The Unhappy Journey to Tarshish

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Title: The Unhappy Journey to Tarshish ------------------- Date: 3/4/2002
Keywords: "discipline"
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Passage: Jonah 1:1-3*

1. The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying,

2. "Arise, go to Nineveh the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me."

3. But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare, and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

Questions

1. To what city did God send the prophet Jonah?

 

2. To what city did the prophet Jonah go?

 

Practical help

Jonah was given explicit instruction from God to go EAST to the capitol city of the Assyrian Empire, Nineveh. While there might have been an understandable reluctance on Jonah’s part for going to Nineveh (Assyria was one of Israel’s longtime enemies), the command of God was clear.

Yet Jonah boarded the first available ship going WEST to the city of Tarshish, in present-day Spain. The upshot of this sea-faring journey was a violent storm on the sea, courtesy of the Lord, and a three day stay in Hotel Whale before being vomited out on dry land. After all of that, Jonah THEN walked to Nineveh and obeyed God.

Nineveh was the place to which God sent Jonah. He sent him there to preach against the city. God has sent you and me to a Nineveh, too. The Nineveh of holiness. In our journey, we may sometimes be tempted to backtrack to Tarshish. In the case of many men and women, that involves a temptation to view porn.

God’s "high seas discipline" on Jonah is a picture of the willingness God still has to discipline His children who flee to Tarshishes of various kinds. If you are fleeing from the Nineveh of holiness to the Tarshish of porn, be certain that God will send storms your way to get your attention and turn you back to holiness. Far better that you should continue on the journey to purity and avoid God’s discipline.

Check out this New Testament passage that assures you and me that God will discipline us when we sin for our good:

Hebrews 12:7-11* —

7. It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

8. But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

9. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?

10. For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness.

11. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

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*"Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, © Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission."