When Jonah refused God’s call, he knew that God would no longer give him prophetic revelations. If he made up his own prophecies he would be a false prophet. If he stopped prophesying, his rebellion against God would be exposed.

So, his choice was either to obey God or to quit being a prophet and start over in a new place. That is what Jonah decided to do. He “found a ship going to Tarshish” (1:3). If you decide to go to Tarshish, there will always be a ship to get you there! If you decide to disobey God, you will always have the opportunity to do so.

C. H. Spurgeon told of a man with a violent temper. The man would get angry, then he would lose his temper, and then he would throw something. Spurgeon said, “What struck me was not that he got angry, nor that he threw something when he was angry. But that whenever he was angry there was always something at hand to throw.”

Never trust circumstances when you are resisting God’s Word. There will always be opportunities to make your sin and rebellion worse. Thank God that’s not the end of the story. Jonah’s sinful heart was taking him away from God, but God was intent on bringing him back.

Jonah tells us how the ship’s crew became God-centred believers. In their remarkable story, we have one of the clearest pictures of the gospel in the Bible. The gospel is about the storm and the sacrifice—the storm of God’s judgement and the sacrifice by which we can be saved.

Think of a circumstance that gave you an opportunity to disobey God. What was your thinking? Why might you choose differently in the future?