The Storm Sending God and Sinful Servants

Introduction

During the COVID lockdowns our world learned to do things a little differently, or a lot differently, in a lot of different ways. School. Work. Shopping… and Working Out. One workout movement that gained a lot of popularity during 2020 was a program called 75 Hard. Maybe you’ve never heard about this, maybe you’ve done this, or maybe like me, you witnessed other people do this! Essentially over 75 days you had to do 5 things each day:

Follow a Diet

Do 2 45-minute workouts

Drink a gallon of water

Read 10 pages of a non-fiction book

Take a progress picture

Now, I never participated… but I saw many Facebook friends do this as they would upload their daily progress picture and talk about their journey. In fact, I remember one person doing this for 70 days… but then forgot to take their progress picture on day 71 and had to restart from day 1! 75 Hard. We know that there are things in life that are hard. Jobs. Assignments. There are some people that are challenging.

What about telling people about Jesus? For some people, they have the spiritual gift of evangelism and sharing the Gospel is almost second nature and comes easy. It doesn’t matter if they’re out to eat at Jimm’s Steakhouse, shopping at Bass Pro, or getting groceries at Walmart, they are planting those Gospel seeds and having Jesus conversations with anyone and everyone… Have you met someone like that? Praise God for them… but for most believers, sharing the Gospel is hard. It’s hard for a variety of reasons… Maybe it’s because we don’t know where to start. Maybe we feel inadequate. Maybe we feel awkward. Maybe we’re afraid that we’ll mess up. Maybe, though, it’s because of the person that we’re around. We can come up with a lot of reasons to not share the Gospel! But, this is what God commands of His followers. We are saved in order to share this good news. We are saved in order to “do hard things.”

Over the month of March, we’ll be in the book of Jonah - one of my favorite Old Testament books, and we’ll see themes such as Salvation, Grace, Mercy, Judgment and we’ll see one of the most famous stories in the Bible as Jonah was in fact swallowed by a fish (or whale, if you’re team whale).

Jonah 1:1–6 CSB

1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because their evil has come up before me.” 3 Jonah got up to flee to Tarshish from the Lord’s presence. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. He paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the Lord’s presence. 4 But the Lord threw a great wind onto the sea, and such a great storm arose on the sea that the ship threatened to break apart. 5 The sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his god. They threw the ship’s cargo into the sea to lighten the load. Meanwhile, Jonah had gone down to the lowest part of the vessel and had stretched out and fallen into a deep sleep. 6 The captain approached him and said, “What are you doing sound asleep? Get up! Call to your god. Maybe this god will consider us, and we won’t perish.”

Can you imagine this scene? Sin. Ships. Storms. Shock. Sleep. It might seem like everything is out of control, but we’ll be reminded of a wonderful truth: Behind the scenes there is a God who has not surrendered an ounce of His authority and power. Our good God has a plan, and His plan will come to pass. Let’s pray and ask Him to help us see His plan in this passage in Jonah, and what His plan is for us today.

What Did Jesus Believe about Jonah?

Now, if you’ve been in church before you’ve probably heard of Jonah. Now, who here is team whale? Team fish?

Whether it be whenever you were a child and you learned about the story of Jonah and the fish/whale, or watching the Veggietales Jonah movie that’s like 20 years old, or maybe you’ve had a sermon series or Bible study through the book of Jonah. This is a familiar book for many of us. Even if you didn’t grow up in church, you probably have at least heard of this story in some way or another… but did you know that there is quite a bit of debate as to whether this story is legitimate history or if it is a metaphor of sorts.

There are many people, even in churches and pulpits, today who say that the Old Testament doesn’t matter or that it is less inspired and important than the New Testament. All Scripture is God-breathed. This means that the Old Testament is just as inspired by God as the New Testament. It is profitable. It is useful. It is good! In order to understand the New Testament, we have to understand the Old Testament. In order to appreciate Jesus and what He has done for us, we have to understand why He had to come in the first place! The Old Testament matters and whenever the New Testament talks about the Old Testament, we gain some helpful insight in how we should approach and understand the Old Testament too. This is called hermeneutics or Bible interpretation and one of the foundational pillars to understand your Bible is to let Scripture interpret Scripture. We wonder, “What is the Old Testament all about?” Guess what? Jesus answers this for us!

