Jonah and the Sea

This evening we will be finishing up the first chapter of Jonah and this is probably the portion of the story that you are most familiar with. Children’s book and publishing companies have made a small fortune on the retelling and reprinting of these verses. As I mentioned last night, we typically think of the story of Jonah as a fish story but really, it is so much more than that. This, as well as any other moment in the Bible and history, is God’s story. And when we look at Scripture, we need to recognize that Jesus always stands out as the greater “character” for lack of a better word. Jesus is the greater Jonah. Last night we talked about how just as Jonah was asleep in the midst of the violent storm, Jesus too slept through a storm at the end of Mark 4 but as we are going to see tonight, while Jesus was able to calm the storm with a simple word, Jonah was totally powerless to control the storm. There are 5 things that I want us to talk about tonight and they should be somewhat easy to remember because all 5 points start with the letter P. I will try to get through these 5 things rather quickly but to give you an idea about where we are going, the 5 P’s are: 1. The Providence of God. 2. The Problem of Identity. 3. The Pain of this World. 4. The Praise of the People. 5. The Purpose of Christ’s Storms. Let’s open up in prayer and then we will look at Jonah 1:7-17. There we read:

Jonah 1:7–17 ESV

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? 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, 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. 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 rowed 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 offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

The Providence of God

The first thing that we are going to talk about is the providence of God and this is a term that if you have been with us long enough, you have probably heard me use dozens of times but I want to give us a quick reminder of what is meant by God’s providence. God’s providence is one of His attributes and when many people think of the providence of God, their minds often associate it with the sovereignty of God. What we mean by God’s providence is that God has complete and total control over all things and governs all things. He always acts wisely and perfectly in every decision that He makes. The sovereignty of God is God’s right and power to do all that He wills and relates directly to His providence. John Piper refers to providence as God’s sovereignty in the service of wise purposes. It is His purposeful sovereignty. The Heidelberg Catechism defines providence as: “The almighty, everywhere present power of God, whereby, as it were, by his hand, he still upholds heaven and earth with all creatures and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.” J.I. Packer gives maybe a simpler explanation of providence by saying, “Providence is a continued exercise whereby the Creator, according to His own will, keeps all creatures in being, involves Himself in all events, and directs all things to their appointed end. God is completely in charge of His world. His hand may be hidden, but His rule is absolute.” The providence of God is all over the book of Jonah and I want us to notice that God’s providence extends beyond the order of the universe and the sustaining of life, it comes down to even the smallest and sometimes unnoticeable details. We are going to see this a lot in about 2 weeks when we start our series on the book of Esther. In verse 7 we read that the sailors decide to cast lots to figure out who was to blame for the storm and the lot falls to Jonah. Now if you aren’t sure what casting lots is, think of something like drawing straws or rolling dice or flipping a coin. Basically the idea was that whatever decision one was trying to make, one could be told what decision was the right decision by whatever the lot turned out to be. The thought was that God would reveal His will through the casting of lots and we see this happen numerous times in the Bible. Was it then by blind luck that the lot fell on Jonah? No. In God’s perfect and wise providence, the lot fell upon Jonah. Something as small as the rolling of the dice or the flipping of a coin is directed by the Lord. So here is what this means for all of us. There is no such thing as luck. There is no such thing as pure chance. Nothing ever truly happens by pure coincidence. You have never had a day in your life that has been governed by karma, luck, or happenstance. You are wasting your time checking your horoscope. These things do not exist. Proverbs 16:33 says, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” Nothing in your life happens by chance and nothing in your life happens outside of God’s providence. You can spend your entire life running but you will never outrun the reach of God’s providence. In His wisdom, God has you exactly where you are supposed to be. I said this at our winter retreat this past January and it has really stuck to me because I needed to hear it then and I still need to hear it now: You are not here tonight because your parents dropped you off, you are not here in this building at this time in this part of the world because you had nothing else going on and you got a ride here. You are right here, right now because this is exactly where God wants you to be. It is by God’s perfect will that you are in the seat that you are in right now listening to what His Word has to say. In the words of Charles Bridges, everything is a wheel of providence. God orchestrates events perfectly for His will and this includes things as small as the rolling of a die or the flipping of a coin. Now does this mean that you should live your life with a quarter in your pocket and say, “God if you want me to go right make the coin go heads.” No I don’t think so. I think the last time you see lots being used in the New Testament is in Acts 1 and after that, you never see God’s people do it again. You need to live by faith. We have a completed Bible, we have the Holy Spirit, and we have prayer to guide us in what we do and we have no real reason to use those methods anymore. But we can still remember that as we see in the story of Jonah, there is no event in your life that is so small that God’s providence is not over it. Let’s look next at our second P: The problem of identity.

