Jonah 1:4-16 | The God Who Pursues

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Jonah chapter one.

Last week we left Jonah on his way down.

He went down to Joppa.

We don't know where he began.

Probably somewhere in the highlands of central Israel.

He went down to Joppa.

He went down into the ship, and he was headed in his mind for Tarshish, the edge of the known world, as far from Nineveh and as far from his calling as possible.

And the narrator of this account closed verse 3 with a phrase that really leaves us hanging.

He went away from the presence of Yahweh.

That is not the posture you expect of a prophet.

It's the posture of a man resigning his commission.

It's not a man who stopped believing in God, but a man who thought he could arrange his own life without God.

He fled from God's expectations, going somewhere that he thought he could be, in essence, left alone.

So this morning we need to ask, what happens when God does not leave Jonah alone?

Look with me.

We'll read beginning in verse 1 through verse 16.

It says, Now the word of the Lord, or Yahweh, came to Jonah, the son of Amitai, saying, Get up and go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up against me.

But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

He went down to Joppa, and he 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 Yahweh.

But Yahweh hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up, and 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.

So the captain came to him and said, 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.

And they said to one another, Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.

So they did.

They cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.

So they said to him, Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us.

What's your occupation?

Where do you come from?

What's your country?

What people are you from?

He said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear Yahweh, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.

Then the men, the sailors, were exceedingly afraid.

And they said to him, What have you done?

For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of Yahweh because he had told them.

So they said to him, What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?

For the sea grew more and more tempestuous.

So he said to them, Pick me up and hurl me into the sea.

Then the sea will quiet down to you, quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.

Nevertheless, the men rode hard to get back to dry land.

But they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them.

Therefore they called out to the Lord, O Yahweh, let us not perish for this man's life, and do not lay on us innocent blood, for you, O Yahweh, have done as it has pleased you.

So they picked up Jonah and they hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.

Then the men feared Yahweh exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows.

Amen.

The first three verses introduce us to a God who speaks and a prophet who runs.

The next section shows us what happens when the God who holds the sea in his hand decides that Jonah's running is over.

And the rest of the chapter shows us that God's purposes will be accomplished even amid human rebellion.

The sailors themselves announce that.

God has done what pleased him.

God doesn't sit in heaven wondering what he will do now that his prophet has refused.

God's not surprised.

He's not waiting for Jonah to run away and decide, oh, it's time to come back when he wants to.

Instead, this account shows us God acting powerfully, sovereignly, and as we will eventually see, graciously.

God accomplishes his purposes through events, through creation itself, and even through people that Jonah would never have chosen.

Our narrator tells this story in three different scenes.

The first scene shows us God acting and Jonah sleeping.

The next scene, the second one, shows us God exposing Jonah.

And Jonah sorta, kind of confessing.

And the third scene shows us God saving, but not in the way we expect.

So look with me at the first three verses.

Verses four, five, and six announce to us the God who pursues Jonah.

And it begins with a contrast.

But Yahweh, but the Lord.

Jonah's gone down to the sea, and he's gone down into a boat, but Yahweh hurled a great wind upon the sea.

Maybe you picked it up when I was reading.

I hoped you would.

That word hurled is found several times in our text, just like the word down.

It's a very artistic way of presenting what God does and what the sailors do.

It means to throw something, to fling it, to hurl it with strength and with force.

Imagine an all-star baseball pitcher throwing a hundred mile an hour fastball.

That's God hurling a great wind at the sea, and the result is a mighty tempest, a violent, thrashing storm described as dangerous enough to break the ship into pieces.

In fact, our narrator says that the ship was thinking.

It personifies the boat.

The boat itself was thinking about this storm, and it was thinking, I'm gonna break apart.

Because of the force of God's hurled storm.

Even the inanimate creation is pictured as straining under the weight of what God has set in motion.

The two to three inch thick timbers that form the outer portion of this boat are groaning and creaking.

The rigging of the boat is screaming in the wind, and the vessel is trembling as if it knows what Jonah does not yet seem to know.

You may be choosing frightful consequences when you run from a pursuing God.

The mariners do everything they can to keep the boat going.

Mariners, quite literally, is a word salty ones.

These aren't tourists on a vacation cruise.

These are experienced Mediterranean sailors.

We don't know where they're from.

Perhaps they're Phoenicians along the coast of Israel.