Luke 24:27 CSB

27 Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted for them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures.

Jesus believed that the Old Testament was all about Him. Whenever people talk about how Jesus doesn’t appear until Matthew or that the Old Testament doesn’t matter, we can point to Luke 24:27 as a basis to say that the Old Testament does matter - Jesus said so!

Some still say that Jonah is a myth. There is no way that a fish could swallow a human being. This is a metaphor, not to be taken literally. What does Jesus have to say about this? Matthew 12:40

Matthew 12:40 CSB

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

In Matthew 12, Jesus is preparing people for His crucifixion and resurrection and refers to Jonah being in the fish for 3 days. He refers to Jonah as being a real person who really was in the fish and uses this story that His audience would have been aware of to point them to the fact that He too would soon be in the heart of the earth for 3 days. Jonah is a real person. This book is real history. This true story reminds us of God’s power and our responsibility to submit to His will in all things… this morning we see the consequence of rejecting God’s plan. It all starts with God’s call of Jonah

God’s Call of Jonah (1-2)

The beginning of this book tells us 3 key things: Who Jonah was, what God wants Jonah to do, and what Jonah’s response is. In verses 1-2, we see the answer to the first two - who is Jonah? He is a prophet and the son of Amittai. Is that sufficient? That’s not a lot of information. God’s Word is incredibly helpful if we look at it to provide us with answers. If you turn backward in your Bible a few books, you find 2 Kings and in chapter 14, we read more about Jonah

2 Kings 14:25 CSB

25 He restored Israel’s border from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word the Lord, the God of Israel, had spoken through his servant, the prophet Jonah son of Amittai from Gath-hepher.

The king at this time is Jeroboam II, and he was the King of the nation of Israel (Northern Kingdom) from 782-753 BC. Jonah was alive and actively working as a prophet during this era. This means that he is alive while people like Amos and Hosea are serving as prophets. In other words, Jonah had some time in which he was a faithful prophet, doing what the Lord called him to do. He preached the Word God gave him to preach and God worked through Jonah’s prophetic ministry as 2 Kings 14:25 tells us! As we arrive here with the opening to the book of Jonah, we find someone who has walked with the Lord. Who has done what God calls him to do. He has experienced God’s goodness and grace and power… but then we see in our passage what God wants Jonah to do, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense! Have you experienced this before? The thing God wants you to do doesn’t make a lot of sense to you?

Consider Moses, earlier in the Bible. What was God’s will for him? To go back to Egypt and tell Pharoah, “Let my people go!” What’s problematic there? Moses isn’t well liked by the Israelites. Moses had killed an Egyptian. He can’t talk very well. God’s plan doesn’t make a lot of sense to God’s people!

Why would Moses do this? Think about your life - if you got a call from an unknown number at 3am at it was one of those robot calls asking you to donate money for a political campaign, what are you doing? You’re hanging up the phone and trying to go back to bed because it was a robot call and they called at 3am! What about if you were asked by a person you haven’t seen in years to help volunteer at a function that you have no connection to? You’re probably going to tell that person that you’re not interested. You don’t know them very well, you aren’t connected to the cause. But what if your best friend in the whole world was taken to the hospital and needed you to be by their side because they had no one else there for them? What are you doing? You’re dropping everything because of the person who is asking you for help! You love that person. They are important to you. You are going to make that happen.

Maybe not for a stranger… but we’d do it for a friend. But what if God Himself told you to do something? What then? What’s the church answer? OF COURSE! I’d do whatever God said to do… but really, though. What would you do if God told you to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” What if God told you to, “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Christ.”

People love to dunk on Jonah for his response to God’s call on his life… but if we’re honest for more than 2 seconds with ourselves and others, we come to an uncomfortable realization, our response to God’s call often looks an awful lot like Jonah’s. And for good reason! What is Jonah to do?

Go to Nineveh!

As an Ozark graduate, I’ve known a person or two to replace Nineveh with Nixa. This is fascinating - why Nineveh? Nineveh is not in Israel, for one. It is a foreign nation. Most prophets addressed foreign nations by addressing the people of Israel - we find examples of this with Obadiah and Nahum who warned the people of Israel of the danger of aligning with foreign nations. But here Jonah is tasked to physically go to Nineveh, a massive city in Assyria, and warn them of God’s coming judgment because of their evil actions. The people of Nineveh worshiped false gods, but they did evil things. Sargon II, the leader of the Assyrian army that conquered Israel in 722 BC had a great grandson who tore off the limbs and hands of his victims. Another king enjoyed flaying his victims alive. This was their culture! Evil. Wicked. And powerful! Nineveh had walls that were 40 bricks thick. Thick enough that 3 chariots could ride along the wall. This was a mighty and wicked place.

