"Hiding From God" Jonah 1:4-13 Sunday Morning Worship Service

You'd open your Bibles to Jonah chapter one.

Oh, a nautical theme.

Look at that right here.

Jonah chapter one.

Let me read for us the really entirety of chapter one.

I'm gonna skip verse 17.

We'll save that.

Let me read for us.

Jonah one, verses one through sixteen.

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

But Jonah rose and fled to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh.

He went down to Jaffa and found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fare and went on board 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.

Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his God, and they hurled the cargo that was on 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 us a thought that we may not perish.

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.

And 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?

And of what people are you?

And he said to them, I'm a Hebrew, and I fear Yahweh, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry lands.

And 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 Yahweh because they had told him.

And 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 attemptuous.

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

Then the sea will quiet down for you.

For I know it's because of me 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 temptuous against them.

Therefore they called out to Yahweh, O Yahweh, let us not perish for this man's life.

Lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Yahweh, have done as it pleased you.

So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea.

And the sea ceased from its raging.

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

Well, Jonah is certainly a book of great reversals, isn't it?

You see in this a jarring mix in Jonah chapter 1 of the ridiculous with the serious.

Jonah 1 · chapter mention

And I hope you notice as I just read it.

I wanted to read the whole thing so you could maybe hear with your ears the repetition that is throughout this.

I mean, Jonah 1 is a literary masterpiece, just this one chapter on its own right.

And God tells Jonah to do a few things: to arise and go up and call out.

And then you notice those three words are repeated through the rest of the chapter, only sometimes they're in their opposite form.

Instead of arising and going up and calling out, Jonah arises and goes down.

And the word down is repeated over and over and over again.

He doesn't go up to Nineveh, he goes down to Jaffa.

He doesn't go up to Nineveh, he goes down to the boat.

He doesn't go up to Nineveh, he goes down into the boat.

He doesn't go up to Nineveh, he goes down into the sea.

God tells Jonah to call out against Nineveh, and Jonah doesn't speak again in this chapter until he's finally under inquisition from the sailors.

Instead, the same word for call out, which is sometimes translated preach, is repeated over and over and over in this chapter, and never by Jonah.

Instead, you have the captain telling Jonah, What are you doing?

Why aren't you, and in the Hebrew you'd see it's the same phrase, why aren't you preaching?

He says.

And oh that must ring in Jonah's ear.

God told him to go preach, and he flees, and the captain, this pagan captain, grabs a hold of his collar and says, Why aren't you preaching?

Why aren't you calling out to your God?

And you look on deck and you see the mariners running to and fro, and they're all calling out, they're all preaching to their gods.

Finally it ends.

This chapter does, with pagan sailors calling out to Yahweh when Yahweh's prophet won't speak a word to his God.

Pagans demonstrate more fear than the prophet.

In fact, there's a whale in this chapter, or a fish, whatever your preference might be, that outdoes Jonah in godliness.

Do you notice that?

The boat obeys God, the wind obeys God, the sail, the seas obey God, this pagan captain and his pagan sailors obey God, a fish obeys God, the only one who's not obeying God is God's prophet.

Moreover, you have here a prophet without a word.

He can't say anything.

When have you ever seen a silent prophet before?

And when the prophet does speak, notice they asked him a series of questions.

He answers all the questions except for one.

What is your occupation?

He can't answer.

You have a cargo ship now without cargo.

You have a passenger who bought a ticket to Tarshish who's no longer on board.

He's getting a free ride the other direction.

Behind all of these reversals, and there's many, many more, if you read Jonah 1 on your own and you just go through it slowly, you will find these repeated throughout the chapter.

Behind all of them is this basic premise.

I mean, for us, the story of Jonah comes so quickly about, you know, a whale swallowing Jonah, a whale story kind of thing.

But understand the main point of this chapter is not about the fish.

It's not even about Nineveh.

The main point of this chapter is the Lord.

And the Lord's relentless pursuit of his own elect, of his own people.

I mentioned the word hurl is in here four times.

I hope you saw that.

God hurls, the sailors hurl, the captain hurls.

Ultimately it's Jonah who's hurled, not once but twice, once into the sea, and then a second time by the whale.

You got the word hurl repeated, you got down repeated, you got great, the word great sprinkled all throughout here.

The great city, the great fish, the great storm, everything is great except Jonah.

You got the word up, up, up, repeated, down, down, down, repeated, call out, call out, call out, then silence.

You have all this repetition, but you know what the most common word in this chapter is?

Yahweh.

