The Storm

One of the great things about the book of Jonah is that it takes theological truths about God and our relationship with him and puts it in real life.

We begin to see what God is like through Jonah's relationship with him.

So far we've learned from Jonah that sin is running away from God and that some ways we all run away from God.

Today we're going to learn how God chases after Jonah and sometimes how he chases after us.

Jonah didn't mind preaching fire and brimstone at home in Israel, but when God told him to preach to the Ninevites, he bought a one-way ticket to the ends of the earth, going in the opposite direction.

Jonah was running away from the presence of Yahweh.

He knew he couldn't flee from the Lord's actual presence.

He was fleeing from his felt presence, which means he didn't want to be anywhere near anything going on that reminded him of God.

He didn't want to go to the temple.

He didn't want to pray anymore.

He wanted to go as far as away, to a pagan city as possible.

So he went on a boat going to Tarshish.

Here's Israel.

Jonah is somewhere in the north of Israel when he gets called.

God wants him to go several hundred miles up north into Assyria, to Nineveh, but instead he goes down to Joppa, gets on a boat and starts heading across the Mediterranean all the way over here, hundreds of miles away, in the opposite direction.

Tarshish is located in modern-day Spain and really at the time was the farthest he could get away from Assyria.

The text gives us some interesting clues as to what's happening to Jonah spiritually.

It says he goes as far down as he can in the ship and falls asleep.

The text is indicating Jonah's direction, but it's reflecting his spiritual condition.

He's going down, and going away from the Lord is always to go down.

In chapter 1, verse 3, he went down to Joppa.

Then he went down into the ship.

In verse 5, jonah went down into the very lower part of the ship, the hold of the ship.

All seems pretty well with Jonah.

He found a ship and he's probably confirming to himself wow, this must be the right thing, here's a ship and he's at peace.

He goes down on the ship, goes to sleep.

All seems good.

I want you to know this first of all, as I read through it here.

What happens when Jonah is at his peaceful best.

Let me read Jonah, chapter 1, the first part of it.

Jonah 1 · chapter mention

Here the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amitya, saying Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.

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

So he went down to Joppa, found his ship was going to Tarshish, paid the fare, went down into it to go with him to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

In the Lord hurled a great wind on the sea, there was a great storm on the sea, so that the ship was about to break up.

Well, the sailors became afraid and every man cried to his God.

They threw the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.

But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship, laid down and fallen sound asleep.

So the captain approached him and said how is it that you're sleeping?

Get up, call on your God, perhaps your God will be concerned about us, so we will not perish.

Each man said to his mate come, let's cast lots so we may learn on whose account this calamity has struck us.

So they cast a lot, and a lot fell on Jonah and they said to him tell us now on whose account has this calamity struck us.

What is your occupation?

Where do you come from?

What's your country?

From what people are you?

Jonah said to them I'm a Hebrew.

I fear the Lord, god of heaven, who made the sea in the dry land, whoa.

Then the men became extremely frightened and they said to him how could you do this?

For the men knew he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.

So they said to him what should we do to you that the sea may become calm for us?

For the sea was becoming increasingly stormy.

He said to them pick me up, throw me into the sea, then the sea will become calm for you.

For I know it's on the account of me.

This great storm has come upon you.

I want you to notice Jonah is down in the ship and he's fast asleep, and God doesn't strike him with lightning.

He's not immediately judged for his sin of disobedience.

It didn't have an immediate effect.

God let him go his own way.

But while he let him go his own way, he didn't let go of Jonah.

In fact, god is a step ahead of it.

This ship is headed right into a huge storm.

The Lord hurled a great wind and a great storm on the sea.

This was no ordinary storm.

Verse 4 says Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.

The storm was so strong the ship itself was in danger of being smashed to pieces, and even these seasoned sailors feared for their lives.

It was huge.

It was powerful Throughout.

Jonah.

I love this book because it is full of word plays.

Here we see a great example of a word that sounds like it means we call it in a rhetorical method an anamanopeia, which means it sounds like it means we have words like that too.

The word buzz sounds like a bee.

It sounds like it means that's an anamanopeia.

Well, jonah, the book of Jonah is filled with them.

Verse 4 says that the storm was so great that the ship was about to break up.

Those two words break up in Hebrew.

Hard to translate into English, hard to translate at all because of this Hebrewism, but it sounds like it means Word break up.

Now I'm going to teach you some Hebrew today, so I'm going to say the Hebrew word and then you say it after me.

Here's the word, the first two words hishbah.

Can you say hishbah?

The second word is la hishabair, la hishabair.

Can you say that?

Hishbah La hishabair?

The word shabair means to break in Hebrew.

But what's happening here?

The verb is doubled and it's intensified.

It's not just shabair, it's hishabair La hishabair, doubled and intensified.

Now it sounds like it means I want you to listen to the waves of the sea beating against the boat.

Hishbah La hishabair, hishbah La hishabair, okay, this side.

Hishbah La hishabair, okay, ready.

