Jonah 1:4-16
Let’s give our attention to God’s
word, Jonah chapter one, beginning at verse four, and then we’ll
read through verse 16. It says, but the Lord hurled
a great wind upon the sea and there was a mighty tempest on
the sea so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners
were afraid and each cried out to his God and they hurled the
cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.
But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and
had laid down and was fast asleep. So the captain came and said
to him, what do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your
God. Perhaps the God will give a thought
to you, to us, that we may not perish. And they said to one
another, come, let us cast lots that we may know on whose account
this evil has come upon us. So they cast lots and the lot
fell on Jonah. And they said to him, tell us
on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What
is your country? And of what people are you? And he said to
them, I am a Hebrew. I fear the Lord, the God of heaven
who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were exceedingly
afraid and said to him, what is this you have done? For the
men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord
because he had told them. Then they said to him, what shall
we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us? For the sea
grew more and more tempestuous. He said to them, pick me up and
hurl me into the sea. Then the sea will quiet down
for you. For I know it is because of me that this great tempest
has come upon you. Nevertheless, the men rode hard
to get back to dry land, but they could not for the sea grew
more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore, they called
out to the Lord, O Lord, let us not perish for this man’s
life and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have
done as it pleased you. So they picked up Jonah and hurled
him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then
the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they made a sacrifice to
the Lord and made vows. Amen, the word of the living
God. Well, so far in Jonah’s story, we have seen a man on
a fool’s errand, and that fool’s errand is this. He is fleeing
from the presence of the Lord. He’s gone not east to Nineveh,
but west to Joppa. He’s not gone up to Nineveh,
but he’s gone down to the seacoast. He’s gone away from the people
that need to hear the word of the living God and he’s gone
to a ship to foreigners He’s gone to sailors and they are
headed to Tarshish now you can over read into this story But
I think it’s helpful at least to go a little distance into
some of the things in this story He’s going to where the Sun sets
in the West He’s going as far as one can go on the sea. He
is going as far away from the promised land as possible. And I think this sets the stage
for verse four. And it’s one of those, what is
it, a particle, a conjunction? The word but. And then paired
together with but God. But God in the Bible is usually
something monumental here, but the Lord. What does the Lord
do? He hurls a great wind upon the
sea, and there is a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship
threatens to break up. This shows to us the thing first
we want to consider, and that is the power of Yahweh, the power
of Almighty God. a great wind, chaos, a tumultuous
wind, a wind that’s gonna get worse and worse and worse. It’s gonna come on the sea. Hit YouTube and look up a ship
on the high seas. And you’ll see in the bridge
on these videos, at least the first ones I saw that pop up,
these ships that are massive. They’re cargo container ships.
They’re tall where the bridge, the captain sits. And you see
these waves just coming at the glass. And you see the sailors
standing there. They’re just as calm as can be.
I guess they know that glass is thick. They know the ship
is strong. They know that it’s built right.
And they’re probably accustomed to this, and that’s probably
a similar sort of feeling, a similar feeling that these experienced
sailors generally feel when the sea gets a little rough, when
the Mediterranean gets a little rough. How bad of a storm does
it have to be for the sailors to start reaching for the Dramamine
or whatever that stuff is you take? Well, it’s probably got
to be pretty bad. But what do we see in a passage
like this? Well, we see the power of our
creator God. We see the power of our sustaining
God. We see our God who is in control
of the wind and the waves. He’s in control of the sea. He’s
in control of sailors and boats. And in this case, this ship,
he’s in control of the wood, the pegs. He’s in control of
all the tackle and all the cargo on board. And he is able to send
and withhold this wind, this tempestuous sea that he makes. He’s able to calm it and he’s
able to quiet. And what does all this remind
us of? We spoke of it last week a little bit. Jonah wants to
flee the presence of God. And as he’s gotten away from
the borders of the promised land and as he thinks he’s gotten
away from Maybe the temple and the other representations of
God in the promised land, the presence of God chases him. And
don’t you catch little echoes in this passage of the wind of
God, the hovering of God over the chaos in creation? the same
God that spoke and took what was formless and void, who formed
it and filled it. He’s the same God over this sea
on which there is a little teeny boat with a little teeny man
who’s trying to flee the presence of God. And so never, ever, ever
forget the presence of Yahweh. This storm is seeming to say
to Jonah, I’m still here. You can’t run. This is a megaphone
to Jonah. I am here and I am pursuing
you and you will continue to go down, down, down until you
repent. And so the power of Yahweh is
clear in this passage. Also the judgment of Yahweh. So not only do we see the power
of Yahweh in the sea, but we see the judgment of Yahweh in
this storm. I think of David and Bathsheba. Remember David was at home, not
at war with his generals and his army. He was at home and
he saw Bathsheba. He coveted Bathsheba. He stole Bathsheba. He committed
adultery with Bathsheba. A baby was on the way. What does
he do with her husband? He gets him killed. Yeah, put him on the front lines.
