Self Sacrifice

Jonah 1:11–17 ESV

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.

INTRODUCTION

My oldest son Ryder who was here the past two weeks, but just went back to Montana where he is serving in the United States Air Force, was a wild little boy, just like every other little boy I know. He was a ball of energy and would get into situations that I don’t know how he got into.

There was one incident in particular where I remember hearing him laughing and singing and yelling and having a great time in another room, and then in an instant, the joyful noise turned into terror when he began screaming and crying. I leapt up and ran into the room to check on him, and there was blood all over his face and his clothes.

Like a detective I was sitting there trying to figure out what in the heck just happened, but I could see no blood anywhere else, and so I was just puzzled pleading with him to tell me what happened. He had no answers, and I didn’t either. But once we got him cleaned up, it was pretty obvious that he had a fairly severe cut in his top lip.

Now being a dad, we don’t love hospitals or doctors too much, so I was ready to let it heal on its own. But thank God there was other wise counsel around who told me that I needed to take him to get stitches. So I obliged. We went to an urgent care, and got into our room, and they laid Ryder on a chair, and numbed his lip so they could administer the stitches.

I guess since he was so young and they didn’t want him freaking out they put a medical cloth over his face with only the mouth part open. This did not work as he began freaking out immediately, when they laid it on his face, to the point that they asked me to hold on to him while they worked.

This whole time he kept yelling “get off of me dad,” which we joke about now, but I remember hating it in the moment.

I was trying to calm him as much as I could, but because he couldn’t see why I was doing what I was doing, he wasn’t listening to what I was telling him.

That was, until that face cover was removed and he could see me again. As soon as he looked at me, he began to breathe slower and slower, until he finally understood that he was ok, and that Dad was helping him and not hurting him. As soon as his focus moved from his fear to his father’s face he was ok.

TRANSITION

And in this world there is much that feeds our fear. From the news, to social media to the company we keep.

An article in Psychology today says that:

“Most media stories involve reports of events, of which the vast majority are negative. The reason being that negative news tends to generate a lot more clicks than positive news.

The problem is that constant exposure to negative information about certain topics can skew our frames of reference, leading to an overrepresentation of potential threats. It can lead us to make broad generalizations about others based on extreme examples, such as protestors, police officers, or people who voted differently from us.”

There is money to be made from our fears. And power to be gained from our fears.

Because whatever controls our fears, controls our focus.

Could this be why the number one command in the entire Bible is “do not be afraid?”

Some form of this is said 366 times. While some form of “Fear God,” is repeated over 300 times. Do not fear the world, but fear God means do not let the world control your focus, but let God control your focus.

As his word states, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

We saw with my son Ryder, that he was letting the wrong fear control his focus, and as a result it was causing him to act out of anxiety, not wisdom.

TRANSITION

And throughout our study of this book we have seen Jonah do the same thing. He has been making broad generalizations of those that God wants to know him.

Jonah found his significance, or identity in his nationality, not in his God. And when his nationality came to be in conflict with his God, he fled. He acted out of anxiety, not wisdom.

But here he is. On the same boat with nonbelievers, who have been praying to their gods, and throwing their income overboard for the good of all on board. He is being challenged to call out to the God he knows has the power to save them. And something must have finally convicted him.

Jonah 1:12 ESV

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.”

For the first time in this entire book, Jonah begins to notice other people besides himself. He starts looking at these nonbelievers, these pagans with pity and sorrow instead of contempt.

This is worth noting, because we can never really move to our next step spiritually until we start looking at someone—-anyone, other than ourselves.

Jonah is saying something like: “I deserve this punishment, God is angry with me, not with you, throw me in that you might be saved.” For the first time we see that Jonah starts caring for the common good over his comfort.

The sailors are still displaying kind and good qualities when they try to find another way before throwing him overboard, and when they finally do decide to toss him over they do it with fear and trembling and prayer directed toward Yahweh, Jehovah Elohim, the God of Israel.

And God’s Word is showing us what is always true, when authentic love is being demonstrated. It is always substitutionary. “I am willing to endure hardships, or the wrath of this storm, so that you do not have to.” All life-changing love is some kind of substitutionary sacrifice.