This is the place that God commands Jonah to go to. Where does God call you and I to go? All peoples. Springfield, Nixa, Ozark, Republic, Strafford, Willard, Branson… and Guatemala City, Berlin, Cairo, and Jerusalem. What do we do? We are tempted to pick and choose. Sometimes we will share the Gospel… sometimes we will say that we don’t have the time. Whenever we stop at the gas station and see the same worker day after day, or go to the same grocery store week after week and have the same check out person, and we never share the Gospel, what do we do? Like Jonah, sometimes we fall short and we sin

Sin Creates Scary Situations (3-4)

So, God calls on Jonah to get up. This is sudden and unexpected… and Jonah follows through! Check out verse 3 of our text - Jonah got up! Of course, he’s going to obey God because he’s a prophet! Whenever God told a prophet to do something, what do we expect the prophet to do? What God told them to do! But what do we read? Jonah did get up… but he went gets up to flee! This is shocking. We see a prophet who sins against God. Prophets are people, so the fact that they sin shouldn’t surprise us… but their job is to be a mouthpiece for God and share God’s message with God’s people. What Jonah is doing is hard to believe - actively refusing to share this message and we aren’t told why, at least right away.

Jonah knew what to do… Jonah knew of God’s power because he had been a prophet for years and had seen God work in great and mighty ways. He was given his instructions… but he refused to do what God commanded him to do. It’s easy to point the finger at Jonah and say “Shame on you! How could you not follow through on this?” But how often do we do the exact same thing? We know what God wants us to do, but we say “I just don’t have enough time!” “I don’t know how to do this!” “Someone else needs to take care of this!” And we, like Jonah, rebel against God’s command. Nineveh was East and Tarshish is West, so some believe that the main problem was directional… but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The problem isn’t so much directional, but spiritual. The problem isn’t that Jonah went West instead of East… it’s that he went down instead of up. Follow me here, church, there are times in our lives where we go the wrong way physically because we have ALREADY gone the wrong way spiritually. There are times when we disobey God’s Word because we have already determined that WE are the ultimate authority. In other words, the reason we go left when the Bible tells us to go right is because we have already settled it in our hearts that we know best. Directional problems are often the result of spiritual problems.

Jonah went down… and this is a theme throughout the book. Down to Joppa. Down in the ship. Down into the water. Down into the fish. Down into the depths of the earth. This downward trajectory begins because of one thing: FEAR.

Have you ever been afraid before? I’m not talking about a little scared… I’m talking about you can barely stand because you’re so afraid. When I was in 5th grade, I went to a friend’s family lake house at Table Rock Lake and my friends loved going cliff jumping and I had never been. We make our way in the boat towards these cliffs and my friends who had done this before jump out and start to swim over to these cliffs that don’t look that big from the boat… and I get out and follow after them. We climb up the rocks and make our way up a little path, up to the top. 30 feet doesn’t look that high from a boat a long ways away… but whenever you’re on top of a 30 foot cliff as a 12 year old, it’s a long ways up and I was terrified. What happens if I slip before I jump? What if there is a rock hiding under the water that I can’t see? I was afraid… we’ve all been afraid before. Here is Jonah, afraid… This makes sense, Nineveh is a big place. A powerful people. A wicked and evil people. He’s afraid for his life, right? We’ll discover at the end of the book that this isn’t the case… see, Jonah isn’t afraid for his life. He is afraid that the people of Nineveh will repent and experience God’s grace and forgiveness! He’s afraid that God’s mercy is so great that these wicked people won’t get what they deserve. How foolish, right? Jonah thought these people were so great at sinning that they didn’t deserve God’s mercy - and he was absolutely right! But he was so shortsighted that he didn’t remember this: Jonah himself didn’t deserve God’s mercy. Friends, none of us do!