Maybe they're Cretians from the island of Crete.

Maybe they're from North Africa.

Maybe they're from Greece.

Maybe they're from the modern-day Spain where Tarshish might have been.

We don't know.

But they're salty men because they've been on boats in the sea and they're encrusted with salt because they're experienced.

They've navigated the treacherous winter swells of the Mediterranean.

They are the best in the business.

They are salty men.

And verse 5 says they are afraid.

They're not cautious.

They're not concerned.

They're afraid.

And they cry out, each one to his God.

They're polytheistic.

That means they they worship many gods.

Most polytheistic people were.

They chose the God that seemed to be appropriate at the moment.

So if you need to have your crops come out well, then you pray to the God of the crops.

The mariners were probably worshippers of the gods of the sea.

Each man, whoever it is, prays to his own God in the midst of the crisis.

They're doing what fallen humanity always does when the wheels come off.

Except boats don't have wheels in most cases.

They're crying out to something, whatever they can imagine that's bigger than themselves.

But when God Himself is directly involved, even the pagan sailors who spent their lives on the sea, even they find themselves somewhat instinctively aware that they're in the presence of some kind of power that they can't imagine.

Because they can't even manage it.

They can't control it.

It's beyond them.

Their fear is so great that they begin to jettison what's precious to them.

Their cargo, their livelihood, whatever grain or wine or olive oil or other merchandise that they brought along for profit, everything goes overboard to save their lives.

Everyone on that ship is doing something desperate because God has arrived.

Everyone, that is, except one man.

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

It's incredible.

Even the inanimate, the non-living boat is thinking about shattering.

And Jonah's asleep.

Seasoned sailors are desperately praying, but the prophet is asleep.

The storm that sent hardened Mediterranean seamen to their knees on the deck has not woken the man who knows the God who sent it.

Jonah's asleep.

It's the same word, ironically, used in Genesis when God caused a deep sleep to come upon Adam when he made Eve.

But for Jonah, this is a stupefying kind of sleep of a man whose conscience apparently has been seared and numbed by running from God so much that a violent storm doesn't penetrate his consciousness.

Friends, that's what sin does.

That's what running from God does.

It doesn't just lead us away from God, it anesthetizes us, it dims our perceptions, it blunts our spiritual instincts, and it makes us unaware of even situations that might harm us.

Jonah should be the one up on the deck calling everyone to repentance.

Instead, he's in the hold of the ship, dead to life, dead to the world, while the unbelievers on the deck are desperately praying for salvation from the storm that he brought upon them.

And then the captain comes.

What do you mean, you sleeper?

What does that mean?

Well, it means that the captain can't grasp what's going on.

Why?

Why would Jonah be down here and why would he be asleep?

Arise, he says.

Call out to your God, verse six.

Arise.

Call out.

Look back at verse two.

God says, Arise, go to Nineveh, and call out.

These are the same commands God gave Jonah at the beginning of the chapter.

The God who commissioned Jonah to get up, go to Nineveh and call out against it, that same God has now arranged for a pagan sailor to do the same thing to Jonah.

Get up and call out.

The man who was supposed to be preaching has to be ordered to pray by someone who doesn't even know his God.

Now the captain finishes with a kind of uncertain hope in verse 6.

He says, Perhaps your God will give a thought to us that we may not perish.

So he's not sure if Jonah's God is any more powerful than the rest of the sailors' gods.

They're all trying, so there's a perhaps.

Because the captain knows that you can't make God do anything.

Jonah knows that too.

But Jonah also knows that you cannot escape God's presence.

But he's been trying anyway.

Jonah's desperately trying to make his God into something that he isn't.

And he's in the hold of sleep.

I think there's a version of Jonah's sleep that's available to every single believer today.

It doesn't look like sleeping in the cargo hold of a ship, although it might, I suppose.

I think it looks more like a full schedule, an extremely busy life, a routine that leaves no room for spending some time with the uncomfortable claims of God's word.

So that God's word just bounces off of us while we're walking away.

God's word has no real impact on who we are.

Just gets pushed out.

As though we're we're just asleep to God.

And one of the signs that we've drifted into that kind of oblivion is when the people around us in daily life are calling us back to a basic consciousness.

They may not even share our faith, but they're more alert to what God is doing in our world than we are.

The captain wasn't calling Jonah to theological maturity.

