Spiritual Slumber

Jonah 1

Today is the first of 4 Sundays that we will be talking about the book of Jonah. In fact, each week we will read 1 whole chapter of Jonah, which is only 4 chapters long.

What this means is that when all is said and done you can say that I’ve helped you read through an entire book of the Bible. For some of you this might be the first, or maybe even the thirtieth time you’ve read through Jonah. But, I’m hoping you’ll see it a bit more clearly.

So, if you have your Bibles handy, or a pew Bible in front of you, I want you all to turn to Jonah 1 with me. It’s right after Amos and Obadiah and right before Micah.

Jonah 1 (NRSV)

1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah set out 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 his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

4 But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. 5 Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. 6 The captain came and said to him, “What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.”

7 The sailors said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to him, “Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” 9 “I am a Hebrew,” he replied. “I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 Then the men were even more 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 so.

11 Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. 12 He said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.” 13 Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. 14 Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.” 15 So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging. 16 Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

17 But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

What we have just read is the first of 4 amazing parts to the book of Jonah. Let’s spend a bit of time understanding this first chapter.

We are introduced to Jonah, son of Amittai (which means Dove, son of Faithfulness). Jonah is a prophet of God, meaning he is given messages by God to then go and tell people around him.

So, God surveys the world, he looks around here and there, and he notices The Assyrian capital of Nineveh. This “great city” as it’s called, is full of wickedness. Danger, murder, oppression and injustice. Longing for the world to come to Him, God desires for his messenger Jonah to provide a message. The message comes to Jonah by way of the Lord and God says, “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.”

However, what does the Dove, son of Faithfulness do? He runs! He hears God as clear as day yet he runs. Jonah runs DOWN to Joppa and found a ship that was headed toward Tarshish. Now, as 21st century Americans this may mean almost nothing to us at first. But, let’s take a look at a map.

[Display Map]

As you can see, Joppa is not on the way to Nineveh. Jonah, instead of heading North East decides to go South to Joppa and hop on a boat. And, where is this boat headed? Tarshish. Instead of Jonah travelling the roughly 725 miles to Nineveh he decides it would be better to travel the nearly 3,000 miles to Tarshish. In the ancient world Tarshish was more than just a port city, it was the edge of the known world. Beyond it lies the great Atlantic sea, and as far as anyone was concerned, nothing existed out there.

So, Jonah pays his fare in Joppa, hops aboard, and heads out with the sailors to Tarshish. And, all is good and well…until it isn’t. The Lord creates a massive storm, so large that the ship threatens to break up on the water. The crew panics, they’ve never seen a storm so big, and they begin throwing everything overboard, all of the cargo. They are trying to lighten the ship. At this point they’ve lost all of their money and earnings because they threw it overboard, they are awake and alert to what is happening around them, praying to their gods. They know that this storm isn’t normal and they are hoping that one of the many gods they worship will be able to help them.

And, while they do this, what is Jonah doing? Well, he’s asleep. During all of this chaos, the yelling and screaming, running and throwing cargo overboard, the prophet, the man of God, is fast asleep.

At this point, in verse 5, we begin to see this repetitive language of Jonah going “down.”

Jonah goes DOWN to Joppa.

In v.3 our English translations typically say that Jonah went on board, but the Hebrew word used here actually says that Jonah went DOWN on the ship.

We are told in v.5 that Jonah went DOWN into the hold of the ship

Then we are told that Jonah went and laid DOWN and slept.

We’re seeing this religious man of God, over the course of this first chapter, descend further and further down. We are watching Jonah slowly descend into a state of lowliness and spiritual slumber, both literally and metaphorically.

We now can see that Jonah’s very own sin has brought him to this lowly state, this state of numbness and being deadened to what is happening around him.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, “well how could this be? How could Jonah not notice?” Have you ever been driving down the road to a place that you often drive to? Often times it becomes second nature as to how to get there. We know the path, we know how to get there, and it’s such a mindless task. Well, have you ever been driving and your mind begins to wander and the next thing you know it’s been three minutes and you’re already where you needed to go?

When we aren’t aware, or we are asleep physically or mentally, we miss what is going on around us. And, so does Jonah.

Except, it’s not Jonah’s daily commute that gets him here. It’s his sin. His sin, his actions and decisions, they have brought him here. They have brought him low. His sins, as we’ve seen, are...

Disobedience to God

Anger that God will show mercy to the Ninevites

An attitude of knowing better than God

These sins act as a sleeping pill and just make Jonah spiritually asleep. Now, all of a sudden, after all of these terrible moral decisions and sins, Jonah is in a place of danger, death, and he’s blissfully unaware of it.

We see in this moment that morality is not as individualistic as we are told it is today. Jonah’s actions, and the consequences of them, have put the other people around him in danger. Jonah has become this spiritually asleep and apathetic wrecking ball.

Yet, despite all of this, the captain of the ship goes down into the hold where Jonah is sleeping and proceeds to wake him up. The captain questions how he could be asleep and he asks him to pray to his God. Isn’t that funny. The pagan, polytheistic sailor has to remind Jonah, the prophet and man of God, to pray.

Now the sailors decide that since nothing else is working, and their prayers aren’t being answered, that they should cast lots. This was the way in many cultures of discerning the will of the gods. And, in this last ditch effort to figure out who was to blame for this, Jonah draws the short straw.

So, they ask him:

“Why is this happening?”

“What is your occupation?”

“Where do you come from?”