Consider parenting. Children need you to spend time with them. Talk with them. Teach them. Spend every moment you can with them, so that they can most fully learn who they are, and who they are to be. We saw last week, that we don’t just figure out our identity as individuals, but we most fully figure out our identity in community, and that always begins at home with the parents.

But if parents are not willing to participate in a great sacrifice of self, the children will suffer greatly. If we choose to most fully live in a way that seeks our comfort and our well being over the common good of our household, our children will be negatively affected, growing up with all sorts of problems, and never be able to become self sufficient adults as a result.

You can say the same about your marriage, or many other examples of costly relationships, but all of them follow the pattern of substitutionary sacrifice. Our loss, whether in time, money, or energy is someone else’s gain. We decrease so that others around us may increase.

Yet when we love in that way, we are never diminished, in fact, we become stronger, wiser, happier, deeper. We grow as we give ourselves away. Which we tend not to believe, but it is true.

To love has always been an invitation to give ourselves away. You lose a sense of independence in order to grow in intimacy. But it is only in turning away from ourselves that we will find our true identity.

True love is always sacrificial. While false love uses others to get what we want.

The Bible says that God proves what true love is, by dying for us while we were still his enemies.

And because we are created in the image of God, we can be certain that the reason this pattern of love is so transformative in human life, is because this is how God, our creator, loves us.

The example of Jonah in this moment points to Jesus.

And we talked about a few weeks back how the Bible is intended to be read Christologically, meaning it all points to Christ, and when Jonah sacrificed himself for the pagan sailors we see what Jesus did for us, on an infinitely greater scale. Jonah only came near to death, under the water. Jesus actually died under the weight of our sin and punishment.

Jonah is not Jesus, as you and I are not Jesus, but what he did here, represents what Christ came to do in totality. Save sinners and sufferers from darkness and condemnation, by demonstrating substitutionary love. The sacrifice of Jonah, brought nonbelievers to saving faith, as our daily sacrifices to self and comfort can do the same thing for the nonbelievers around us. We point to Christ when we love sacrificially. With how we spend our money, with how we interact with strangers, with how we give of our time, talent and treasure. We point to Christ with how we live and with how we love.

Someone read Mark 10:45.

Jesus died on our behalf. The cross is the greatest example and fulfillment of true love in history, through his substitutionary sacrifice WE CAN KNOW GOD. Know peace with him. Know a relationship with him. And help others know the same.

Read v 15

As soon as Jonah is tossed overboard the storm ceased. The “anger” or wrath of God subsided. People have a hard time with the idea of the wrath of God, and his anger against sin.

Let me ask you a question, do we have the right to be angry when wrongs are committed?

To the degree that we are living “rightly” in our own eyes we will be upset with others living against what we believe is right. God says that he alone is righteous and sin turns us away from his righteousness and toward our own. Our righteousness is unholy.

But God is holy, set apart, he is the only being untouched by sin. His entire being is righteousness. His holiness explains his wrath.

And if we just thought about his wrath without the cross, we might think of him as an angry and vengeful deity, but we don’t just have the book of Jonah by itself. We have the entirety of Scripture, that shows our holy God, dealing fully with the problem of sin on the cross. He fully pays the substitutionary sacrifice needed because of our sin. Ceasing the storm of God’s wrath for those who trust in his sacrificial love.

Jonah might have mistrusted the goodness of God, in dealing with his sin, his turning away from the father, but he didn’t know about the cross. What is our excuse?

Someone read verse 5 and someone read verse 16

In verse 16, after Jonah is thrown over, the sailors experience a whole new kind of fear rather than the one they experienced during the storm. They experienced the fear of the Lord. They used his covenant name, Yahweh when they sacrificed to him.

This name used throughout scripture denotes a personal and saving relationship with him.

These pagan sailors experienced true faith in God, because they were not just crying out to him in the middle of the storm. They began praising him and sacrificing to him after he had calmed the storm. They were not seeking God just for what he could do for them, but simply for the greatness of who he is.

Jonah was avoiding God’s call for him to go and show God’s goodness to nonbelievers, and that is just what he ends up doing.

What God is going to do, God will do.

Will we be obedient in what he’s called us to do, or will he prove his power in our disobedience?

When God calls, the only answer is obedience.

Jonah was fleeing God’s goodness and mercy, only to find himself needing it in the depth of the sea. In the belly of the fish, Jonah will remind himself of who Yahweh is. And that is the end of chapter 1.