How To Thwart God

In Jonah 1:4-16, we continue to learn a lot about the man Jonah,
about ourselves, and about Jesus. We'll get to the Jesus part in
just a moment. But first let's talk about us. Just like Jonah, we
try to thwart God. We have gone astray. Psalm 51 tells us we were
sinful from the time we were conceived. We didn't have a shot at
being perfect. For some reason, we continually try to thwart God.
Paul explains this best when he talks about our flesh (sin loving
part of us) continuing to win some battles in this life (see Romans
7). Even though the Christian has been saved from sin and desires
to do what is right, we often still do what we know is wrong. In
these sinful episodes, we find ourselves trying to thwart God. For
some reason, whether out of ignorance, defiance, or plain
stupidity, we think we can outrun, out-maneuver, and out think God.
We do this by trying to make God's commandments friendly so that we
can be comfortable with our hypocrisy and disobedience. Jonah, like
us, was a sinner who needs to be saved. Thankfully, Jesus, the
sinless Savior, became sin and rescued us out of our misery. This
week, let's take a look at how Jonah tried to thwart God and how
God saved him anyway. We cannot thwart God, because he pursues His
people in His infinite grace.