He was calling him to basic consciousness.

Aren't you aware?

Look what's going on around us.

Doesn't it bother you?

Can't you see it?

Sometimes that's where God's work begins.

Sometimes we drift so far away from God that we need to be called back to a basic consciousness.

Are you even awake to what God's doing?

That's God pursuing Jonah.

Now look with me in verses 7 through 10 at the God who exposes Jonah.

The sailors have tried prayer.

They've tried throwing the cargo overboard.

At this point, nothing is working.

The storm is still raging, it's increasing in its intensity.

And so they try the next best thing.

Come, they say.

Let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.

All right, this is somebody's fault.

Let's find out whose.

You need to understand that the lot in the ancient world was the standard instrument for discerning the divine will.

It really didn't matter what culture it was.

Many different cultures understood that you cast the lot and it decides, it shows you what the God's will is.

Scripture shows us this.

The lot was the standard instrument.

Proverbs 16, verse 33 tells us plainly the lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.

Proverbs 16:33

So these sailors are doing something more theologically sophisticated than they know.

They're acknowledging that there is someone beyond themselves who's governing this situation, and they want to know who it is that has caused this because the God will show them.

Now, everybody who's reading this story has some theological and biblical background, most likely, and they understand that Yahweh is the one who decides the lot, and the lot fell to Jonah.

Which tells us that God is identifying whose fault this is.

The lot didn't find Jonah by chance.

The lot was in the hand of God who hurled the storm.

So what Jonah thought was a sort of a private act of spiritual resignation, a quiet sort of spiritual defection from Yahweh that no one needed to know about has now been brought out into the public.

You cannot hide from the consequences of running from a pursuing God.

And a rapid interrogation follows.

What do you do?

Whose people are you?

What god do you worship?

Who are you?

Tell us more about you.

Come on, spill it, Jonah.

And Jonah answers all their questions.

I'm a Hebrew.

As a Hebrew, I I fear Yahweh.

Who's Yahweh?

He's the God of heaven, which is where storms come from.

I'm the God I'm the one who fears Yahweh who made the sea that this boat's on.

And He also made the dry land.

Fear is the same word used in verse 5 to describe the terror of the sailors.

The irony is incredible.

The sailors fear the storm.

They are exceedingly afraid.

And the prophet claims to fear God, but the man who claims to fear God is the one sleeping in the hold while the unbelievers pray.

Jonah's saying one thing and doing another, while the sailors are the ones who, ironically, are the most spiritual on the boat.

And hear the irony in the one who made the sea in the dry land.

It's sort of the apex of the irony.

Jonah knows and confesses that the God he's running from is the creator and the holder of the sea he's sailing on.

He's on the very element that Yahweh made.

He's fleeing on the very waters that Yahweh governs inside of a storm that Yahweh hurled.

Yahweh is exposing Jonah in a prison on the sea.

Now Jonah's not confused about his theology.

His problem is never intellectual.

His problem is that he has decided to live in contradiction to what he knew to be true.

He's trying to make himself believe that God is different than he knew him to be.

And that's a sobering reality, friends.

It is possible to have an entirely orthodox life and a thoroughly disordered life.

It's possible to have an orthodox faith, belief in your mind, and a thoroughly disordered life.

It's possible to know the sovereignty of God and flee from its implications.

It's possible to affirm with your lips and your theology that God made the sea, he made the dry land, and then spend all of your energy to use that sea to outrun God as if you could hide from the omnipresent Creator.

Now, what does that mean?

Well, verse 10 shows us.

Shows us by helping us see how the sailors received what Jonah said.

They're scared out of their minds.

They were afraid before.

This takes it up another notch.

They're exceedingly afraid.

And they say to him, What have you done?

Because they knew that he was running from Yahweh because he told them.

And the fear of the sailors is now a great fear.

They now understand perfectly that this is not just an unusual weather event.

This is a cosmic confrontation between the God who made the sea and the man who's trying to use the sea to escape him, and they are caught in the middle.

So their fear is entirely rational.

If this is the God who made the sea, what chance does anyone have against him in the sea?

None.

We're toast.

What is this that you have done?

Do you hear that echoing?

Because it's one of the oldest questions in the history of the world.

It's the question that God asked Adam in the garden.

What is this that you have done?

It's the question that confronts willful rebellion when the consequences catch up to it.