Twelve times.

Not the word Elohim, which is the pagan word for God.

That's only in here once.

Not the word for Adonai, which is the word for Lord, that's not in here at all.

But twelve times you get Yahweh's covenant name.

It's the word of Yahweh in verse one.

Jonah's supposed to go preach about Yahweh.

They corner Jonah and ask who his God is, and he says, Yahweh.

And by the end of the chapter, the sailors are praising Yahweh.

It's an outrageous turn of events designed to describe to you the absolute supremacy of Yahweh over everything in the world.

You have a showdown in here between Yahweh's rebellious and recalcitrant prophet who is bitter and angry at God and runs the other way, and the God who made the universe.

You know what a contrast God is from these pagan gods.

You see every one of the sailors calling after their own God.

The pagans believed in these geographic gods, and I'm sure you've heard this before.

Their gods oversaw certain geographical districts.

And even in the Greek and Roman world, you're familiar with this.

You know, there might be one God that oversees the ocean and another oversees the mountains and another hell and another heaven.

And so it's it's kind of like, in a sense, the Catholicism, where you might have your patron saint of this or that, and you've got to get the right one to pray to to answer your prayer.

And that's what they have going on here.

Everybody just scrambling, trying to find the right God to whom they can pray.

Meanwhile, you've got Jonah, who is the one who believes in the God who's over all other gods.

In fact, Jonah's own words say he's the God that created the ocean.

Did you notice that?

And yet he's trying to hide from God, and you know he's trying to hide from God because the text says he's trying to hide from God.

These pagan sailors don't try to hide from their God, and they don't even believe their gods rule the ocean.

But there is Jonah.

In a showdown with the God who made the heavens.

Notice that Jonah's description of God there.

I believe in the God who made the heavens, the sea, and the dry land.

Well, that pretty much covers it all, doesn't it?

Who do you think is going to win this collision here?

The runaway prophet and the sovereign God, who's going to win?

And that's going to be our kind of outline this morning.

We're going to look at throwing sin overboard.

Throwing sin overboard.

If you're taking an outline, that's going to be your notes this morning, throwing sin overboard, because the center of the action here is the person who wants to run from God.

And so this becomes a showdown in Jonah 1.

And the showdown will shift in Jonah 2 and again in 3 and again in chapter 4.

It's going to be the same battle, but played out in different fields.

In chapter 1, this battle between Jonah and the Lord takes place in the deck of a boat.

In chapter 2, it's going to take place in the belly of a whale.

In chapter 3, it's going to take place in the heart of the most pagan city around.

And in chapter 4, it's going to take place in the heart of the prophet.

And in it's the same battle in all four chapters between the Lord and the heart of the one who loves sin.

And so it's worth asking as we go through this chapter who's going to win this showdown.

And by the way, you have to have Jonah in your mind as a counterbalance to the kind of Americanized God.

You know, the pagans have their own Americanized, their own localized deities.

Americans are so prone to Americanizing God, to democracizing God.

To saying things like, you know, God would never have anybody go against their free will.

God would never, God wouldn't, God's a gentleman.

He would never make you do something that you wouldn't want to do.

I'm sure you've heard that.

Perhaps you've even said that before, huh?

Maybe that's even escaped your mouth.

That, you know, God would never make anybody do anything they don't want to do.

He's such a gentleman.

He knocks on the door of your heart gently and politely until you kindly open up the door of your heart and invite him on in because he would never force his way onto anybody.

You've heard that speech, right?

Not just me.

You guys have heard it.

Imagine giving that speech to Jonah.

Just imagine it.

Imagine the look in his eyes as you stare at him and you tell him, Jonah, I want you to know this basic fact about God.

God loves you too much to make you do anything you wouldn't want to do.

God's best gift to you, Jonah, is free will.

You can use it however you want.

You can go this way or that way.

Good luck out there, Jonah.

Ha!

As he's strapping on his life vest.

What a funny speech that would be.

This book stands as an argument against that.

Remember, in the background of this book, we talked about this last week.

I don't want to re-preach last week's sermon, but I kind of want to repreach last week's sermon.

The background of this book is this basic fact.

God can save whoever he wants to save.

He wants to save some pagan sailors, he'll save some pagan sailors.

He wants to save the people in the most brutal city at the time, he'll do that.

They haven't heard of Yahweh, they don't know his covenant name.

You know what?

God can save them.

And he'll only save people through the preaching of his word.

I mean, that's obvious.

And that's exactly why Jonah runs, remember.

