Jonah runs into a group of heathen sailors in chapter 1. The sailors honor Jonahs god more than Jonah. Why? Listen in as Thomas Terry delivers insights on Jonah 1.
Transcript
Welcome to this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. We hope this message inspires you, roots you down deep into the Lord, into His Word, and may His Spirit be your guide as you enjoy this teaching. Thanks for joining us. Here’s the message. This morning’s passage is Jonah 1, verses 4 through 10. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that each 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 into the inner part of the ship, and had laid down and was fast asleep. So the captain came to him and said, What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise and call out to your God.
Perhaps the God will give a thought 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. Then they said to him, Tell us, on whose account this evil has come upon us? What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?
And he said to them, I am a Hebrew, and 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 that you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them
— Jonah 1
(ESV)
. This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. Well before we begin moving through our scripture text this morning, I want to take just a few minutes to do a quick recap on what took place last week in verses one through three, because this is going to help us to understand our text a bit better this morning. So if you remember last week in verse one, the word of the Lord came to Jonah. God had commissioned the prophet Jonah to arise and go from Israel to the city of Nineveh to call the violent, God-hating Assyrian people to repentance. But instead, Jonah, who thought he knew better than God and thought he knew what was best for God’s people, did not care to be the agent of mercy to the Assyrian people. And as a result, he blatantly disobeyed God and attempted to flee from the presence of the Lord by running in the opposite direction of Nineveh towards Tarshish.
Drastic Mercy
But as we saw last week, it’s foolish to think that you can run from the presence of God, because God is everywhere. So no matter where Jonah runs, God is right there running alongside Jonah. And so as we unpack this week’s text and in these seven small verses, what we’ll see is Jonah continues to run. But instead of trying to run from the Lord who is all-present, Jonah will now foolishly attempt to run from the God who is all-powerful. So it’s almost as if Jonah has made this list of God’s divine attributes and is testing each one of them. And so to help us along this morning, what I’ve done is I’ve, again, broken up these seven verses into a few sections, five sections to be exact. So in verses four and five, we’ll look at the drastic mercy. In the second half of verse five, we’ll see the deep sleep.
In verses six and seven, the divine control. Verses eight and nine, the discovered identity. And finally, verse 10, the discontinuity exposed. And so let’s begin in verses four and five with the drastic mercy. 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. So our story picks up with Jonah on the ship that has set course for the city of Tarshish. But as I mentioned last week, God’s love for Jonah does not let Jonah keep on running. And so God, in his drastic mercy, throws this storm to stop him in his sin. Now it’s important to understand that Jonah is on this ship with men who are professional sailors.
These men would be experts in transporting cargo across the sea. And in their many years of sailing, they’ve gathered a bit of experience and insight as to the difficulties of the sea. It’s something that they become accustomed to and have learned to navigate. So these men would have no doubt weathered some very difficult storms before. But this storm is altogether different from other storms. With a typical storm, the sailors would have seen the slow shift in conditions, the gradual movement of dark clouds that begin to block out the sun. They would have seen the winds and the waves begin to swell with this kind of crescendo of strength. These professional sailors were paid to know how to deal with the difficult and ever-changing elements of the sea. But this is a different kind of storm. It’s a supernatural storm thrown by the mighty hand of God.
So the magnitude of this storm was of supernatural proportion. A storm pitched by God at Jonah and the sailors without warning and with unrelenting force. So there was nothing predictable or manageable about this storm. In fact, the storm is so severe that even the professional sailors on the ship were beginning to fear for their life. In their many years of sailing, they’ve never seen this kind of fierce wind and forceful waves hit so fast. It was as if the sea was full of rage and aggressively attempting to tear the ship apart. And so now the sailors are doing everything they can possibly think of to survive this supernatural disaster. But the severity of the storm only proves that the storm can’t be controlled and can’t be reasoned with. And even in their years of experience and expertise, these sailors were completely powerless to pacify this angry and aggressive storm.