Hishbah La hishabair, hishbah La hishabair.

Hishbah La hishabair, hishbah La hishabair, okay, you got the idea.

It sounds like it means you can hear the waves crashing against the boat.

In fact, those powerful waves are mentioned again in chapter 2.

They're actually called breakers.

That's where we get the word breaker.

These waves are breakers, they break things.

Chapter 2, verse 4,.

All your breakers shall bear and billows pass over me.

So what's the significance of the storm?

The storm gives us the good news and the bad news about what it means to live in God's world.

The bad news is God is sovereign and sends storms into our lives.

The good news is God is sovereign and sends storms into our lives to save us from ourselves.

That's what he's doing with Jonah.

Consider this great irony in this book.

God is sending a life-threatening storm in order to save Jonah.

God is sending a killer storm to save his life.

God is not tame.

He doesn't do what we expect Many times, just the opposite.

Why would God send a killer storm, hurricane-force storm, to save Jonah's life?

As we'll see, as the book continues, he's going to teach Jonah about grace.

Listen to me very carefully, because I know this is hard.

God always, always, always has a lesson for us.

In the storm.

Grace is sovereign.

God sent Jonah to warn Nineveh of his imminent judgment.

God wanted to use Jonah to warn them and give them an opportunity to experience God's grace if they repented.

But Jonah was not equipped to preach a message on grace.

Jonah really never personally experienced his grace.

Jonah ran away from warning the Ninevights because he didn't want them to experience God's grace.

He wanted them to experience God's judgment.

Jonah hated the Assyrians.

You've talked about this before.

They were ruthless, murderous, pagan idolaters.

The list goes on and on.

As a Jewish prophet and worshiper of Yahweh, the creator, jonah felt superior to these awful pagans, these awful people.

At this point, jonah believed, as most Jews, that God accepted him because of his racial and spiritual superiority.

He was a Jew, one of God's chosen people.

Jonah's prideful feelings, racial superiority, was preventing him from actually understanding and experiencing God's grace himself.

As a result, jonah really didn't understand why God was sending him to people who deserve judgment.

In his mind, some people were unworthy of grace.

In his mind, some people were worse sinners than he was.

Do you ever feel that way about anybody?

But as God would teach Jonah this lesson taught throughout the Scripture and specifically the gospel of the New Testament every single one of us is an awful sinner, every single one of us.

There's no worse sinners.

All of us are sinners in need of God's grace.

That's what Jonah needed.

God's going to give him an opportunity to do just that, to give him something he doesn't deserve for his sin.

See the jump into the news.

The moment a person believes in Jesus as their Savior, the moment, instantaneously, god welcomes us into his family, not because we perform well for him or our moral works were superior or because of our race, but by sheer grace.

Sheer means nothing else.

The only way God could show Jonah the flaws he couldn't see in his own heart and soul was through a life-threatening storm.

And we serve the same God and the storms still come up.

Obviously, for us.

This is both scary and comforting.

If you've been a Christian any length of time, you know God works in mysterious ways and wonders to perform.

Romans 8.28,.

We need to memorize that, meditate on it and remind ourselves every day.

We know, we know God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

Some things, no, all things.

He's sovereign, he has something in mind.

He's not going to leave us the way we are.

We're still full of sin, disobedience, rebellion.

We're not perfectly obeying what God has told us to do.

Romans 8.28,.

I'm telling you right now.

I've been a Christian a long time.

It's a very comforting verse, but it takes a lifetime to unpack, for us to see it, realize it and get it.

A lifetime.

That truth, jonah, you see, is not.

He's not going to be competent to preach on grace until he learns it himself, until he experiences it himself.

You know I marvel at God.

This is true for me as well.

I've told you over the years it doesn't fail.

Whatever God, whatever I'm studying in the Scripture and I'm going to tell you about it, god makes me go through it.

First, do you get this, jim?

You have no business telling anybody that unless you yourself understand it.

You see, if it doesn't work for me, how do you expect it'll work for them?

And I nod my head.

Yes, lord, thank you.

Teach away.

Here's the next storm, linda.

Until Jonah saw how incompetent he was to do what God asked.

He was not competent to do what God asked.

The same is true for us, until we see we're not competent to run our own life.

We're not competent to run our own life.

In a sense, you could call the storm some of our storms too, in Jonah's life an intervention, the principle of interventions that was adopted by people in AA.

What's an intervention?

Well, it's when a group of friends get an addict in a corner, surround them with love and confront them that they are weak and out of control, no matter what they say.

And they've got a choice Either admit it, humble yourself and get help, or die.

There's your choice.

That's an intervention.

This was Jonah's intervention.

You've got a choice Admit it, humble yourself, get help, or you're going to die.

God's intervention in our lives usually involves a storm, but not necessarily a meteorological one.

Sometimes the only way God can teach us something, especially that we're not in control, is by hurling a storm in our path.

Listen, as Jonah will find out.

God's sending the storm to reveal several things to us our false gods, our false values, our false thinking and our false trust.