Jonah runs not because he's really trying to hide from God's omnipresence.

I mean, Jonah knows he can't hide from God's omnipresence, not because he's trying to hide from God's omniscience.

He knows you can't get out of God's mind.

Jonah's trying to run because he understands the tension between Romans 9 and Romans 10.

That God can save whoever he wants to save.

It does not depend on men who wills or a man who runs, but on God who saves.

Yet, Romans 10, God will only save through the preaching of his word.

And so here you have God saying, I want to save people in this city, and Jonah saying, Great.

I hope you find a preacher who can do it, because I'll be that way.

Let's see if that works.

Your first step in throwing sin overboard here is to notice that sin inherently defies God.

Sin inherently defies God.

Remember that Jonah is running to escape from God's presence.

He's running to get that phrase, escape from God's presence.

In our mind, you might think he's trying to hide from God.

Again, that doesn't make sense.

Escape from God's presence is a common word in the Old Testament.

It's a word that many prophets use to describe their relationship before God and his word.

It's why a prophet in the Old Testament can speak for God.

It's why Elijah says he can speak for God.

Elisha says he can speak for God.

They can speak for God because they're in the presence of God.

They receive God's words.

Even when there's a room full of people and one is a prophet, the others aren't.

It is the prophet who's in the presence of God because the prophet has God's word.

And so when Jonah's running from God's presence, he's saying, I'm leaving his word behind.

I'm leaving being his mouthpiece behind.

I'll no longer speak for him.

I'm done.

I've turned in my prophet card and I'm getting on a boat.

And he's out.

And remember, he joins a long line of people that try to decline their prophetic mantle from Moses to Jeremiah.

Well, here goes Jonah.

Didn't work for Moses.

Didn't work for Jeremiah.

We'll see if it works for Moses.

But understand, behind this chapter really is this theme.

Don't get sidetracked by the whale, don't get sidetracked by the storm.

Don't get sidetracked by the sailors that are offering sacrifices, which are all inherent parts of the story.

They're all neat tidbits here.

The main focus of the story is this basic fact that sin is a rebellion against God.

That's what's behind the storm.

That's what's behind Jonah's reluctance to go to Nineveh.

That's what's behind Jonah's own self-styled autonomy here is that he wants to be in charge.

He wants to be in charge of who hears God's word and who doesn't.

He wants to be in charge of who gets saved and who doesn't.

He wants to be in charge of where he goes and when he goes there.

Meanwhile, God demands those things for himself.

This is the basic part of discipleship when you're following Christ, is that you recognize inherent in the call to follow Christ or to submit yourself to God is self-denial.

You deny yourself to follow him.

You deny yourself to pick up your cross to follow Christ.

And sin is the unwillingness to deny yourself.

Sin is saying, I'm not going to deny myself.

I'm going to go where I want to go.

And here, Jonah's antagonistic towards election.

God says, I'm going to save people over there.

And Jonah says, I don't think so.

I don't think it's a good idea.

And I definitely don't want any part of it.

I'm out.

You think of Psalm 2.

Why do the nations rage?

Why do the people plot a vain thing?

How absurd is it to revolt and rage against God?

Understand that behind every act of sin is defiance against God.

How absurd is it to defy God?

It's no less absurd for you than it is for Jonah, by the way.

I mean, you can chuckle at the prophet running away in a boat, hiding from the God who made the ocean in the ocean.

I mean, it's it is, you should laugh a little bit at it.

But understand that same attitude is behind every act of sin, even in your own heart.

Even in your own heart.

Why do the nations rage?

Why do the people plot a vain thing?

The one enthroned in heaven, what does God do when the nations rage?

He what does he do in Psalm 2?

Laughs.

Oh, you should know that verse, brothers and sisters.

The one enthroned in heaven laughs.

How amusing it would be to God.

How amusing it would be.

A high-speed caterpillar getaway.

I mean, it's funny.

Where's it running to?

This little where does it think it's gonna go?

The cat is hoping it gets away.

The cat's excited about it.

The caterpillar's not gonna get away when we're it's on the table in front of us.

How do you run from God?

How do you try to get away from God?

Of course, the one enthroned in heaven laughs.

I mean, what response would you want from him?

And I want you to laugh a little bit at Jonah this morning.

You should.

Jonah one is designed to be a little bit humorous.

That's why I dwelled on the language earlier and all this.

It's designed to make you chuckle.

Oh, the the one who believes in the God of the oceans is hiding from God in an ocean.

It's great.