And so full of fear and afraid for their lives, they do what most people in this kind of situation would do. They call out to their gods. Now whether you’re a believer in the one true God or not, most humans, when confronted with the inevitability of death, turn to God, or at least their limited understanding of who God is. The sobriety of death and the frailty of life has a way of making even atheists and agnostics become second guessers. So these particular sailors though are what you would call polytheists, meaning they believe in multiple gods, which are usually assembled into a pantheon of gods or goddesses. So each one of these sailors in their fear were calling out to their localized and specific gods to help them to safety. But their gods fail them because ultimately their gods are imaginary gods, powerless to save. And here’s the thing.
The sailors know it, which is immediately why after they pray to their impotent gods, they begin taking matters into their own hands. They start throwing cargo from the ship into the sea to somehow lighten the load and create some equilibrium for the ship. Now these sailors throwing the cargo into the sea is no insignificant thing. The fact that they’re throwing cargo overboard shows that they’re at the end of their options because the cargo was the very reason why the sailors were on the ship to begin with. Transporting cargo is how these men made a living. It’s how they provided for their families. And so as the cargo begins to be thrown overboard and sink to the bottom of the sea, so did their money, their investment, their reputation as amazing sailors and transporters of goods, their future employers and their future stability. But the sailors are so afraid for their lives that none of those things matter anymore.
They’re willing to lose everything to preserve that which is of most importance, their own life. And that really begins to give you some perspective on the scope of this storm and the kind of fear that these sailors were facing. You know, one of the things that’s really interesting about this whole situation and it’s kind of hard to understand is that this supernatural storm, this aggressive storm has come upon these sailors, not because these sailors have rebelled against God, but because of Jonah. God threw the storm at Jonah because of his rebellion. But Jonah’s sin had far reaching consequences. Though his sin was his own and in many ways was private, the sailors were suffering the consequences of Jonah’s sin and rebellion in the form of this life-threatening and vicious storm. These sailors were in the crosshairs of God’s discipline that was specifically aimed at Jonah.
And this, brothers and sisters, is a good word for us because we oftentimes think of sin primarily as an individual thing from an individual perspective. It’s my sin, therefore I’m the only one that suffers the consequences for it. And when we think this way or when we believe that way, it becomes easy for us to reason away the consequences of sin. Well, if what I’m doing isn’t hurting anyone, well, then it’s no big deal. I’m willing to take the consequences. But here is one of the biggest lies of the enemy, that your personal and private sins won’t affect the people around you. But that’s simply not true. Our private and individual sins do affect the people around us. They affect our families, our friends, our church community. They even affect our city. And listen, all you have to do is spend a few moments thinking, honestly thinking, about
the aftermath of your sin. Draw out your sin to its furthest extent. And there you will see, no doubt, how it will impact all the people around you, the people in your life. Our sin, even when personal and private, always affects those around us. So don’t believe the lie of the enemy that the consequences of our private and personal sins only affect you. And don’t believe the culture’s lie that says, if I’m not hurting anyone, then it doesn’t matter how I live. That’s just not true. And brothers and sisters, this is why. We just did a corporate confession. It’s why we do it every single week, and why you must be fully engaged in the process of corporate confession. Because it reminds us that our sin has a very real and corporate effect on this specific community. So we corporately own it, and we corporately confess it.
So these sailors are in the thick of this storm, not because of their own doing. They did nothing except their job. But they’re in the thick of the storm because of Jonah’s disobedience. Now Jonah knows that this storm is from the hand of God. He’s wise enough to know that. And Jonah knows that it’s directed specifically towards him. But Jonah hasn’t quite realized yet that the storm is God’s powerful attempt to discipline and draw him back to the path of obedience. So when Jonah stands on the deck and looks at the raging sea, he doesn’t perceive it as God’s severe mercy. Instead, he sees it as an act of God’s severe punishment. And that’s how most people perceive God’s discipline, as punishment. So Jonah sees what’s going on in his own mind while he’s standing on the deck. He knows it’s his own fault. He doesn’t care to come clean to the sailors.
