The Storm

Are any of you familiar with Louis Zamparini?

Louis Zamparini was an Olympic distance runner who shortly after going to the Olympics served in World War 2.

While he was serving his plane was shot down and crashed in the ocean; he spent 47 days drifting on a raft until he was found by a Japanese boat and ended up in a Japanese prison camp for 2 or 3 years.

and during those years he was treated awful and was often tortured more then others because at the time he was known throughout the world.

But when the US won the war he was released but had server post traumatic stress disorder because of all he had been threw

He was an alcoholic

Some nights he would actually wake up from his sleep and he would be choking his wife.

He would often catch himself drinking to much to take away the pain.

And at this point he was not a Christian but one night at a Billy Grahm revival He accepted Christ into His life.

And when He did this his life completely changed and by the grace of God he was delievered from his alcholism and his PTSD

Which I know that is not always the case

but something even more amazing happened because shortly after. Louis Zamparini felt like God was calling Him to go back to Japan where he was tortured and forgive and minister to the people who tortured him.

and he did.

and it is really an amazing story.

but you can almost imagine how difficult it would have been for him to go and not just forgive the people who tortured him but to talk to them about Christ.

because these were people who ruined his life for a couple years and even caused him to suffer years after he was away from them.

and

These were people who caused him

But sometimes God calls us to do challenging things

Have you ever had God call you to do something that is just challenging?

For some it is a call to share the gospel with someone

For some it is to move away from things that are causing damage in our life that are not glorifying to God

For some it might be to even enter into a relationship with God.

but the reason I am brining this up is because God often calls us to do hard things that are outside our comfort zone.

and we are beginning our sermon series called “Jonah” this week and we are just going to be going through the book of Jonah and just to give you some background information on the story of Jonah

He often ask us to do things

In this book God is calling a man named Jonah who is a prophet to minister to this city called Nineveh

and Nineveh at this time was known to be this city that was just evil, it was known for terriosm, violence and

They would do all of these unspeakable things

But in the middle of all this violence like I said God calls Jonah to minister to Nineveh.

and Jonah has a hard time with this and instead of being obedient to where God calls Him He runs away from where God is calling him and really he trys to run away from God.

So we are going to be in

And I am excited because Jonah is often a book of the Bible we learn about as a little kid but then we never talk about it again.

But whats exciting is there is a ton in this book for us as adults as well.

so we are going to be unpacking this book for the next four weeks.

and as I mentioned we will be in today it says:

7 (NIV)

Jonah Flees From the Lord

1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

(NIV)

Jonah Flees From the Lord

3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.

1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.

3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. 4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.

But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. 6 The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”

7 Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”

9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

10 This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.)

11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”

12 “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”

13 Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. 14 Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.” 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.

(NIV)

Jonah’s Prayer

So as we already talked about in this passage Jonah gets this call from God God wants Him to go to Nineveh

17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. So as we already talked about in this passage Jonah gets this call from God God wants Him to go to Nineveh

I want to pause right there because God is calling Jonah and like we already talked about God is calling every single one of us whether we are a Christian or not.

For some it is to move away from things that are causing damage in our life that are not glorifying to God

For some it might be to even enter into a relationship with God.

But God is constantly calling us to do something.

And in this story as I already mentioned is Jonah instead of following what God is asking him to do He actually guns it out of there and tries to get away from God by getting on a boat to get as far away as possible

and

and look what happens in verse 4 because verse 4 it says that a violent storm arises and this violent storm is so strong that the

Bible says it might break up the ship which means the ship is going to sink.

and the Bible says that the Lord sent this storm but the reason the Lord sent it is because Jonah was disobedient.

and when you look at the reasoning for why this storm is occuring Jonah admits that it is his fault in verse 12.

But if you look at why this storm is happening it is because Jonah

and really it is implied that it is because of Jonahs actions that the boat is going through the storm

because He was disobedient to God

The issue that occurs is when we do not obey that call in our life.

and really the first point I want you to get is that when we are disobedient to what God is asking us to do we invite a storm to enter into our lives.

and often times what happens is when we invite sin into our life

because when we do this and disobey God it really is a sin

Think about the

and the first point I want you to get is that when we disobey God (when we sin) we are inviting a storm to enter our lives.

because God has these amazing plans for your life and when you catch yourself running away or disobeying Him it makes it so you go off of this plan He has for your life.

and if you are disobeying God it is

I remember a few years back me and some friends went white water rafting which if you have never been it is awsome.

Because if you look down even in verse 12 Jonah admits that this storm is his fault.

It might not look like

and they assign someone who knows what they are doing to go with each boat and they help get you around all of the rapids to make sure the raft doesn’t flip and to make sure no one gets hurt.

and I remember at one point my instructor was telling us to go a certain way but we thought we knew better then our instructor so we did something else.

and before we knew it the raft was completely flipped.

I am getting scrapped up in the rocks

I see a few of my friends just drifting down the river

I see another clinging onto a rock.

And I see the instructor chasing after the raft and the people.

You know God has this amazing plan for your life.

He has things he wants you to do

He has lives he wants you to impact

and that doesn’t mean you will have an easy life, when we were all listening to the white water rafting instructor we still had bumps and close calls, but we stayed on the raft.

It is when we say I am going to ignore or run away from what God is asking me to do that our lives seem to flip.

Thats were the storm comes in because when we disobey God we invite sin which causes destruction in our life and welcomes the storm.

and often times the storm that we invite into our life impcats our friends, family, and people we don’t even know about

Because in our Passage Jonah wasen’t alone on a boat but there were other people who got caught in this storm that he created.