God's prophet won't speak God's name.

It's funny.

Meanwhile, he doesn't want pagans to get saved, and sailors are getting saved left and right.

It's hilarious.

See Jonah hiding in his boat.

See him hiding from God.

See him defiant.

See him trying to pull the cords away from God.

See him like the caterpillar trying to escape.

Laugh at the whole God can't make me preach Sheninnah if I go in the other direction thing in his mind.

I mean, that's hilarious.

Chuckle at those that take God's providence's license to go against God's word.

I mean, certainly, Jonah, as he's running from Galilee, gets down to Jaffa, and lo and behold, there's not regularly scheduled boats from Joshua from Jaffa to Tarshish.

I mean, remember, Tarshish is at the end of the world.

It would be unusual, very unusual to see a boat in Jaffa in Israel going to Tarshish.

That's funny.

It's so unusual.

So unusual.

And yet there it is, and you can just imagine Jonah's eyes lighting up.

Like, God must, look, God's being kind to me.

He must be excited about my plan to run away from him.

Why else would he have provided this?

Oh, it's so providential.

So providential.

Jonah's folly should teach us the absurd nature of trusting in providences over God's word.

Thinking, oh, God must want me to do this, and it violates his word.

This whole escape act is going to come to a screeching halt here.

And in a second, look at verse 4.

Jonah's on the getaway.

But, verse 4, Yahweh hurls a great wind upon the sea.

I mean, come on.

How do you fight God when he can hurl a hurricane at you?

It's not fair, God.

Jonah's Jonah's Jonah's stuck on a boat.

He's trying to get away from you, and he's got to buy a ticket.

I mean, that should be comical enough.

Jonah's not, it's not an equal playing field here.

For Jonah to get away, he has to pay somebody else to take him away.

Meanwhile, God can throw an ocean at somebody.

In verse 4, you wouldn't notice this in English, but in Hebrew, in verse 4, Yahweh's the first word.

Normally in Hebrew, you would get the verb first, then the subject and the object.

But this is one of the few exceptions in the Bible of that where Yahweh is put first in the text.

And that's what I mean by he's the star of the show.

Yahweh is the actor.

Everything is revolving around him.

You can't fight the one who can throw a hurricane at you, and God hurls the great winds upon the sea.

And there was a great tempest on the sea.

And the ship threatened to break up.

The ship here is personified.

That word threatens here.

It's again hard to see this in English, but in Hebrew, that word threatens, it's a word that requires an intellect.

It requires a scheme and a heart and a mind and a plan.

It's not a word that would be used of an inanimate object, but here the ship is doing it.

The ship is threatening to break up.

It's in the American idiom, so it loses the effect.

But in Hebrew, ships can't threaten to do anything.

It's a ship.

But not this ship.

This ship is thinking right now.

And this ship is weighing things out.

I got Jonah in me, and I've got God outside of me throwing a wind at me.

I'm going to side with God in this, the ship decides.

I'm not going to stick together for you guys, the ship is telling the sailors.

Sorry.

Can't do it.

It reminds me of the mother cow and her calf that are separated in the book of 1 Samuel, where the Israelites won't worship God, the Amalekites won't worship God, the Philistines won't worship God, but here's this cow separating from her baby calf, they'll worship God.

The cows have more sense than God's prophet.

The boat has more sense than God's prophet here.

Understand that behind every act of sin is this defiance.

Behind every act of sin is this idea that I have more sense than God.

Well, Yahweh tells Jonah, Remember who I am.

Remember who I am, Jonah.

I'll send this wind after you.

First, sin inherently defies God.

Second, sin inexplicably deadens sinners.

Sin inexplicably deadens sinners.

The wind comes at Jonah and his boat.

The mariners in verse 5 were afraid.

Each cried out to his God.

They hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.

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

The Septuagint, the Greek translation of this, it says that Jonah was snoring.

He's out.

And so it's worth marveling here at the nature of Jonah's predicament that God told him to go up and he goes down and then down a second time, now down a third time into the boat, and he's, in a sense, down a fourth time here, deep in sleep.

What's Jonah doing sleeping in the boat?

I mean, you're supposed to surmise a little bit here.

You wonder when the last time he slept was.

I mean, how exhausted would you have to be to sleep when your boat is in a hurricane?

I was on a plane this week and we hit some turbulence.

What they say in the airline world, moderate turbulence.

And the person next to me slept through it, which was amazing.

I looked at her like she had magical powers.

How would you sleep through that?

How's Jonah asleep on a boat in a hurricane?