The Deep Sleep
He doesn’t mention to the sailors, the storm is all my fault. And just like his attempt last week to try and hide from God, now he tries to hide from the sailors by making his way down into the bottom of the ship. The original language says to the bottom most part of the ship. Which brings us to the second half of verse five with the deep sleep. And Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. So first Jonah ran and now Jonah sleeps. The question is, why does Jonah sleep? Some say Jonah was just extremely tired from his journey. I mean, after all, prior to Jonah getting on this ship, he had to travel some 500 miles to the seaport of Joppa. So yeah, he could have been physically exhausted from his travels. But that’s not why Jonah sleeps.
He sleeps because he finally began to recognize that he could not run from the presence of God. And now as he stands in the midst of this supernatural storm, he realizes that he can’t run from the power of God. So Jonah is completely boxed in on all sides. He can’t escape the God who chases after him. And because Jonah can’t get away physically, his only option is to get away cognitively. Jonah sleeps to escape the grief, to escape the anxiety and the guilt of his sin and disobedience. You see, the disobedience was beating at Jonah’s conscience. And so he’s sleeping is just another attempt to try and sever his conscience, to kill his conscience. And the best way in Jonah’s mind to kill the conscience is to be unconscious. And brothers and sisters, this is all too familiar with us. We do the exact same thing.
When we run from God, when we choose to rebel against God, when we refuse to live in a way that honors God, we feel grief, anxiety and guilt. And sometimes those feelings become so overwhelming that we do whatever possible to try and disconnect from those feelings. And so for many of us, we do it with sleep. We sleep. We don’t want to feel anything. We don’t want to emotionally or spiritually be engaged. We don’t want to process those feelings. We don’t want to obey. We don’t want to repent. And so we just physically and spiritually check out. We sleep to disconnect from the reality of our rebellion. But it’s not just sleep. You could pick your poison. And we’re so creative at checking out that we find all kinds of ways to drown out the reality of our rebellion and conviction of sin. Some drink excessively.
Some use drugs or pills. Some even do it by binge watching Netflix. And some endlessly scroll through their social feeds, numbing themselves to their own reality by flooding their minds with other people’s fake realities. We don’t want to feel the presence or conviction of God. So we try and find a way to numb our mind and our bodies. We want to remain disengaged and unconscious to God’s world. You see, this is why Jonah sleeps. It’s just another attempt for Jonah to escape God’s world. But here’s the truth. If you are a genuine Christian, and if you’re running from God, then you will feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit. And despite how that makes you feel, it’s a good thing. The grief and the guilt and the anxiety of your sin is a good thing, because the conviction of the Holy Spirit is the means by which God leads you to repentance, to draw you back
to himself and to spiritual health. So don’t try to cut it off. Don’t try to numb yourself to escape the reality of God. Because listen, the conviction of sin is God’s loving and merciful work in your life. It is revealing that you are his. It reveals that he cares for you, and it reveals that he is not willing to let you go. So he is applying pressure. You see, in those moments of conviction, you have two choices. Disconnect from your sin or disconnect from reality. And sadly, Jonah, the stiff-necked prophet, he chose the latter. So Jonah is checked out in the bottom of the ship in a deep sleep, hoping for a full eight hours of uninterrupted numbness to reality and conviction. And as he sleeps, to escape this conviction and correction of God, the Lord again uses resources. He uses the things in God’s world to interrupt Jonah’s flight and stubbornness.
Divine Control
And we see this in verses six and seven with the divine control. 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 us that we may not perish. And they, meaning the sailors, 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. So not only will God not let Jonah run and hide, God will not let Jonah sleep. God’s love for Jonah interrupts his attempt to escape reality and conviction. Not only does the Lord demonstrate his power by controlling this raging sea, the Lord also exercises sovereign power to control the captain of the ship. He controls the captain to wake Jonah up from his deep sleep.