So he runs away, to flee from the Lord’s presence - again, sin makes you do foolish things like believe that you can outrun an all-knowing God! Not only this, but Jonah pays for this ship going to Tarshish. Now, it’s not as though there was a ship ready to go and Jonah arrived right before the ship took off and paid a coin and got on board. Likely what this means is that Jonah had to find and hire an entire crew for this voyage. Jewish tradition tells us that Jonah rented this entire ship and paid for the entire journey because he was in such a rush to run away from God’s plan for him and the people of Nineveh. He would rather pay thousands of dollars and run away from home than share the truth of God’s Word. Again, we say what a fool… but aren’t we tempted to do the same thing?

What does God do in response? Jonah shows us what the Gospels remind us, the God of the Bible is all-powerful. He controls the wind. Waves. Even the fish of the sea. God responds to Jonah’s sin in a spectacular fashion. Look at verse 4 - the ship threatened to break apart. Literally the Hebrew language personifies the ship to the point that it is as if the ship is talking to the sailors and the storm and saying, “If you don’t stop, I’m going to self-explode!”

People wonder why would all this happen to Jonah? Why the storm? Why the fish? Because we don’t realize how serious sin is! Romans 6:23

Romans 6:23 CSB

23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Imagine the consequence if you were to grab a rock and go and scratch a car abandoned in a junk yard.

What would happen? The owner of the junkyard might be upset at you if he caught you, but more than likely he couldn’t even tell if you scratched the car because it’s so old and banged up. Now take the same rock and go scratch a new $75,000 Ford F-150 at a car dealership and now you’re going to be paying quite a bit to fix the scratch…

but let’s say that you see a brand new $5.5 million Ferrari in a parking lot and you have the audacity to go and scratch that Ferrari with that rock, now you’re a criminal offender.

Why? Because the value of the thing that you scratched increased. So often what we do is we “Anthropomorphize” God, that’s a $5 word, but it just means that we treat God like He is just like us. Here’s the fundamental problem, church, God is NOT just like us. That’s a great thing in a lot of ways… but it’s problematic in others. God is so much holier than any of us think. Because of this, this means that our sin is so much worse than any of us think. Kevin DeYoung words is like this, “Any sin committed against an infinite God carries infinite consequence.” Jonah deserved this storm because of his sin. We deserve destruction because of our sin. Many cry that this isn’t fair, it’s exactly fair. It’s exactly what we deserve. Yet, through all of this, God has a plan. Through our struggles. Storms. Sleepless nights. God has a plan that we don’t always understand, but a plan that will be accomplished one way or another.

I appreciate what Billy Smith says about this storm, “The plans of a sovereign God are not so easily thwarted by the stubborn will of a puny prophet.”

Friend, you are free to make choices and we do so every single day. But let me remind you of something, you are not more powerful than the Creator of the Universe. Sin causes problems and sometimes, because of our sin, we are left in some scary situations like Jonah and these Sailors

Sin Crushes Spiritual Hope (5-6)

The Bible shares with us that Jesus is the light of the world and that whenever we are saved, we receive His light. One of the contrasts of light is darkness. Whenever we are living in sin, it is as if we are walking in darkness as Ephesians 2 tells us. Darkness confuses us. If you’ve ever tried walking in complete darkness, it’s kind of scary as you have no clue what’s in front of you - will you fall off of a cliff or run into a wall? You don’t know because you’re walking in darkness. Whenever we walk in spiritual darkness, our hope is crushed. These poor sailors were in for the storm of their lifetimes. At this point in time, if you were a sailor you were likely a merchant and you sailed often. For them in verse 5 to be afraid indicates that they genuinely believed they were going to perish. These individuals made their money by selling things, but they began to throw their cargo out to the sea because they believed that doing this might either appease God or lighten the load of the ship and help them survive. They are praying to their gods, but nothing was changing. Nothing was stopping this storm that was sent by God.

Can anything stop our God?