In the middle of the boat, getting tossed everywhere.

How tired would you have to be?

I think the person next to me took some sleeping medication.

I don't think Jonah took some sleeping medication.

It was actually Spurgeon who said, There's no narcotic that puts you to sleep faster than sin.

And that's what Jonah's on right now.

When was the last time he slept?

I mean, God calls him from Galilee.

And instead of going to Nineveh, he goes down to Jaffa.

That's a, you know, it's 30, 40 miles of a walk at least.

He's walking for a day or two.

I don't know if he slept that night.

Goes on through.

There's the boat.

It's going to Tarshish, buys a ticket right away, goes on board.

Does not appear that he slept until the boat was loaded and went out to sea.

It doesn't seem like he fell asleep in the port here.

I mean, you got the, I have this picture in my mind of him on the boat looking behind him.

Is anyone after me?

You know, is Hosea on my tail?

Does God send Amos to track me down?

Who's coming after me?

The sailors have got to be, I don't know, interested in Jonah.

This is an unused, this is not a passenger boat.

You understand?

This is a cargo boat.

There was not a tourist trade between Jaffa and Tarshish.

They gotta be mystified by Jonah.

Wondering if he's some kind of outlaw?

What's his crime?

Is he a murderer?

Is he a thief?

They never would have guessed he's a runaway prophet, right?

And there's Jonah watching his back.

Finally, he's safe at sea.

Safe at sea.

Finally, nobody can catch him.

Nobody in the boat is going to make him go to Nineveh.

Finally, for the first time, he can go to sleep.

And he collapses and is snoring.

The word that's used for deep sleep here, by the way, it's used a few other places in the Bible, and I just want you to compare.

The first place in the Bible this word is used is of Adam, when God puts him in a deep sleep and takes out his rib and makes Eve.

That's the kind of sleep Jonah's in.

It's used of Daniel in Daniel chapter 8, when Daniel gets the vision of the Antichrist and is so terrified he collapses and God sends an angel to wake him up.

Daniel 8 · chapter mention

But my favorite of these uses is in the book of Judges.

When Cicero is given warm milk and falls fast asleep, and Jael drives a tent peg through his head.

That's this word.

Some of you are fast asleep right now, I can see.

Here's Jonah fast asleep in the boat.

Nobody pursuing him.

What does it tell you about Jonah's heart right now?

That the storm in the world that's going after Jonah is more severe and more threatening in his mind than the storm on the waves.

It's worse to be on the run from God than it is to be stuck in a hurricane.

Now that Jonah is safe in a hurricane, he's fast asleep because he feels that he's out of the reach of God's word.

The situation on board, meanwhile, is desperate.

So desperate the men of the world are driven to prayer.

When you see this in verse 5, each of the mariners is crying out to their own God.

The mariners are desperate.

The mariners are praying, Jonah's not.

This is a window into the reality that there are those who believe in the sovereignty of God, namely Jonah, and yet can be driven to prayerlessness by their own disobedience.

And I'm sure there are some of you in the room that are in that same boat, so to speak, that you would say you believe in the sovereignty of God.

You would say you believe that God rules the heavens and the earth and the sea, that God rules all those things, and yet through your own act of disobedience, it severs your own prayer life where you don't pray because you know you're living in sin.

You can have all the theological answers right, but your heart's not right before God, and so that creates prayerlessness in you by your own disobedience.

That's Jonah's situation here.

Notice how surprising that has got to be to the non-Christian.

Look how surprised the mariners are by this.

When the mariners find Jonah, in fact, as I mentioned in the Septuagint, it sounds like they heard his snoring, is how they found him.

So the captain comes to him and says, What do you mean, you sleeper or you snorer?

What do you what in the world is happening here?

Do you see the exasperation in the captain?

He's been on board working for, I don't know, hours here.

They're losing their cargo.

And he finds this dude sleeping in the boat.

It's not that he's like a passenger doesn't have to work.

That's not the way vessels worked back then.

If you're on board, you've got to work.

Even if you bought your ticket.

You're working.

And Jonah's sleeping, and they can't figure it out.

During Jonah's nap, everyone's desperately calling on their own God.

The only person on the boat who knows the right God to call to is silent.

It's insane.

Their yelling didn't wake Jonah.

The storm didn't wake Jonah.

Finally, the captain wakes him up to ask him how he can possibly be asleep.

How absurd a sleeper must have been to them.

And then notice the question again in verse 10.