You see, the captain was a bit of a pawn in the mighty hand of God. And how do we know that God powerfully controls the captain? Because of what the captain says to Jonah. Look again at what the captain says to him. He says, arise. The very first thing the captain says to Jonah, arise. Does that sound familiar to you? Those words are not by accident or coincidence. The very first word the captain says to Jonah is the very first word God told Jonah in his commission. Remember last week in verse one, the Lord said to Jonah, arise, go to Nineveh. It’s the same Hebrew word. Get up right now. Go get up. Come on, let’s go. The next thing the captain says to Jonah is call out. Those are the exact same words God told Jonah to do in verse one. Go to the great city of Nineveh and call out.
So Jonah was in this deep sleep when he’s suddenly awakened by the pagan captain. And the very first words he hears from him are the echoes of God’s commission. These words had already been reverberating on his conscience. This is why Jonah tried to sleep in the first place. But the Lord pierces the prophet Jonah once again, but this time through the mouth of a pagan captain sailor. The words of this captain had no doubt shocked Jonah back into reality. And Jonah finally begins to understand. God won’t let me run. God won’t let me hide. And he won’t let me disconnect from the reality of God’s conviction. I can’t help but see the irony in this pagan polytheist captain rebuking Jonah, God’s amazing prophet for sleeping instead of praying. I mean, this is crazy. The captain who we would consider to be an unbeliever is the one pleading with Jonah,
the believer, to pray. And more than that, look at how God masterfully uses this captain. Jonah was running from the face of the Lord, but now the captain is calling Jonah to go before the face of the Lord and pray that God will keep them from dying. God is sovereignly in control of the actions and the words of this captain. What I find to be very interesting about this whole scenario here, if you look at it, is this just crazy contrast between God’s prophet Jonah and the pagan polytheistic sailors. So listen, Jonah, he’s aware of the storm. He knows who sent the storm. He knows who the storm is sent for. And Jonah’s God is the only God that can actually help with the storm because Jonah’s God is the only real God, the only one powerful enough to do anything. But Jonah does nothing.
He doesn’t pray. He doesn’t confess his sin. He doesn’t turn from his running or rebellion. He doesn’t even do anything to help the other men on the ship who are on the deck fighting for their lives, doing everything possible to save themselves. Instead, he’s sleeping in the bottom of the ship. Jonah has the right God. He has the right theology. He knows that all men are made in the image of God. He knows how God feels about helping people in need. Jonah knows Proverbs 3, 27, do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it. Jonah has the right framework for serving and helping humans in distress. But in this moment, he is thinking only about himself. His sin has caused for him to become so self-absorbed that he views the struggling sailors on the
ship as nothing more than collateral damage. From Jonah’s perspective, these sailors are facing the judgment of God because of Jonah, mind you. But Jonah doesn’t seem to care. And why would he care? This is exactly how he’s been treating the Ninevites. This has become the new pattern for Jonah, a runaway prophet, consistently rebellious towards God and the arbitrator of who is worthy of mercy. The pagan sailors, on the other hand, well, they have no idea why this calamity has come upon them. They don’t know who’s responsible for the storm or who the storm was even sent for. And despite not knowing the true God, the pagans all pray to their imaginary gods. And despite them not having the right theology or the understanding that all people are made in the image of God, these men serve and help one another because of their deep distress.
They hustle together for the greater good of all the men on the ship. They are willing to do whatever it takes so that everyone on the ship survives and flourishes. These sailors did nothing wrong. They’re facing this supernatural storm, but their perspective and their work is consistently others-oriented. You see, what is so sad about this situation is that the pagans seem to be more spiritually sensitive than God’s prophet. The pagan sailors, who have no theology and no understanding of the true God, better serve and help people on the ship. They do that better than the one with the right theology and the one who serves the true God. The pagan sailors are rebuking God’s prophet by their works and spiritual sensitivities. And sadly, this is often the case in the world today, when the good works of the world serve as a rebuke to God’s people.
