Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

I’m betting this has happened to you.

You’re driving somewhere - somewhere you’ve driven to many times before - and after a while your mind kind of turns off for a bit, until suddenly you come to and you have no memory of the last few minutes.

It’s amazing and terrifying what our brains can do - when we’re doing repeated familiar action, we can go on autopilot and descend into this semi-conscious mode of being where we aren’t all together there, and then we come out of it and are like, “How did I get here?”

On more than one occasion, I find myself in the Kroger parking lot, thinking, “Why am I here?

I’m supposed to be at Home Depot,” because I had checked out completely while driving.

But for some of us, we don’t just fall into this sleep mode of being while driving or when we’re doing menial tasks at home or at work, but we actually live our lives in this state, where we suddenly come to and we’re like, “Where the heck did this month go?

What did I even do?

How did I get here?”

We sleep-walk through life, unaware really of what’s going on.

This is what we’re talking about this morning as we dive into .

Background Information

So we’re diving into Jonah for the next few weeks, and first things first: this is not a children’s story, and this is not a story about a fish.

If we reduce the story of Jonah to a story about a man miraculously surviving in the belly of a fish, we’ve completely missed the point of the book.

This is an incredibly rich and sophisticated story that’s meant to punch us right in the gut.

Jonah is supposed to make us feel uncomfortable, because it forces us to look in the mirror and wrestle with the truth that God and I often have competing visions of how my life is supposed to pan out.

But Jonah is also a remarkable story of God’s scandalous grace and his abundant mercies toward even the worst of the worst.

So let’s open our eyes and ears and hear what the author of this story is saying to us this morning.

1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.”

Who exactly is Jonah son of Amittai?

Well he’s a prophet, he’s a messenger for God.

Remember, when you see the word LORD in all caps, the Hebrew word is not a title of God, it’s his name - Yahweh - the covenantal name he reveals to his people.

So Jonah is a prophet of Yahweh, and ironically his name means “Dove, Son of Faithfulness.”

It’s ironic, because as we’ll see throughout this story, Jonah is neither innocent nor faithful - in fact, he’s the least faithful character in the entire book!

So Dove, Son of Faithfulness, Jonah son of Amittai, is sent to Nineveh.

This is so interesting, because the only other time we hear about Jonah son of Amittai in the Old Testament is in the book of 2 Kings, where we learn that Jonah is a prophet in the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

If you remember, the Northern Kingdom of Israel is invaded and taken over by the Assyrian Empire, whose capital just so happens to be where?

Nineveh.

Now Nineveh w

Now the Assyrians were absolutely brutal to the lands they conquered.

And we see here that God has taken notice of the brutality and evil that was flowing out of this great capital city of Nineveh, and he calls for Jonah, his prophet, his messenger, to go and speak against it, to stand against the injustice and brutality and senseless evil that was in that city in the name of Yahweh his God.

Jonah’s sin leads to spiritual apathy.

And what does Jonah do?

He runs.

He runs from God, and from the life that God is calling him into.

3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.

He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.

So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.

He flees to Tarshish.

Now, Nineveh was east of Israel, where Jonah lived.

So God is calling for Jonah to go east.

Tarshish, is as far west as you can go in the known world of that time.

It was the last port in the west before you hit the Atlantic ocean.

It was at the edge of the world, in the opposite direction of where God was calling Jonah to go.

To say you’re going to Tarshish then is like saying you’re going to Timbuktu.

It’s as far away as you can possibly go.

And this is where Jonah is fleeing.

But what happens?

4 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.

5 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 down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep.

Everything in the book of Jonah is big and over the top.

One writer said it was almost comic book like - everything is huge and dramatic, so Yahweh hurls a huge storm at the boat, so violent that the ship was in danger of not sinking, but physically breaking to bits on the open water.

So the sailors start chucking their cargo overboard.

You know it’s bad, because they’re throwing out their livelihood!

But what else are they doing?

They’re praying, crying out to their pantheon of gods.

These weren’t Israelites.

These weren’t God-fearers.

These were pagan sailors from a polytheistic culture, and they were praying.

They saw something in the storm, they saw something in what was happening around them, that this wasn’t just any old storm, there was a divine hand in this, they were very so they were praying to their gods.

But what is Jonah doing?

In all this chaos with the storm and the yelling and the throwing things overboard, the messenger of Yahweh is in a deep sleep, completely unaware of what’s going on around him.

Now, the author of Jonah is using a fascinating wordplay throughout this first part of the chapter.

The very first word of God’s message to Jonah is “Arise!

Get up!”

But the author repeatedly tells us that instead Jonah keeps going down.

He goes down to Joppa, he goes down into the ship, he went down into the inner part of the ship, he laid down, and went down into a deep sleep.

So in contrast to the pagan sailors who were very aware of what was going on around them, very aware that there were divine forces at work in their lives, we see that the messenger of God, the prophet of Yahweh, Dove son of Faithfulness is slowly descending down, down, down, into a literal and spiritual slumber.

What’s happening is Jonah’s sin has led him into this numb, deadened, and apathetic state, such that he’s not even aware of what’s going on around him.

What a powerful image of spiritual apathy.

God has invited Jonah to be a part of something absolutely spectacular, as we’ll come to find out as we read on in this story.

God has called Jonah to be a part of standing against injustice and confronting people in their sinfulness and offering grace and mercy and forgiveness.

And Jonah ran from that.

And listen, it wasn’t because he was afraid of the Ninevites or afraid of what might happen to him.

We learn in chapter 4 that he simply just hates Ninevites, and he knew that God would find a way to bring them to repentance and forgive them, and Jonah does not want to live in a world where the Ninevites receive the mercy of God.

Ultimately, Jonah thinks he knows better than God, and he acts accordingly.

God had called him to be a part of

But what happens is this choice causes him to descend down, down, down into a numb, stupor, where he’s sleep walking through his own life, he’s less human, he’s growing further and further form God, to the point that he’s unaware of what’s really going on around him, unaware of what God is doing in his own life.

Jonah’s spiritual apathy has real consequences.

And Jonah’s apathy has serious consequences.

6 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.”

This is amazing and tragic.

The pagan captain has to remind the prophet of Yahweh to do something as simple as pray.

Jonah is so unaware and so distant from God that he’s got to be reminded to pray.

7 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.

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?” 9 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.”

10 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.

Again, look at the contrasts here.

These pagan sailors are doing all the action in the story.

They’re praying, they’re throwing over the cargo, they’re calling for Jonah to pray, they’re asking all the questions, they’re casting lots, they’re trying to discern what’s going on, what is God doing?