The men were exceedingly afraid to him once they find out that he believes in Yahweh, and they shout at him, What is this you've done?

I love that the ESV puts an exclamation mark there in Hebrew.

It reads like a question, but it's certainly meant as rhetorical.

They're not asked actually asking him, What is it that you've done, even though strictly speaking, it's just like in English, if I were to say, What are you doing?

I don't really mean that as a question.

Parents can relate to that, right?

What are you doing?

Well, I thought I'd put the cat in the dryer, kind of thing.

No, I'm not actually asking, what are you doing?

I'm exclaiming, I cannot believe this.

That's the language the mariners are using.

What are you doing, Jonah?

It's incomprehensible to them.

That's where they give them the questions, by the way.

Notice the questions.

Tell us on what account this evil has come upon you.

What is your occupation?

Where do you come from?

What is your country?

What people are you?

Notice he answers all of them except what his occupation is.

He's lost that.

He's no longer a prophet.

He understands that.

And a prophet without a word is no prophet at all.

I remember in California a few years ago, a bus driver fell asleep and crashed the bus, and I don't know, all kinds of people died.

I don't remember how many people died.

And he was giving an interview.

The bus driver was afterwards, and they asked him, What is your name, state your name and your spell your name and your occupation?

It was the typical questions the media ask when they're doing an interview.

And the guy couldn't bring himself to say his name.

He was a bus driver who fell asleep and some of his passengers died.

He couldn't bring himself to say his name.

That's gotta be Jonah's situation here, when they're asking him, What is your occupation?

How could he say?

How could he say?

He used to be a prophet.

His life used to be held together by an unshakable commitment to God and God's word.

Not anymore.

His life used to be known as someone who would stand on God's word, not anymore.

He has no more identity, nothing to say, nothing to stand for, nothing to live for.

By the end of the chapter, he throws himself into the gets thrown into the sea, he submits himself to a watery grave.

Jonah is literally lost at sea.

He's metaphorically lost at sea as well.

Where there's no obedience to God, there's no assurance about who you are.

If your life isn't submitted to God, you can't answer these basic questions.

You don't know why you were made.

You don't know why God has you in this world.

You don't know what the point of living is.

These basic questions you're not able to answer if your life's not in submission to God and God's word.

And that's Jonah's situation here.

Having lost his anchor in God's word, he's drifted out into the dangerous waters of the sea.

Away from safety and into the hands of a sovereign God.

Third, sin inevitably devastates bystanders.

Sin inevitably devastates bystanders.

Let's not forget that the story is real.

Nineveh is real.

The danger Jonah would face there is real.

Jonah's life is in danger on the ocean in a real way.

The sailors are at risk of death.

Everything in this story is real.

It's personal, it's immediate.

They're trapped on a ship, they're trapped on a storm.

There's no Tarshish.

Notice the sailors try to swim or go to the land.

There's no land.

There's no Nineveh.

There's no Tarshish.

There's no Galilee.

There's no Crete.

There's no nothing there.

There's nothing except the storm.

There's only death.

I mentioned the world, the word hurl is repeated four times here.

God is going to hurl the wind.

The sailors hurl the cargo.

Jonah tells the sailors to hurl him.

The sailors finally do hurl Jonah.

In chapter 2, verse 10, the fish will hurl Jonah as well.

The life for the sailors is falling apart.

They're terrified, of course.

They're calling out to the unrespective gods.

Does them no good.

They're throwing their cargo overboard.

I mean, just like a prophet without a word, what's a marine merchant without a cargo?

And what's going to happen when these dudes, when they show up at Tarshish and the boat's empty, they're throwing their life overboard as well.

Notice their desperation in verse 7, they cast lots.

Let me show you how lots work.

They're not like straws like you might see in an Americanized version.

Lots are two dice.

They've got half of the sides are black, half of the sides are white, you roll them at somebody.

If they both turn up white, the person's innocent.

If they turn up black, the person's guilty.

If they turn up mixed, then you roll again.

Or you roll again, or you roll again.

Casting lots is no guaranteed way of an answer.

Many times you can cast lots for a long period of time and not get an answer.

I mean, how many people are on the boat?

You've got to go through them one at a time.

Who knows what number Jonah was in this list?

Maybe they cast lots at Jonah first.

Who knows?

They got lucky, so to speak.

And by the way, even if it does turn up pointing at somebody, that doesn't mean that that person really is guilty.

I mean, the people who are casting lots know this, and so if they if the lot falls to you, you get to explain yourself.

And that's what happens here.