“What is your country?”

“What people are you?”

And, in midst of all of this chaos, the sleepy eyed Jonah says, “I am a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

Let’s look at Jonah’s response real quick. Jonah, the prophet, is told to do something by God and yet he runs away from him. He doesn’t just get on a horse or donkey and take off, he decides to go to the sea… And here Jonah says that he fears the God of Heaven. The one who made what…the SEA!

However funny this is, we catch Jonah here in a downright lie. He tells the sailors that he worships the Lord. Now, some translations say, “I fear the Lord” and it’s clear that this isn’t the case. This Hebrew turn of phrase means that there is a deep reverence and awe. A healthy fear of someone who you are accountable to.

Jonah doesn’t fear the Lord. If he did he would have gone as quick as he could to Nineveh instead of dragging these sailors into danger! This response by Jonah is just another case of religious babble, of hypocrisy. Jonah’s words and actions don’t actually align with what he says.

Despite the lie, the sailors ask Jonah, “what have you done?” They knew that Jonah was running away from the Lord because he had already told them. This goes back to the port in Joppa. It would be like going through customs when you travel. You’d be asked “where are you going, what’s the reason for your travel?” Jonah told them that he was going away from the presence of the Lord!

At first this would have meant nothing to polytheists. Everyone had a god they would have been running from. But, after Jonah tells them that he is running away from the God of Heaven, who made the sea and dry land…while on their boat…they see Jonah’s contradictions. They see that Jonah, who said he was a man of God, someone who fears the Lord, is not really someone who does.

Well, the sea gets rougher as the storm grows and the sailors ask Jonah what they should do to him. Jonah says, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.”

Jonah’s solution is essentially, “Kill me...”

Now, two things are possible here and scholars tend to disagree with one another. Either:

A) Jonah has a change of heart, sees what his mistakes have done to these people, and decides that if he dies he’ll save the people on the boat.

or

B) Jonah is trying even harder to run from God’s call. The furthest that he can get from God at this point is no longer Tarshish, but death.

The sailors refute this idea and begin trying to row back, but the storm is too strong for them. So, in v.14 we see the first prayer offered up in the whole book to the Lord God. Not by Jonah, the prophet, but by the same people who were praying to their own gods in v.5. They ask the Lord to forgive them and they throw Jonah overboard. We learn here that the sailors return to land and make sacrifices to the Lord, and even vows. Something happens to these people despite the hypocrisy and failings of his chosen people, despite Jonah’s lowliness and spiritual slumber.

Now, Jonah, who has been thrown into the sea, is swallowed up by this big nasty fish. We’ll touch more on this next week, but this really isn’t a great place to be. It’s not a good thing to be swallowed up by a giant fish and sit in digestive fluids from 3 days and 3 nights. But, it’s here in this place of death that Jonah becomes awake and alive to Yahweh.

What does this mean for us?

After reading through this story for the first time, I remember thinking to myself “wow, Jonah was a real bonehead! If he would have just obeyed God he could have avoided this whole thing!” Now, I won’t ask you to raise hands, but I’m sure that there are many of you here today who read this story and others of spiritual shortcomings in the Bible and think, “I’d never be so stupid!”

But, here’s the problem, the story of Jonah is one giant mirror where we see ourselves. As soon as we begin to feel superior to Jonah, to think “I would never do such a thing” we have fallen into the trap. There is not one in here, especially me, who can say that they have never had one contradiction between what they say they believe and how they actually live.

The story of Jonah is that. A story of contradictions and hypocrisy. A story where one man, who claims to be a worshiper of God, falls down deeper and deeper into his sin, to the point that he becomes numb to everything around him and misses the beautiful conversion of the sailors on the ship.

How many of us in this church this morning are spiritually asleep? How many of us keep running back to the sins that control our lives? How many of us run from God’s command over our lives? How many of us say that we are believers in Jesus Christ, yet our actions prove otherwise?

Brothers and sisters, ask yourselves this serious question, “are you in a spiritual slumber?”

If the answer is yes, as I imagine it is for many of us, you may want to know how to get out of this slumber. Well, I wish I knew the top 10 ways to do so. I wish I could give you a fool proof plan on how to awaken from that slumber, but I can’t.

Jonah starts this first chapter as a man spiritually asleep, and as we will see next week he goes to a place of death, of complete surrender, and it is here where the Lord acts on him and wakes him up. God’s grace happens to Jonah, despite his hypocrisy and slumber.

Now, does this mean that we throw our hands up, live in moral destitution, and wait for the moment where we are swallowed by a fish? No!

What it means is that no matter how far down we fall, no matter how many times we are exactly like Jonah, no matter how long we have been in a spiritual slumber, God’s grace and love remain.

This is witnessed in the very death of Jesus Christ. Despite the hypocrisy of the religious leaders, despite the betrayal by his own people, Christ still died for those and us sinners, that proves God’s love toward us.

If we want to wake from this spiritual slumber we must come to Jesus, say that we are asleep or maybe even just drowsy, admit our unknowing of what to do, and ask Christ for the help that only he can give.

Let us stop being the spiritual wrecking balls in our own lives and the lives of the people around us, and let us fully submit to the gracious love of God our King!

As we prepare to come to the table this morning let us humble ourselves before the presence of Christ at his table. Allow the Holy Spirit to show you what you need to do in order to awaken from your slumber.

Let us stop living lives like Jonah, and live more like Jesus.

Amen.