And after some time, Nathan the prophet comes to David’s house
and tells the little story about the man who had a lamb and the
traveler came and The traveler had it all but wanted the man’s
lamb for supper what does the man do he takes the lamb and
he kills it gives it to the traveler and Or he steals it takes it
and David gets all upset That’s that’s not right and Nathan says
you are that man. You’ve taken a man’s wife you’ve
taken a man’s life and and you have done this very thing. And
so David was brokenhearted, he repented of his sin, but remember
the consequences, the judgment did not escape his household.
David and Bathsheba’s child became sick and that child died. And David was told by God, he
said, the sword will not depart your house. And so after David
had experienced so much grace, so much peace, so much blessing
in his life, he did this thing and not only did death come to
his household. Remember, he lost the child and
he wept. I will have to go to this child.
This child has left me. But also his son Absalom brought
great heartache as he attempted to steal his father’s throne.
David had to flee Jerusalem for his own life because of his son
Absalom. The sword will not depart from your house. The tempest
will not depart. We say, but I’m justified, right?
We talked about that in Sunday school. I’m justified. It’s just
as if I’ve never sinned. It’s just as if I’ve always obeyed.
How could God punish me in this life when I’m saved? Well, there
are consequences to sin, right? You can be a Christian. And yes,
you are forgiven. Yes, you’ll be in heaven with
God forever. Yes, you’ll arrive at the judgment throne and be
openly acknowledged and acquitted. But you can experience, even
to your dying day, temporal judgments for the things that you do that
are contrary to God’s law and his commandments. And that’s
what Jonah’s experiencing here. He is experiencing the judgment
of Yahweh for fleeing his task, which was to be a prophet who
went to Nineveh and called out against them that they might
repent of their evil and their wicked ways. And so we need to
be careful in our lives. You know, we see on TV, there’s
the good angel and the bad angel. The good angel says, don’t do
it. The bad angel says, do it. And
that’s not real, right? But we have the spirit and the
flesh at war against one another. And so, one of the things that
we ought to do in our rationalizing sin, and we do rationalize sin,
is we ought to reckon in our minds, God cannot be escaped. The power of Yahweh is mighty.
He sees all things. He is everywhere. Your mother’s
told you she had eyes on the back of her head, and that was
not true. But God is almighty, all-knowing, all-seeing. He does
see all things. And your sin, though in the grand
scheme of things, the eternal scheme of things, is forgiven
by God, but your pain, your suffering, Your temporal judgments can come.
And here’s another thing. And we see this clearly in this
boat. We see this clearly in the life
of the sailors. Your disobedience may directly
affect others. Get behind the wheel of your
car drunk. Spend all the family’s money.
Say something that ruins relationships. What other examples could we
get? Get angry at work and quit your job. Your family has no
provision. On and on we go. There are things
we can do that don’t just bring judgment on ourselves, but they
bring judgment on others. And that’s the central part of
this passage. A great and mighty wind comes
on the sea. The tempest on the sea is so
great that the ship threatens to break up. It’s a bad storm. These were experienced sailors.
This was a well-built ship, no doubt. It was seaworthy. It was
loaded with cargo. That means people entrusted these
sailors and this freight company with their goods. This cargo
represented a livelihood. Get this cargo from point A to
point B. But once that cargo gets from point A to point B,
it’s going to be sold again. It’s going to be distributed.
We’re in the middle of a supply chain. You think about all those
ships, supply chain crisis, you think about all those ships.