Romans 8:31 CSB

31 What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?

God has all-power. We read in the Bible that there are times where God sends storms… and other times where God stops storms. Remember the story of Jesus and the disciples on the sea of Galilee? He and the disciples were out at sea. A storm strikes. They believe they’re going to die. Jesus is sound asleep. Jesus speaks and the storm stops. This is the power of our God! While the entire crew is terrified, what is our man Jonah doing? Once again, he went down into the lowest part of the ship and fallen into a deep sleep. Again, Jonah went down. Why did he go down? Scholars are divided. Some say that he believe that he went to nap before the storm got bad because of his exhaustion and because he had purchased the ship… others, though, believe that he knew what was happening. He knew that the storm was a result of his rebellion, and went to sleep anyway. This isn’t a Sunday afternoon nap… this is a deep sleep. A sleep so deep that you don’t wake up in the middle of a serious storm! If you’ve ever struggled with insomnia, you know this to be true, sleep serves 2 purposes: Restores our bodies and Reminds us we are not God. What’s fascinating about sleep is that we all need it, and we are powerless over it. You can do everything right, eat right, not watch TV late at night, read your Bible, count all the sheep, and still not fall asleep. As one who got about 5 hours of sleep in 5 days, I can attest to this, God is sovereign over our sleep. That’s not to say that some people don’t sleep because of their own doing, drinking Dr. Pepper at 11pm probably will keep you up a little bit! But here we see something interesting. A deep sleep out at sea. We see something similar to Genesis 15 as God put Abraham into a deep sleep before signifying His covenant with Abraham. Here is Jonah - running from God, going down, not praying, falling asleep. He is on the door of death itself.

Sin starts with one small disobedient action and ends with completely spiritual destruction!

Think about this. Someone who goes to church every Sunday. It doesn’t matter how your week has been, you’re at church. You’re serving at church. You’re growing in your walk with Jesus. You’re active in a small group. You’re ALL IN! You don’t wake up tomorrow and say, “You know what, I think I’m just going to stop going to church!” That’s not how it happens! What happens? It’s one deviation. It’s one decision. It’s one action. And then another. And another. And before you know it, you’re on a ship going the opposite direction, and a storm is on the horizon to shake things up.

You and I are Jonah. We fall short more often than not. We’re in a messed up, broken, fallen world and we have the solution. We have the answer. We have hope! But so often, what do we fail to do? We fail to share it. While all the other sailors are praying and working, Jonah is sleeping. We too can choose silence or disobedience… or we can choose faithfulness and share the hope that we have in Jesus. You see, Jesus is the true and better Jonah. You understand that all of Scripture is about Jesus, don’t you? Jesus is the true and better Jonah who, like Jonah, was called to go and preach a message of repentance but doesn’t run away from this task. Instead He faithfully trusted in God’s plan and obeyed, even to the point of death on a cross.

Whenever we rebel against God’s will, we invite God’s wrath… We invite God to send a storm to redirect us and to humble us. How can we avoid this storm in the first place?

Be Faithful in the Word - It’s hard to obey the Word if we don’t know what the Word says!

Be Fervent in Prayer - Whenever we pray we admit that we desperately need God’s help! We need His help every day. Jared Wilson shared this week that Prayer is Weakness Weaponized. Church, we must be a people of prayer as we acknowledge that we are weak BUT He is strong! We also must be people of prayer as we seek to invite others to worship with us - I saw this stat this week: 90% of unchurched people say they would come to church if they were asked… but only 2% of church members have asked someone to come to church with them over the last 6 months! When was the last time you personally invited someone to church? When was the last time you shared something on your Facebook page having to do with Jesus or about our church? We share things that we care about. We talk about things that we care about. Do we care enough to post and talk about Jesus? We have hundreds of thousands of people in our community who do not attend church, who do not know Jesus. Statistically, many of them would come if they were invited! We must be fervent in prayer and ask for God’s help to invite people to come worship with us.

Be Focused on Monday Morning - If we aren’t focused, we will miss these divine opportunities! When you get to school, when you get to the office, when you go to the store, when you have conversations, be focused to have Gospel conversations! When someone asks you how your weekend was, give a recap of Sunday morning, share the Gospel, and extend an invitation to worship with us at South Gate.

Following God’s plan and telling people about God’s Son can be hard for a variety of reasons. It’s easy to miss the opportunities that God gives us if we aren’t intentionally looking for them. It’s easy to run the other direction and stay in our comfort zone. But telling people about Jesus is what we are saved in order to do. Friend, you have a purpose today and that purpose is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever! In order to glorify God, you must know Him. Today we must stop this downward spiral of sinful rebellion and choose to follow and tell people about Jesus! If you don’t know Christ, if you haven’t turned away from your sins and been changed by Jesus, today I’d love to pray with you and share with you the hope found in Jesus.