The lot falls to Jonah, and that's why they ask him, What in the world is going on here, Jonah?

It's like defend yourself.

Explain why it shouldn't be you.

And Jonah does, he can't explain anything.

That's why they cast lots in verse 8.

It lands on Jonah, and they say, Whose account does this evil come upon us?

And Jonah pleads guilty, which blows their mind away.

I mean, the lots fall on somebody with a bunch of sailors.

You're supposed to defend yourself, right?

Not supposed to say, hey, you found me out.

This is the nature of sin.

It's destroying the lives of those that are around you.

My mind goes to the lying prophet in 1 Kings 13.

Do you remember the story where there was the godly prophet who is journeying back from Bethel?

And he finds an old retired prophet who brings them into his house, and they have a meal together, and God had told the good prophet, Don't eat food there.

Get out of there and go back to your own town.

But this lying prophet captures the good prophet and says, Oh, you don't need to listen to that word because God gave me a different word than he gave you.

And feeds the good prophet a meal.

And the good prophet goes on his way.

And remember, God kills him with a lion.

There's a lion there and kills him.

And the only mourner at his funeral was the lying prophet.

And that story is so mystifying if you've read it in 1 Kings 13.

You wonder, why is that prophet lying?

What does he gain out of this?

A meal?

Did he was he so desperate for fellowship he would lie just to have a meal with somebody that also believes in Yahweh?

I mean, it's such a surreal story.

But the point is, the lying prophet's lie took the life of an innocent person.

That's what you see Jonah doing.

Jonah is both of those bad prophets rolled up into one, isn't he?

His own disobedience is putting other people's lives in danger.

Which leads to fourthly.

Sinners can be incredibly delivered by God.

This storm is God's intervention.

I wanted to talk more about this point today.

I think I will save this point.

Not I think.

I will save this point for next week.

Except to say this.

Yahweh uses it to track down his servant who's gone AWOL.

Jonah went as far away as he could to get away from God's presence and found that he was just as near to God's saving power as he was back in Galilee.

He thought he'd gotten away from the place where God could reach him, where God's word could be effective.

He didn't.

God's grace is so extreme that it tracks down the most graceless person.

Even when that graceless person is a prophet.

Jonah has nowhere to go now, does he?

Where is left?

He was too close to God's word in Galilee.

He was too close to God's word in Jaffa.

And now God's word has found him on a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean.

Surrounded by pagan sailors that don't know, the only thing they know about Yahweh is what Jonah's told him.

There's nowhere left for Jonah to go.

The boat is too small for him.

The whole world is too small for him at this point.

And so he submits himself to God's judgment.

He submits himself to death for sure.

I mean, Jonah did not anticipate.

Don't think that Jonah thought by going overboard that God was going to rescue him, okay?

Jonah is Jonah is delivering himself over to death.

I mean, he's got this logic going on in his mind.

If I stay on board, everybody dies, including myself.

If they throw me over, I die, everybody else lives.

How does Jonah know that?

Because he's a prophet, silly.

As I said, he cannot escape God's word.

He cannot escape God's word.

And God has the capacity to rescue people, even people that are running from his word.

Now I hope you can relate to Jonah here.

I hope you can relate to Jonah.

On the days of Yom Kippur, we mentioned last week how the book of Jonah really is really practiced on Sukkoth.

The Jews, for the Feast of Tabernacles, the Jews love the book of Jonah.

They even see Sukkot as prophesied at the end of Jonah 4 when the weed grows up over Jonah's head.

Look, it's a covering, just like the Jews do on the Feast of the Tabernacles.

But the real day that Jonah is important to the Jews is Yom Kippur.

On Yom Kippur, the Jews read the whole book.

It's the only multi-chapter book the Jews read on Yom Kippur.

They read different sections from Leviticus, they read different sections from the Psalm.

The only book Jews read on Yom Kippur is Jonah.

And the rabbi will read it in the synagogue.

And when he's done reading it, everybody declares in unison, we are all Jonah.

We are all Jonah.

And it's an interesting thing to declare, and I'll tell you more why they all declare that, perhaps in chapter four.

It's not the reason you would think.

But it is a powerful truth to it, that we are all Jonah.

Because when you look at Jonah right here, he's supposed to be laughed at.

It's going to devastate those around you.

But God can forgive it.

I think of the person who's having an affair, who thinks that nobody will find out, they won't get caught.

And over time, the sinful reality of what they're doing is deadening their heart.

They lose the offensiveness of it.

They lose track of how awful it is what they're doing.