Jim recently saw them out at sea, out on the West Coast. Those
are goods that can be sold, but they can’t be sold until they’re
in the store on the shelves. And so Jonah’s disobedience,
his paying the fare on this ship at Joppa to go to Tarshish, not
only puts his own life at risk, but it puts the well-being, the
health, the life. Sailors usually don’t have families,
right? But if they go down to sea, there’s gonna be people
back at home, depending on them, in some shape or form. Maybe
they are family men, it probably doesn’t, seem to be the case,
but there are people interested in their well-being, their success. But here’s the sea raging, a
tempest blowing. This is a kiss the ground when
you get home type storm, but it’s the judgment of Yahweh.
So there’s Yahweh’s power, his judgment, but there’s also his
grace. That’s the last thing we want
to think of, the grace of Yahweh. There’s got to be some turning
point here in the life of Jonah. He makes himself a sacrifice.
Toss me overboard and the sea will subside. You remember the TV commercials,
I guess they’re still on, I don’t know, for Alka-Seltzer and it
shows a cup of something that’s kind of boiling. And you drop
the Alka-Seltzer in and it settles it. I guess that’s for your tummy
or something. I’m not sure what. But anyway, Jonah’s the Alka-Seltzer. They’re going to drop him in
the sea and it’s going to make it calm. He’s the scapegoat,
right? But before they toss him overboard,
you see what they do. They make one more try. Let’s
crank up the outboard and make a run for the shore. They try
as hard as they can to row home. They must value his life in some
way. And what does it say? The sea
becomes more tempestuous, more grouchy. And we mentioned a few
moments ago the sea here, the storm here as a megaphone. Remember,
was it C.S. Lewis, pain is God’s megaphone?
And in your life, when things aren’t going well, We want to
be careful not to be Job’s friends. You must have done something
wrong. But in life, when things aren’t going well, maybe you
should ask the question, what is God saying to me? What is
God trying to get my attention over? Over what am I being a knucklehead?
That’s a good spiritual question. The sea is getting more tempestuous. The prayers of the Gentiles are
heard. They basically say, oh Lord, we’re about to toss this
man overboard. If it’s the wrong thing to do, please don’t hold
us accountable. Let not his blood be on our hands.
God heard the prayer of these Gentiles, these sailors, these
foreigners. And depends on who you read,
but a lot of folks you read, good folks. Say there’s every
reason to believe these Gentiles were converted. Okay, so we can
say right now, oh, look what God did. Jonah made a bad mistake,
but look at what good came of it. And what do we need to be
careful of there? We can begin to rationalize,
I made a mistake, but God used it for the conversion, and guess
what? I’m off the hook. Right? We rationalize like that.
No, you didn’t make a mistake. You sinned. You sinned against
God. You sinned against Israel. You
sinned against the gospel. You sinned against Nineveh. You
sinned against every one of these sailors. You sinned against every
one of their wives, if they have them. You sinned against the
owner of this boat. You sinned against the owner
of this cargo. And you sinned against those
who would benefit, who on the other coast, Perhaps, maybe they’re
not Christians, but perhaps they prayed in some way to some God,
give me this day my daily bread, and their daily bread is on this
ship. See, that’s the reality of Jonah’s
disobedience. It wasn’t just Jonah getting
on a ship and going down in the hole and finding a nice pallet
of corn to sleep on. Now, this is Jonah wreaking havoc
in other people’s lives and God being very loud to say, you’re
not going to get away with this. You’re not going to get by with
this. And even the Gentiles perhaps were converted. And we say, oh,
no, God is not that severe. God is a God of grace. God is
a God of mercy. Remember how God often works.
He works not on smooth seas, but he works in the tumultuous
ones. What’s the old saying? Good sailors were made not on
smooth seas, but on rough seas. But this is also a mercy, not
just to Jonah and these Gentiles. This is a mercy for those of
us who, some thousands of years later, read this story, and we
ought to recognize this was a local storm on a local piece of ocean.
But there will be a global, a worldwide, a cosmic judgment, and we should
flee the wrath that is to come. We should run to God, for God
does as he pleases. We may think we do as we please,
but no, it is God who does as he pleases, and that includes
sending a mighty storm of wrath onto his own son at the cross
in order to make peace in our lives. So let us learn these
lessons well. Pray with me. Our God, we thank
you for the disobedience of Jonah to push us to obedience. Help
us to flee the wrath that is to come by resting in Jesus Christ
alone for our salvation. And may our tempestuous seas
be brought to calm because of his peace that can be ours through
faith in him. Help us, we ask in the name of
Christ, amen.