It's not it's not what were you thinking?

No, it's it's more like, do you understand what you've set in motion?

Do you really understand what you've done?

Jonah is thoroughly exposed in front of pagan sailors.

So it's astonishing then what happens next, beginning in verse 11.

We see the God who saves.

Don't forget, in case you've forgotten, don't forget that this is not a fish story.

It's not even a Jonah story.

This is about God.

It's about a God who pursues and exposes and saves.

But what we see God doing here in his salvation is not what we would expect.

You see, the storm is not going away in verse 11.

The sailors have tried everything, and now they ask the only question left.

All right, Jonah, it's your fault.

So what should we do to you to make the sea calm down?

And his answer is well, number one, here's the first step.

Pick me up and then toss me overboard.

Except he doesn't use the word toss.

He uses the word hurl me overboard.

God initiated this storm with a hurling, and the calm will come with another hurling, this time of the prophet himself.

Jonah's accepting the consequences of his rebellion.

He's confessing, yes, this is my fault.

This horrendous circumstance has come upon you because of me.

But the sailors show more concern than Jonah does.

They don't want to throw him overboard.

Instead, they buckle down and they row in the hurricane.

They row.

They're out in the middle of the Mediterranean, and there's a hurricane from God, and they think they're going to row back to dry land.

They're desperate, and their desperation is on Jonah's behalf.

They're showing concern for Jonah that Jonah didn't have for anyone but himself.

Instead, the sea in verse 11 grew more and more tempestuous.

It's growing angry, more and more angry.

The purpose of God here, friends, cannot be circumvented.

Not by storms or compassion of pagan sailors trying to spare a sleeping prophet from the consequences of his own choices.

No one can successfully fight against God's purposes.

And then, before they hurl him in, they pray.

The prophet doesn't pray yet, but the sailors first pray to their own gods, and then they call out to Yahweh in verse five.

Verse five, their gods.

Now, verse 14, they call out to Yahweh by name.

By name.

They've heard the name of this God from Jonah's lips, and they now use it.

They know him now.

They didn't before.

Now they know him.

And they say, Oh Yahweh, let us not perish on account of this man's life.

They're appealing.

These salty men are appealing to God's divine standards, saying, We know that this is not a good thing, this is a bad thing, we ought to die for this.

But God, this is your choice.

You have done as you pleased.

It's one of the most remarkable statements in this chapter.

You have done what you desired to do.

So they are now confessing, and in the moment of throwing a man into the sea, they're calling on the God that they're dealing with as an absolute sovereign over all of it.

They're saying, God, we're putting ourselves under your purpose, under your plan.

We recognize this is what you're doing.

We're acting in obedience to you.

They now know he controls the storm, he controls the lot, he controls the outcome, and they act to carry out his will.

So it's not cruelty on their part.

It feels cruel, doesn't it?

To throw a man overboard.

But what they're really doing is submitting to a God that they're only beginning to understand.

While the prophet is still refusing to submit to the God he knows.

Verse 15.

So they picked up the dove.

Remember that's what Jonah's name means?

They picked up this dove and they hurled it into the sea.

And the sea ceased from its raging.

Immediately.

Have you heard that somewhere else?

And God confirmed Jonah's words about him.

He made the sea.

He made the wind.

He controls it all.

The change was instantaneous and total, and the men, the salty men, feared Yahweh exceedingly in verse 16.

They knew exactly what they had just seen.

And they now fear Yahweh with great fear.

The same phrase is used in verse 10 when they learn that Jonah was fleeing from God.

But this time their fear is not directed at the sea, but at the God who made the sea.

And they go a step further and they respond now with sacrifices and vows.

This is incredible.

This is the language of worship.

This is the language of people who are orienting their lives toward a God they now recognize as real and worthy of their allegiance.

Jonah ran from God specifically because he did not want Gentiles to know God's grace.

He refused his commission because the wicked, idol-worshiping Assyrians turning to God and receiving mercy was more than he could stomach.

So he books passage to Tarshish to make sure that the knowledge of Yahweh went nowhere near anyone who didn't deserve it.

And somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, a boat full of salty pagan men bow and worship before the God who made the sea.

And it didn't happen through a sermon.

It didn't happen through a carefully arranged evangelistic outreach.

It happened through a hundred-mile-an-hour storm.