And it's going to shipwreck their whole life?

They don't realize that.

And you wonder, how can you not realize it?

I mean, how did Jonah think he can get on the boat to run away from the God who created the ocean and God wasn't going to shipwreck him?

How does the person who's having an affair think that it's not going to destroy his life?

It's not going to devastate his husband or his wife.

It's not going to devastate his children.

It's not going to wreck his friendships at church.

It's not going to just make a shipwreck of his life.

Does he not see how devastating it is going to be in all those around him?

And not just an affair, but I'm sure you can think of people in your life that are so given over to sin, they're a tornado coming into your life.

The family member who you don't want to talk to, who you don't want your kids to be around.

I mean, I th some of you may be that family member.

I mean, do you not see how your sin is destroying your own family?

Do you not see how your just giving over to an immoral lifestyle is going to make a shipwreck of your life?

It's going to crash those around you.

Jonah swims into these sailors' lives, and nothing goes well from there.

This one person's, just marvel at this one person's disobedience has the power to take captive a whole boat of sailors.

And the sin in your life has that power too.

I think the reason some people go into a life of sin like that is because they see their own power in that.

They see that through living a life of sin, they can exercise power over those around them.

They can make those around them bow to them.

And if they don't bow to them, if they don't recognize them, if you don't adjust your life around me, the sinner says, then your life is going to crash.

It's just this vacuum that draws people in to harm them.

And it gives a sinner a sense of power, I think.

I don't think Jonah was after that.

I think Jonah was so dead to his own sin, he didn't realize that.

And maybe that's the case with you as well.

Maybe you get so dead to your own sin, you don't see the danger it puts other people in.

That alone is a danger in and of itself.

But the hope that's in this chapter is no matter how shipwrecked your life is, no matter how much drowning in sin you are, you can't outrun God's grace.

I mean, that's the most amazing part of this chapter, isn't it?

You're not gonna find somebody who's angrier at God in the Bible than Jonah.

And he cannot outrun God's grace.

You're not gonna find somebody who's trying to get further away from God than Jonah is.

And he cannot get away from God's grace.

He can't do it.

There's nowhere in the world you can go from God, which means there's nowhere in the world you can go from his saving grace.

Death doesn't even get you away from God.

As Jonah's about to find out.

In a world where people are devoid of understanding their significance in life, their confidence in who they are, or their basic understanding of why God made them.

Understand that the relentless grace of God gives you that meaning.

The relentless grace of God can expose to you that God made you to be in a relationship with Him.

Here, God sends a storm after Jonah.

Do you understand that every providence in your life is, in some sense, God revealing himself to you?

We sang earlier, this is my father's world.

In the rustling grass, I hear him pass, he speaks to me everywhere.

And I know some of you might roll your eyes at that line.

What is that?

Charismatic stuff?

Come on.

No, do you understand that in every providence, God is revealing something to you?

In every providence, the heavens declare, David writes, the nature of God.

The sky speaks forth his handiwork, day after day pours forth speech, night after night reveals knowledge.

There is no place in the world where those words do not go, David says.

No place.

God doesn't send only storms after you, though.

He also sends his son.

And that's where the New Testament makes Jonah one so different.

In the New Testament, God doesn't just send a storm, although there are storms, he sends specifically his son to go after his lost children.

And here, the lost children of Israel, in the New Testament, God sends his son to go after his lost children, us.

And Jesus comes to pursue us, to die for our sin, and to rescue us from making a shipwreck of our life.

Lord, we're thankful that you are the Savior who pursues sinners.

We see in this chapter a wonderful picture of your relentless pursuit.

We know that sin is against you and that we can't break your cords.

We can't shake off the shackles of sovereignty.

We can't escape from you.

We can't run away from you, no matter how hard we try.

I pray for people in this room, if there's anyone who's leading a life of sin, a life that is devastating those around them, I pray that you'd give them a heart of repentance, that they would confess their sin to you, and you'd forgive them of their sin.

I pray if there's anyone here who's spiritually asleep, that you would wake them up.

Help them see that their spiritual slumber makes no sense to those in the world.

We live in a world of people who are lost at sea, and how silly it is for those who have your word to be asleep at the wheel.

Lord, wake us up.

Help us be passionate about taking your message into the world.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You have been listening to Emmanuel with Pastor Jesse Johnson.

You can find more resources like this at ibcva.com.

Here is a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBCVA.com.

If you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

We're located in Northern Virginia, and for more information about when and where we worship, check out our church website.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.