The Problem of Identity

Last year for YC Week we spent the entire week talking about our identities because we have identity issues. Look at the world today and you will notice that so many people have a problem with identity. We struggle with value, we struggle with fear and anxiety, we struggle with recognizing who God has made us to be and even when we get areas of who we are right, we often stress the parts that should not have the utmost priority and this is exactly what Jonah does in verses 8-9. Jonah 1:8 “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? What is your country? And of what people are you?”” The sailors ask Jonah, what do you do, where are you from, what country were you born in, and what is your race. We tend to base our identity around those factors. We base our identity over social actions and who we surround ourselves with. We base our identity on the families that raised us and where we feel most at home. Chances are you act differently based on the level of comfort you have at the place you are at. The job or mission that you have in life will say a lot about your identity because it exposes that which is important to you and these are all the things that the sailors are hoping to draw out from Jonah. The most important question that they want answered is the first one. What is your occupation? What do you do? What is your mission in life? Really these sailors are asking Jonah, “Who are you?” but even more so, they are asking Jonah who does he belong to. The thought at this point is: Our gods aren’t working, will yours? Jonah, who is your God? And we know this based on what the captain said to Jonah last night in verse 6. But notice what Jonah answers first, it’s not the most important or pressing question. His answer begins with: “I am a Hebrew.” You see, in Jonah’s eyes that is what mattered most. What mattered most to Jonah was that he was a part of God’s chosen people and not that he himself had been chosen by God by pure grace. What is Jonah having right now? Jonah is having an identity crisis! He didn’t recognize what was most important and he didn’t recognize that what matters most is not what race you are, what gender you are, which area code you live in, what matters most is your identity and relationship to the Lord. Yes those things still exist when you come to Christ but they are not the things that are most important or the things that you should base your identity and life on. A shallow identity, a shallow recognition of who one is in Christ produces shallow people and shallow Christians. Tim Keller wrote, “Shallow Christian identities explain why professing Christians can be racists and greedy materialists, addicted to beauty and pleasure, or filled with anxiety and prone to overwork. All this comes because it is not Christ’s love but the world’s power, approval, comfort, and control that are the real roots of our self-identity.” So who are you? Yes you are a man or a woman, yes you are an American, yes you are a Virginian, yes you are a student but what matters most is whether or not you are a Christian! You will be called several things in this lifetime but the title and name that will have real and eternal significance is that of a Christian saved by Jesus Christ alone and justified by what He has done! So, what is most important to you? What aspect of your life is most important? The next P that we come to is the pain of the world.

The Pain of the World

What do I mean by the pain of the world? Well when we look at the state of the sailors, and we look at the state of Jonah, we see that they are both suffering from the same issue right? They are both caught in the midst of this storm. We see both the unrighteous and the righteous suffering. Now we know that whether you are a Christian or not, you are not free of pain or suffering. Everyone goes through times of pain, everyone goes through times of trials, so what we see is the reminder that we all live on the same earth and experience the same problems. Jonah was in as much of a storm as the unbelieving sailors. Now the more aware you are of your Savior, the more aware you will be of His presence in the midst of the storms of your life. Look at what Jonah says in verses 9-10. He acknowledges the God that he serves and he says that it is God that has sent this great storm and he acknowledges that it is because of his disobedience that God sent the storm in the first place. Jonah is totally aware of God’s presence and God’s power yet he is still stuck in the same problem as the unbelieving sailors. In some ways, this is really beneficial for us as Christians. How so? What this means for us is that we have a great opportunity for evangelism not in spite of suffering but in the midst of it! We go through storms just as the unbelieving world goes through storms. Just because we are believers that does not mean that we are immune to problems in this world. It is as if Jonah is saying to these sailors, “Look, I know we are in the midst of this great storm but my God is the true God who made the seas and the land. You don’t believe in the God who made the seas and you are in trouble in this storm yet here I am, a believer in the God who made the seas and I am in just as much trouble as you are.” There’s a commonality in suffering that opens the door for evangelism. We are not perfect people that are no longer plagued by suffering. We go through storms just as anyone else does. Yes we suffer but we suffer differently. We suffer as people with hope. We suffer knowing that no matter what happens in this life, if we truly belong to Christ, that which comes to us is not God’s wrath against us but will ultimately be for our good. For Jonah, this storm in his life would ultimately be for his good even if it did not look like it on the surface. When man suffers, the Christian is able to say, “I know the pain but I know how to go through it differently. I’m not immune to hurt but I am immune from suffering without hope because Christ suffered on my behalf.” William Gurnall, a great Puritan author, said, “The Christian is not to pray for an immunity from all temporal sufferings. There is no foundation for such a prayer in the promise, and what God thinks not fit to promise, we must not be bold to ask. God had one Son without sin, but none in this life without suffering.” We are able to love our neighbor better when they are hurting because we know what it is like to hurt but we hurt differently because our hope is built on nothing less but Jesus’ blood and righteousness. When we stand with and not against those that are hurting, when they see that we are different because of the God that we serve and when we declare His excellencies, we may very often find the 4th P happening: The praise of the people.