It happened through the reluctant but honest testimony of a sleeping, disobedient prophet who only said what he knew to be true.

God didn't need Jonah's obedience to reach the sailors.

But he did accomplish his purpose through Jonah's rebellion, didn't he?

Friends, that is a God of unbounded sovereignty.

It's a God of also of unbounded grace.

A grace that pursued Jonah.

A grace that would not leave him.

That would not leave him in the bottom of a boat.

A grace that even now was preparing a fish just for Jonah.

God's purposes will be accomplished whether we willingly participate or not.

But there is a world of difference between being used by God as a faithful servant and being used by God as a reluctant instrument.

God accomplished his purposes.

But Jonah's path of flight, his sleep, and his passive resistance was a path of unnecessary pain and spiritual humiliation.

If you know what God wants of you and you do not do it, you will face the consequences and you will bear that pain and you will be exposed.

God does not ask for your cooperation because he needs it.

He offers you the privilege of participating willingly in what he's doing.

So Jonah's story is not a comfort to the disobedient.

It's a warning that God will get where he's going.

But the question is whether you will be carried there in the joy of faithful participation or dragged there in the discipline of flight.

And along the way, God may do exactly what you don't want him to do.

Were those pagan sailors truly converted on the deck of a ship that thought about breaking apart?

I don't know.

I don't know.

But I want to believe that someday I will be singing holy, holy, holy in Phoenician with them.

This passage ends on the surface of the sea with a ship of worshiping sailors and a sinking prophet.

The sailors have done what Jonah refused to do.

They've acknowledged Yahweh as the sovereign God, they've sacrificed, they've made vows.

They will probably never see Jonah again.

They do not know what happens next.

But we do.

We know that a great fish is waiting.

We know that in the darkness below the surface of the sea, a man who has been going down and down and down is going to reach the point where he can go no further down.

And there he will look up and finally pray.

Because God pursues and God disciplines and God restores.

He's not finished with Jonah any more than he was finished with the sailors, and any more than he was finished with Nineveh, and any more than he's finished with any of us.

But consider how God begins to work in us through this text.

First, God begins to work through us by stretching our view of his sovereignty.

Sovereignty is merely a big theological word that means God made everything.

He made the sea and the dry land, and he made the wind and the storms and the atmosphere.

He made everything that is, and he's in control of it.

The God of this text is not a God who works around human rebellion.

He's not a God who waits patiently in the heavenly waiting room until his people feel ready to obey.

No, he's a God who hurls storms.

He's a God who governs lots.

He's a God who calms seas and who accomplishes his purpose with polytheistic sailors and sleeping prophets with equal ease.

So if your view of God is of a deity who can be outmaneuvered, outrun, who can be successfully evaded or ignored, then you've got some wrestling to do with the God of Jonah.

If you think that God is a God who simply shrugs when his people run, then you've got a lot of correction to wrestle with.

But this also challenges our willingness, doesn't it?

The sailors made vows, they made sacrifices.

That's not a casual gesture in the ancient world.

That's orienting your life toward the God that you're worshiping.

It's a public declaration of saying, I believe this God exists and he is, and I'm offering this worship to him.

What those salty men did by crying out to Yahweh and sacrificing and making vows in their crisis is what God had commissioned Jonah to make possible in Nineveh.

Instead, it's happening in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

The sailors, ironically, had arrived at the position, at the destination Jonah was trying to prevent for Nineveh.

Will we see them in heaven?

I don't know.

I think it's possible.

Maybe even likely.

And if so, they would be an eternal reminder of God's pursuit of people.

In the end, we're left with simple questions.

When God accomplishes his purposes in his world, where will we be?

Will we be on the on the deck worshiping and committing ourselves to him, or will we be in the hold, asleep, desperately trying to ignore the oncoming consequences?

Because God will accomplish his purposes.

Whether we want him to or not.

Will we join him in that work or resist?

Would you join me in prayer?

Lord Jesus, we oh, we pray that we are not resistant to you.

Cause us to have willing hearts that join you in your work.

And Lord, we even ask that you would do amazing, glorious, and gracious things through us, even through our disobedience, as you did with Jonah.

Bring people to a knowledge and an awareness of you simply because we cannot but speak what we know to be true.

That you are the God who made it all.

And we worship you.

Draw our hearts to true and genuine obedience.

For your praise and your glory.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.