Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

The word turbulence means the violent or unsteady moving of something.

We see turbulence in flights when there is a shift in air movement that makes for a rough plane ride.

We see turbulence in water when waves make for a rough ship ride.

But we also see that sometimes life can get turbulent!

Sometimes the turbulence of life is not due to a consequence of your sin directly.

Sometimes life is just difficult and despite you making righteous decisions, things just don’t go as planned.

But today we are going to see a more common situation of why life gets turbulent.

Life often gets turbulent because of the sins of people.

We are going to see that there is a consequence for the sin of Jonah’s fleeing from the Lord.

God isn’t just going to sit back and allow Jonah to deliberately disobey the Word of the Lord.

My friends, disobedience has consequences from our sovereign God.

God sees everything that is done under the sun.

And all sin will be accounted for.

As theologian Leslie Allen stated:

“Yahweh will not be brushed aside and ignored.”

Leslie C. Allen

Today we are going to see God acting sovereignly throughout this entire narrative of Jonah’s disobedience.

I pray that our faith is increased in God as we see Him miraculously work in this turbulent situation and as we see His undeserved mercy give a surprising ending to this first chapter!

Let us pray.

Prayer

Today we are going to discuss three ways that God sovereignly acts and rules in regards to Jonah’s disobedience.

The first is:

I. God is Sovereign In… The Response to Disobedience (4-10)

The transition phrase “but the Lord” is one that can go either way.

We see in the New Testament a positive use of this idea as we discussed last week in Ephesians 2:4-5- but God being rich in mercy…made us alive in Him…by grace we have been saved.

This good news comes through faith and not through disobedience though.

In this case we have Jonah who has fled the Lord.

And now we have this same phrase - “but the Lord.”

And this phrase is followed by a terrifying Hebrew word.

But the Lord ‘hurled.’

This word hurled here is the same word that we see mentioned when King Saul tries to kill David by hurling a spear at him in 1 Samuel 18:11.

The Lord literally hurled a great wind upon the sea.

And the author wants you to know this was quite a wind because he goes on to let us know there was a mighty tempest on the sea.

This word tempest means a heavy gale or a violent storm with dangerous waves and wind.

Moving forward we are given a unique look at the ship that Jonah and the pagan crew boarded on.

This ship threatened to break up.

First we see that God sovereignly brings the storm.

And now we see the ship conspiring with God against Jonah.

This word threatened personifies the ship as if it is out to get Jonah as well.

As we continue on, we need to compare the reaction of the pagan crew to the storm and the reaction of Jonah.

Here we see the pagan crew is afraid.

They are terrified.

They are crying out to their gods and throwing cargo off of the ship to lighten the load and make it easier to manage this great vessel.

They want to do everything they can to keep the ship from breaking up into pieces.

Obviously these men were experienced sailors to set out on such a long trip to Tarshish.

These guys had seen some bad storms in the past.

But they had never seen a supernaturally sent storm from Yahweh!

This one was different than anything they had seen before.

And you can see by their reaction that they think their life is all but over.

But what about Jonah?

Verse 5 shows it well.

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

How can anyone remain asleep during a storm like this?

Many commentators have sought to explain how Jonah was still asleep.

Some think that he was just so exhausted from fleeing from the Lord that he was completely worn out.

The word for fast asleep here is a unique word choice though.

It is the same Hebrew word that we see given in Genesis 2:21 that was a sleep that was placed by God in order to do surgery on Adam to remove his rib (Genesis 2:21).

This word is also used during sleeps that fell among people that recieved a dream or vision from the Lord such as Abraham and Daniel.

I think that we can be sure that this wasn’t a peaceful sleep given by God, however.

Yet it was one that was very deep.

This type of sleep was one that was stupefying.

A. R. Fausset puts it the best here:

“Sleep is not necessary proof of innocence; it may be the fruit of carnal security and a seared conscience.”

- A.R. Fausset

Sin makes us completely ignorant and unobservant of what is actually going an around us.

That is why we see the world respond so illogically in debates on things like sexuality, abortion, godly living, etc.

Their sin has them in a deep spiritual sleep that makes them unable to respond with wisdom and discernment.

Matthew Henry asserted that sin brings storms and tempests into the soul, into the family, into churches, and nations.

My friends, know that your sin does have consequences.

And as we see here.

These consequences are not just going to affect you.

They are going to affect others around you as well.

If you get drunk or are sexually immoral or gamble or are lazy or any other sinful act… not only will you suffer but so will your marriage, your spouse, your family, your workplace, your church, and even your nation will all directly or indirectly suffer from the consequences from your sin.

There are consequences to our sins.

Praise God we have forgiveness offered through Jesus Christ our Lord through the cross.

Yet there still will be some form of earthly consequence that we will face here.

Sometimes those consequences are smaller by comparison such as a haunting memory of something that you said or didn’t say and sometimes they are much bigger like destroyed relationships.

Even the smaller consequences can cause lasting hardships and heartaches.

But we can face them knowing that God will mercifully carry us through them if we are repentant and turn to Him.

Moving forward we come to verses 6-8:

Jonah awakes to a nightmare.

Not only is the captain likely flipping out because of the horrible storm but the captain gives him an eerily familiar command.

Arise!

Call out to your god! Which sounds very similar to the Arise and Go command we saw in verse 2 from Yahweh!

Jonah is learning that you can run but you cannot hide!

Note that at this point the captain sees Jonah’s God as a little ‘g’ god.

He sees Jonah as perhaps one more person who can cry out to one of the many gods they believe are out there.

Note also, however, that there is no mention that Jonah prays here.

Even when confronted with a horrible and supernaturally sent storm, Jonah still doesn’t pray and repent.

Instead, the crew casts lots to find out whose fault that this storm is.

They recognize that this must be a supernatural storm.

Someone must have sinned and caused this horrendous storm.

And wouldn’t you know it - the lot fell on Jonah.

We see God sovereignly working again in this:

Jonah is given 5 commands/questions here in rapid fire succession.

The lot has fallen upon him and he is the problem.

Now they interrogate him suspiciously and want to know what exactly is going on.

Jonah answers back in 9-10:

Note that Jonah almost answers casually here.