineveh in your life? You got a Nineveh, that's a group of people, a community of people, a political affiliation, whatever it may be, any city, any person that you have just quietly and firmly and maybe even righteously decided that they are beyond the boundary of your concern. I don't care about these people. They're beyond where you're willing to go. I wonder today if God might press on that boundary in your life and you might say, you know what, I need to respond to that. I remember years ago, I was preaching at Brooksville, Wesley in church. Where is some of you remember Brooksville in this room? Out there where you are, Peterson. And I was down there in Wabah, I'm sorry, Wabah knows Brooksville. And so I was down there in Brooksville and I was preaching. I was preaching my guts out on a Sunday night and I got done preaching and an elderly woman came up to me and she was in tears and she said to me, I need you to pray for me and I said for what? She said, I need you to pray because she said there's one part of this town that I will not drive through because it's full of people whose skin is a different color than mine. And she said it's not because of crime, it's not because I'm gonna get abducted. It's just because I don't like those people and I need you to pray that God would help me there. That was her Nineveh. So maybe you have a Nineveh and here's the question that I would have, last one. What direction are you heading? So this says that Jonah was down on the ground. He was waiting and he hears the word of the Lord and the word of the Lord comes to Jonah and the word of the Lord says, get up and head to Nineveh. And so Jonah gets up and he has a choice. He has a choice between going to Nineveh or he has a choice between going to his own direction and Jonah takes a hard left. What direction are you headed with the directions that God has given you? What direction are you headed with the direction that God has given you? And are you heading in a direction that you're making excuses for going in that direction? Oh, I know this is right. And I know this is gonna pan out. Honey, we're gonna get rich quick and all of that, no, no, no, no, no, listen friends. Trust God with the timing. What direction are you headed? I'd like you to buy your heads with me. And I'd like us to quiet ourselves before God. The highest cost of the wrongship in our lives is not financial. The high cost of the wrongship in our lives is not how much it costs to get on the boat. It's the direction that it takes us away from where we were meant to be. It's the direction that it takes us away from where God made us to go. And those steps away from God compound over time. Like compounding interest in a bank account steps away from God compound over time. His voice becomes quieter and duller. His promptings become less frequent. This inner nudge becomes something that we kind of just push aside so many times that we don't even hear it anymore. So I don't know where you're at today. But I want to encourage you that if God is calling you to Nine of it, don't go to Tarsers. If God is calling you to follow Him in one direction, don't go in the other. So Lord, we come to You as people today who know way more than we act on. We know Your voice. We know the direction that You point us. God, sometimes You point us in the direction for years. And we fight it and we resist it and we head other directions. God, I confess that there's been times in my life that I bought a whole lot of tickets. And I paid a whole lot of fares to go a direction that was opposite of the way you called me to go. Forgive me for that, God. For all the energy that we pour into Tarsish, while Nine of a, well, Nine of a waits to hear from God. God, more than forgiveness today, give us courage. Courage to turn our faces back toward yours. To say yes to the thing that we've said not yet to. And God, I pray that you would remind us today. Remind us that your grace travels farther than we think it should to people that we think don't deserve it. Especially to us. Especially to us. So it's in the name of the one who pursued us all the way to across. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.