This whole scenario here just proves that just because your theology is right doesn’t mean that your living is right. The pagans outshine the prophet in almost every single way. And brothers and sisters, I pray that this is never the case with Trinity Church. Our love and good deeds should always outshine the world’s works. Because we are the children of God. Because we’ve been given new hearts that reflect God. Because we uniquely have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. And because our faith is inextricably connected to our good works. James 2 verses 14 through 17 says, what good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works, can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for
the body, what good is that? So also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. So to be explicitly clear, we’re not saved by our works, but we are saved for good works. And if our actions and our attitudes don’t reflect the heart of God, then brothers and sisters, we need to repent and beg God to change our hearts. To mobilize us and to assist us in loving and serving the world around us, not with just our words, that’s the easy part. To just say things. We need to ask God to help us with our works. So God powerfully used the storm as well as the captain to confront Jonah, and if that’s not enough, God powerfully uses the casting of lots to expose Jonah as the culprit. And I find this to be so crazy, that God would use like the luck of the draw, the rolling
of dice to smoke out the profit. That’s crazy, but this should teach you a bit about the magnitude of God’s sovereignty and power. That not only does God exercise cosmic power over the massive elements of nature like seas and storms, but he also exercises cosmic power over the smallest, meticulous, and the most seemingly insignificant things, like the flip of a coin. Proverbs 16 says, the lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. When Jonah was attempting to conceal from the sailors, God uses what is superstitious and superficial, illogical, and irrational to reveal to the sailors that Jonah is the one responsible for this supernatural storm. And in verses eight and nine, we see the discovered identity. Then 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?
Discovered Identity
What is your country and of what people are you? And he said to them, I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land. So the lot is cast and Jonah has been exposed as the one who knows why the storm has come upon them. And so the sailors begin to interrogate him. But notice the sailors don’t make any presumptions here about Jonah specifically. They don’t just jump to conclusions. They don’t assume that Jonah is the one who’s responsible, that it’s Jonah’s fault. I mean, they recognize the lot has indicated something about Jonah. Maybe he knows something about it or that he’s potentially hiding information from the rest of the crew. They don’t know. So they just straight up ask him, you obviously have some insight as to what’s going on here. So tell us, why are we in this situation?
Who’s responsible? But before Jonah can give them any answer, they flood him with these four questions. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And who are your people? And you see, all four of these questions are really questions concerning identity. They’re the same kind of questions that we would use today to understand someone’s identity. What’s your job? That’s usually the first thing you would do to understand someone’s identity. Hey, what do you do? I’m a plumber. Right? That’s just part of the process. They ask these questions to get a sense of their identity. What’s your job? What’s your city? What’s your country? And who’s your folks? Who are your people? So for me, I’m a pastor and an artist. I’m from Portland. I’m an American and I’m a Christian. Those answers pretty much sum up my identity. It’s who I am and what I do.
What lies underneath the sailor’s question concerning identity is not so much about who are you, but whose are you? The sailors don’t really care about Jonah’s identity. They wanted to know whose God is Jonah’s God. You see, in this culture, your identity was connected to the God that you worshiped. And that’s not altogether different from our culture today. There’s always a direct correlation between what you worship and how you identify yourself and who you are. So they ask these questions to get to the heart of the issue. You see, if they know whose God is Jonah’s God, then they can begin to pray to that God and ask for help and deliverance. And Jonah knows what lies underneath the four questions, which is why he only answers the last question. And so Jonah here, for the very first time in this narrative, speaks. And when he speaks, he says, I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven who
made the sea and dry land so powerful, what he says. Jonah knew exactly what they wanted to know. When they asked the question, Jonah seizes the opportunity to be a good prophet, to be a good Christian. He gives them a clear and comprehensive confession of faith. But think about it. Jonah’s response is actually pretty ridiculous. It’s theologically right, but it’s ridiculous. Actually, Jonah says to these pagans, I serve the Lord of all creation, the one who spoke everything into existence, the one who exercises power over everything he created, including but not limited to the sea and the dry land. And guess what? I fear him. However, I’m currently in the process of running from him in complete rebellion and disobedience. It’s ridiculous because Jonah at that very moment is a living and breathing contradiction. You see, Jonah’s doctrine is right. His confession is right. His statement of faith is right, but he doesn’t live according to his theology or his confession
or his statement of faith. Again, Jonah has masterfully bifurcated his theology and his practical living. He doesn’t live according to what he professed because if he really feared the Lord, he would not be running from the Lord. And listen, before we look at Jonah and see his blatant hypocrisy, remember the book of Jonah is meant to be a mirror. Can you see yourself in the pages of this book? We’re just like Jonah. We have a tendency of doing the very same thing, to live in a way that contradicts what we actually profess to believe. So we declare our statement of faith. We promote our doctrine as right and true, but we often live in a way that contradicts our declaration and our doctrine. I’m going to say this, and please don’t misunderstand me. Theology means nothing for Christians if it doesn’t change the way you live.
It doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t change you. Knowing things about God is not the same as knowing God. To know God is to love God, and to love God is to obey God. John 14, 15 says, if you love me, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. So can I ask you this morning, have you become comfortable living a contradiction of what you profess to believe and how you actually live? Have you developed a subtle pattern of confessing what you believe with your mouth, but never really fleshing it out with your actions or your attitudes? Is your pursuit of theology a cerebral exercise only, never to make its way into the deep parts of your heart to transform you? If that is you, and if you’re in that space, dear Christian, you’re in a very bad way. You need to ask God to intervene.
You need to ask God to help your words and your actions be one and the same, to make your theology and your practice consistent, to make your confession of faith your actual walk of faith. And if you ask God to forgive you for those inconsistencies, if you ask God to help you to be more consistent, he will do it. I’ve prayed this countless times when my life and my theology have been in two opposite different places. In fact, this should be our consistent prayer as a church. Lord, help us to believe what we say we believe. And Lord, help us to live what we say we believe. So the sailors know now who they’re dealing with, and more importantly, they know whose God they’re dealing with. And now that the sailors have begun to discover Jonah’s identity, they’ve deduced something about the identity of Jonah’s God.
And now they can begin to see something ain’t right here between Jonah’s identity and the identity of God. And in verse 10, we see the discontinuity exposed. Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, what is this that you’ve done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. So now that the sailors know that the supernatural storm has come upon them because of Jonah’s running from God, the sailors become exceedingly afraid, meaning they feared with a great fear. They were afraid before when they didn’t quite understand what the storm was really about. They had a limited understanding about the storm, but now they’ve realized that the God of the cosmos who controls everything and everyone has seemingly set his divine judgment upon the ship and the crew, they freak out. The sailors knew this was a different kind of storm.
They knew it was a supernatural storm by the hand of God. And now they know that Jonah is a Hebrew who worshiped the all powerful God of the universe. They know he’s actually running from God and they’re completely confused. They’re completely confused, which is why they asked Jonah, what have you done? Now that’s an expression, not so much concerning what sin Jonah has committed. They don’t really care about what it was that Jonah’s done. It’s a question of more fear and disbelief. Essentially, the sailors asked Jonah, why in the world would you try and run from your God who is all powerful in all presence? See, it’s a rhetorical question because their assumption is that Jonah must be mentally unstable. He must be out of his mind because no one in their right mind would attempt to do such a thing. No one would actively choose to defy a God with that kind of power.
But here’s what’s so interesting. The sailors, through this rhetorical question, again, as an instrument of God, are beginning to help Jonah see his own foolishness and discontinuity. They essentially call out Jonah because Jonah is not living as someone who professes to fear the Lord. Like he said, I’m a Hebrew, I fear the Lord, but he’s not living like it. And what’s crazy is that these sailors are pagans. The pagans are responsible for rebuking God’s prophet because God’s prophet is running from God and they don’t even really know anything about God up to this point. They don’t have a good theology, but they’re piecing it together. They don’t know much other than the fact that he is the God of creation, that he created everything. And now that’s a lot to know. They know he’s powerful enough to send this life-threatening storm to stop Jonah. And so they rebuke Jonah.
