This is part 7 of a sermon series on Jonah entitled “Surprised by Grace.”

In this sermon—“Two Ways to Run from God”—we compare the way Jonah ran from God in chapter 1 to the way Jonah is subtly running from God in chapter 2.

In chapter 1 we see Jonah running as far away from God as he can get. God says, “Go to Nineveh” and Jonah unashamedly runs in the opposite direction. At that point, he’s thinking he can get what he wants by being disobedient.

But then we get to chapter 2 and we see that Jonah’s plan of defiance hasn’t worked out the way he hoped it would, so he employs a different strategy: “If I can’t get what I want by being disobedient, then I’ll get what I want by being obedient.”

We do the same thing.

Sometimes we try to get what we want by breaking the rules and sometimes we try to get what we want by keeping them. But whether we are keeping a rule to find happiness or breaking a rule to find happiness, we’re still relying on ourselves.

The truth is that we need to be saved from our weaknesses and our strengths, our badness and our goodness, our disobedience and our obedience, our spiritual disabilities and our spiritual abilities.

The gospel is the good news that God’s massive mercy tracks down runners regardless of which direction they’re running.