The Praise of the People

Jonah decides that what is best for all is for him to be thrown into the sea but the sailors are not immediately sold on this idea. Verse 13 says that the men continued to row hard to get back to the shore but the storm only grew worse. Jonah 1:14-16 says,

Jonah 1:14–16 (ESV)

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 offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

Now were these men saved at this moment or were they just responding to the things that they saw? I think that these men came face to face with an experience that they could not explain and for God to act so decisively in that moment, the chances were pretty good that these men were saved. I don’t think that after this experience that they would go back to the gods they were serving. Why? Because their gods didn’t do anything before that moment! This is a good reminder for us that God has one method of salvation but numerous ways to get our attention. Salvation is always by Jesus Christ alone but the way that God grabs hold of you happens in all sorts of ways. God may use a storm to grab hold of you, we mentioned that last night. He may use a sickness to grab hold of you, He may even use the loss of a loved one to point you to Him. It is entirely up to Him in accordance with His perfect providence. God does things that grab hold of us and they grab hold of us in ways where it is clear that it is a God send. These sailors had the common sense to praise the God who was there. These people who knew next to nothing recognized the God of all Creation and praised Him accordingly yet here we are as the Church of Jesus Christ and we hardly praise Him at all! Our worship is so stale if it can qualify as worship at all. I’m not saying that you should be Pentecostal but I am saying that you shouldn’t worship like a dead man! God has brought you from spiritual death to spiritual life and that deserves some praise, doesn’t it? The Lord has brought you out of the great storm of sin, He will bring you out of the grave and bring you into His heavenly kingdom, shouldn’t we praise Him to the best of our abilities while we are here? God does big things and deserves big praise. Even if God were to leave you at the heart of the storm, He would still deserve big praises. Now we should know by now that unbelievers won’t praise the Lord but we should be ashamed at the idea that believers would not give the glory to the Lord that He deserves. So, when we get to verse 17, Jonah is in the sea and the Lord appoints a great fish to swallow him and the chapter ends with Jonah being in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. Jesus would refer to this exact moment as He described what He would go through in His own life. Matthew 12:40 says:

Matthew 12:40 (ESV)

For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

It is here where we will get to our final P of the evening: The Purpose of Christ’s Storms.

The Purpose of Christ’s Storms

Last night we looked at Mark 4 and we saw just how similar the events of Jonah and the events of Jesus calming the storm were but there are some pretty big differences that we need to be aware of. Jonah on his own was totally powerless to calm the storm. Jesus calmed it like it was nothing. Jonah was the reason that he went through that suffering. Jesus never did anything wrong but still suffered. Jonah to an extent said to the sailors, if I die, you will live. Jesus came and as He told His followers that He would go to Jerusalem and be put to death, He went with the same message: If I die, you will live. Jonah went into the belly of the whale alive but Jesus would spend three days and three nights dead in the grave. Jesus calms the storm knowing full-well that the greater storm awaited Him. He knew that the greatest storm that man could ever face was going to be poured out on Him. The greatest storm that any person has ever had to go through was the storm of God’s wrath that was poured out in full on the Son of God. You see, Jesus went through the great storm of God’s wrath, the great storm of suffering, the great storm of shame, the great storm of death, so that you and I would never have to experience that. In Matthew 12:41 Jesus says, “The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.” When Jesus says that someone greater than Jonah is here, it’s as if He is saying, “One day I will calm every storm and calm every wave. One day I will fix all that is broken. One day I will destroy destruction and kill death itself! Where Jonah was powerless to stop the storm, I alone possess the power to do this.” Leon Morris wrote, “God’s whole work in Jesus, the sending of his Son, the decisive provision for the salvation of repentant sinners, the bringing in of the kingdom. All this represents something far greater than the coming of a Jewish prophet to the ancient city of Nineveh.” What we all must realize is that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. He came into the world to go through a storm that you and I could never bear on our own. He went through pain and suffering just as we go through pain and suffering but it is through His suffering that our suffering will one day be destroyed in full! But if you do not have Jesus, you will never be able to get through life’s storms. You might be able to wade for a bit in the seas of life but one day your sin will bring down to a point that you will never recover. Even the strongest swimmer tires out at some point. Yet Jesus offers Himself for you this day. One other major difference between Jonah and Jesus is that Jesus was not just tossed into the sea of God’s wrath, He willingly walked into it. It was the sailors that physically tossed Jonah into the sea but Christ Himself willingly walks into the heart of the storm and drains it to the very last drop. He submitted to the Father’s authority, He willingly went to the cross with His eyes set on the joy that was before Him. Have you realized this? Have you realized the purpose of Christ was to glorify God and to save sinners? Have you realized that you are a sinner? Have you realized that there is no hope of outside of Christ. There is no escaping the storm of sin and suffering outside of Jesus. This very day you must recognize that your only hope in life and death is Jesus Christ. As we will see tomorrow night, Jonah recognized that his only hope in life and death is to fall into the hands of good and merciful God and salvation belongs to God alone.