The Discontinuity Exposed
And again, you see more irony here in that the Lord originally, in verse one, called Jonah to rebuke the pagan Assyrians, but Jonah refused. So God, in his providence and in his mysterious work, uses the pagan sailors to rebuke Jonah the prophet. It’s ridiculous. God powerfully used these sailors to reveal that Jonah’s practical theology did not correspond with his practical living. This is what God does. This is how God corrects his people. And you see in these seven short verses, they reveal so much to us about the God that we serve. Think about this for a moment. The God of creation who exercises sovereign power over everything in creation uses all of God’s creation to call Jonah back to himself. Is that not amazing to you? He controls the elements of nature, the storm, the wind and the waves do his bidding to break apart the ship to stop Jonah from running.
He controls the will and the words of the pagan captain to wake Jonah up from his deep sleep to help burn his conscience and snap him back into reality. He controls the casting of inanimate objects to make Jonah’s sin and rebellion exposed to these pagans. He even controls the mockery of these pagan sailors to rebuke Jonah for his utter foolishness and theological inconsistency. Why does God do this to Jonah? Why does God use all of creation to hunt down Jonah? Well, depending on your perception of God, you might conclude that God is seeking revenge on this disrespectful prophet gone AWOL. That God is exercising all of this massive power to control creation, to punish Jonah for his blatant disobedience. I mean, look at how Jonah has defied the God of all creation. But if you rightly understand the nature and character of God, then you will understand
why God would go to such great lengths to stop Jonah from running. You would understand why God commissions all of creation to conspire against Jonah. Why does God do all of this? Mercy. Mercy. This is the heart of God. Psalm 145 verses 8 and 9 says, The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made. The Lord is merciful to Jonah, and the Lord uses all that he has made to show his mercy to Jonah. Even though his sin and disobedience against a holy and righteous God deserves the wrath of God, deserves the punishment from God. The Lord is merciful to Jonah. And the Lord is merciful to us. We are just like Jonah. We deserve God’s righteous wrath and judgment because of our sin and disobedience against
a perfect and holy God. He is not like us. He is perfect in every way. He is righteous in every way. He is holy, and we are the farthest from it. And because of that, we deserve his wrath and judgment. But because of Jesus, because he took the punishment that we deserve, and because he took the wrath, because he absorbed the wrath of God that we deserve, we who have come to trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior have received mercy. We did not get what we deserved. We did nothing to earn it. We did nothing to deserve this mercy. In fact, we were only running and hiding and cutting off our conscience. But he powerfully pursued us, and he stopped us in our sin and rebellion and lavished us with this mysterious mercy. Have you experienced this great mercy? Are you running and hiding from God?
Are you trying to escape the reality of God in his world who made everything? Is your conscience crushing you this morning? Stop running from him and run into his mercy. He will forgive you of all of your sin. He will forgive you of all of your disobedience, and he will make you a child of God. If you would simply trust and believe upon Jesus Christ, and that simply means believe in who he says he is, Jesus himself said, I am the son of God. Trust and believe that he is who he says he is, and you could be saved from this wrath, from this raging sea that is coming after you. Come to Jesus, and he will pacify the storm in your life. Let’s pray. Our father and our God, we thank you that you are the all-powerful and all-present giver of mercy. And though we deserved your wrath, you showed us your loving kindness, you sought us out.
Even though we were running from you, you chased after us. Even though we wanted nothing from you, you gave us everything, including everlasting life. And so for that very reason, father, we owe you all of our love, affection, and worship. You are the God who chases us down, and we are thankful for it. And we pray, oh Lord and God, that we would never be the kind of people who look at your word, who study your word, who pull apart your word, but never take it in deeply. We pray, God, that your word would have a powerful effect on our life, that you would change us, that you would make us the kind of creatures who submit under your lordship, who not only profess what we believe with our words, but live what we believe with our action and our works. Help us to be those kinds of people.
And father, for those who are here this morning who do not know you, I pray, God, that your spirit would draw them to yourself. I pray, God, that they would experience your pursuit of them, that they would see your chasing and your chastening, and turn from their sin and embrace you to be saved. Father, may today be the day of salvation for those. May they become the recipients of your mysterious mercy. We pray all these things in the merciful name of our risen savior, Jesus. Thanks for joining us for this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can visit our website at www.trinityportland.com.