It is easy for your family to get caught in a storm you created

You know your kids are watching you

Its easy for your friends to get caught in a storm you created

when you act a certain way

I remember when I used to do prison ministry these guys would tell me how their family is suffering because they don’t have a father anymore, because their family can no longer afford where they were living because of the storm that they invited into their lives.

Your wife is suffering because you

But often times the storms we bring into our lives and our families lives are their because of of something we did.

and like I said even when we obey God we can still have a storm, but God will get us through it.

When we hit a storm and do not have God, or the storm is because of us disobeying God we are in trouble.

So the first point is disobeying God or sinning invites a storm to enter our life.

But the second point is often times we are oblivious to the storm.

Look at verse 5 because while everyone else is in this storm and is running around doing anything to make it so the boat doesn’t flip.

It says that Jonah is below deck asleep

He is completely oblivious to the storm that is happening and has actually distanced himself to a place where He can’t even see it (inside a boat)

And really the same is true for us because what will happen is we will be going through a storm that we have caused in our life but we are completely oblivious to it or if we do understand that we are the reason the storm entered our life.

Did

and a lot of times it takes some sort of wake up call for us to realize the storm we are in.

and it happens to Jonah because it says the captain comes down and looks at Jonah and says what are you doing?

Don’t you know whats going on?

Don’t you know that we are in a storm?

and you know the captain from what we can tell did not worship the true God. He worshiped a lot of gods (little g) but not the true God.

But the captain provided a wake up call to Jonah, where he said get up and call on your God

because we are in this storm and really they discover after awhile Jonah is the reason for the storm.

because when we disobey Gods

because He has been disobedient to God.

But whats crazy is Jonah never actually calls on God to save them.

and often times in our

He doesn't pray.

He just explains who he is, why this is happening and then he just says throw me overboard.

Basically he just gives up

Some of you may know this and this is a little bit of a messed up illustration but did you know if you place a frog in room temperature water and heat up the water slowly,

The frog wont actually notice that the water is getting warmer until it gets close to the boiling point.

and once it hits the boiling point the frog will try to jump out but its muscles actually do not work anymore and there is nothing it can do to get out of the water.

And in this passage this is really how Jonah feels because he was oblivious to this storm and then he ends up realizing it this storm is here

but when he realizes it he goes just throw me overboard.

Because I am way to deep into the storm.

and its easy for us to feel this way, (its easy for us to feel like a frog getting cooked).

Where we go I am in this storm and there is no hope for me so I might as well call it quits.

Its to late

And I really believe that Jonah could have said instead of throwing me in the ocean lets sail back to where God is calling me and the storm would have gone away, but Jonah was to stubborn

And if you have noticed the points we have covered so far tell us a lot about ourselves.

You know sin invites a storm into OUR lives

We are often oblivious to OUR storms

But this last point tells us about God. because when we are inviting these storms into our lives and are oblivious to them our God is still pursuing us.

the last point is we cannot escape God’s presence.

Because you will notice this whole story Jonah tries to run further and further from God but God keeps pursuing Him.

While Jonah was the reason for the storm God was the cause

and the story ends with the sailers throwing Jonah off the boat but instead of Jonah drowning he gets swallowed by a fish.

You know this story makes me feel a little uncomfortable because

i don’t want a storm that will sink my boat and I don’t want a fish to swallow me.

I think we can all agree on that.

in our life there are things that separate us from God, we all have our own boats, we all have times where we are willing to get thrown off that boat to escape God’s presence.

But God wants you so badly that their is not a boat He is willing to sink to get to you.

God wants you so badly that if he has to use a fish swallowing you He will.

And you may be asking yourself why did God not just call it quits on Jonah and find someone else t deliver this message to Nineveh?

Jonah was probably wondering it as well

And I believe its because it wasn’t just about what God was going to use Jonah to accomplish, (God doesn’t just use people), but it was about what God was going to do in Jonah to change him.

You know God wants to pursue you and he won’t stop because he wants to be in a relationship with you.

Even when we are not listening to him

Even when we think we know better

Jonah was going to drown in the ocean b

Even when we are running away from him

He will not give up on you.

We celebrated Easter a couple weeks ago and really it shows how amazing God pursuing us is because God loves you so much He came down and died for you.

So there doesn’t have to be anything that separates you from God.

And we all might be in a few different places this morning.

Some of us might be in the storm.

Some of us might be oblivious and are starting to realize just this morning the storm you are in and how maybe you played a role in it.

and I am going to be spoiling things for next week.

But next week we will be looking how Jonah calls out to God and it changes everything.

This morning you can call out to God because He will work to redeem the situation you are in and not only that be he will redeem you.

You are never a lost cause

and this morning we are going to end by remembering just how much God is pursuing you and remembering just how much He loves you.

because the night before Jesus died on the cross to pursue you. He was having a meal with his disciples

and if you were here last week you remember how one thing we discussed was how his disciples were a mess.

but during this meal Jesus took a cup and said this is my blood shed for you (referring to the blood he shed on the cross)

and then later He took the bread and said this is my body broken for you

Referring to him being pierced on the cross.

And so today we still receive this meal as a way of remembering what Jesus did for us.

and how He is pursing you.

All are welcome to receive communion as long as you have placed your trust in God and accepted Him as your savior.

Even if that is something you might want to do today.

and Tammi will be helping serve communion but I would invite you to come forward during this next song to receive communion.

because it talks about how at the cross we surrender everything. We surrender our lives.