Right away, a storm can rip all that out With only one thing the Lord and you.

Have you seen it?

The Lord and you.

It's going to rip everything away.

Show you you've been trusting the wrong thing, my friend.

You've been living for the wrong thing.

How can I get you to see that?

Well, let me just hurl a storm your way.

Well, like an addict, the intervention or storm doesn't change anybody.

It doesn't change anybody.

You know what changes people?

Their response to the intervention.

How are they going to respond to it?

And the wrong way to respond is blame.

Excuses, it's not my fault.

Thank you, I don't need it.

Wrong, adam and Eve both tried to shift the blame for their sin.

I don't want to take ownership of that.

If I do, it'll mean I'm weak.

I'll have to admit I'm wrong.

I'll have to swallow my pride.

Exactly that's what God wants you to do so he can help you.

The storm was God's intervention in Jonah's life and I'm telling you right now, as we read this this time he got it right.

He got it right.

Let's look at his example, his response.

Now the sailors recognize.

We read this, they recognize right away.

This storm is so unusual.

This storm has a supernatural element to it we can't explain.

We've never seen anything like this.

And so they began to ask what God is throwing this at us.

Who is this?

Who's responsible on our ship?

And everybody on board we'll talk about them throughout.

Everybody on board that ship, these pagan, heathen, idolatrous, sailors, were religious people.

They all understood the storm was meant that a God was angry at someone.

Jonah told them earlier that he was fleeing from the Lord's presence, yahweh's presence, and they cast slots and confirmed yeah, you're the guy.

And then they started pummeling him with questions who are you?

Where are you from?

What are you doing?

Why did you do this to us?

And here's the deal.

If you walk through this slowly, up until this point Jonah doesn't say anything.

He's quiet.

So when he starts talking and identifying himself as a Yahweh worshiper, he admits.

He admits this storm is my fault.

He says I'm a Hebrew.

I worship the God who made the sea in the dry land.

Jonah stands up and says I am responsible.

He admits what he's done.

He responds with no excuses, no blaming.

God was making me do something I didn't want.

None of that.

No rationalizations.

He takes responsibility and says it's my fault, pick me up, throw me in the sea.

Basically what he's saying and we'll talk about this a little later it's his death penalty.

He knows I sinned.

I got to die to save you.

Please note that the storm brought on by Jonah's disobedience, his sin, endangered everyone else on that boat and all the cargo and stuff Everybody.

The truth is, many of us have had someone else's sin break in on our lives and engulf us.

Someone else's sin has hurt us.

Well, that's what was happening on the boat.

Jonah's sin is affecting everybody else.

They're saying why did you do this to us?

You mean the storm God sends to get someone may also kill me.

That doesn't seem fair.

Some years ago, harold Kushner wrote a popular book entitled why Bad Things Happen to Good People, but the book's title wrongly assumes that some of us deserve a wonderful life Wrong logic.

This is probably how Jonah felt, causing him to miss the first step of understanding God's grace.

None of us deserve it, absolutely none of us.

Jonah maybe thought he deserved a wonderful life.

He was a faithful prophet, none of us.

Jesus made this very clear in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 13, verses 1 to 5.

Luke 13:1–5

Now, on the same occasion, there were some present who reported to Jesus about the Galileans, people from his home territory, whose blood pilot had mixed with their sacrifices.

Jesus said to them do you guys suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this?

I tell you no.

Unless you repent, you, my followers repent you will all likewise perish.

None of you deserve grace.

None of you are good enough to deserve a wonderful life.

Do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the Tower of Salon fell and killed them were worse culprits, worse sinners, than all the men who live in Jerusalem, all the holy religious people there?

Do you suppose that?

Are you thinking that?

I tell you absolutely not.

No, unless you repent, you don't deserve this.

You will all likewise perish.

Who is the worst person?

Jonah had to learn.

He had to learn this.

It is all of us, and he did.

Eventually.

That is what we need to learn.

Things may happen to us in the short run that we don't deserve Somebody else's sin or tragedy or unexpected whatever.

We don't deserve it.

But I'm telling you right now in the long run in Christ, none of us get what we really deserve.

The question is not why does God give us so much hardship?

The question is, why does he give us so much beauty and good to enjoy?

We don't deserve it.

God has to teach Jonah that principle.

He has to teach us that principle and he has the world, his sovereignty to do it Best.

To learn it quick and stop thinking of others as worse sinners than you.

Stop withholding love and caring for the law.

Jonah's repentance was different than the sailor's repentance.

You know what the sailors are doing.

Don't do this.

We do it.

Try not to do it.

But the sailors are seeking their God's.

They're concerned about one thing how can I get saved and get out of this mess?

They say what should we do to you for the sea to calm down?

For us?

Just trying to escape the mess is not true repentance.

Some of us may be just looking for God to get us out of a jam, to do something and get us back to where we were.

Then we'll be strong in faith and more religious than we've ever been.

Well, that's a pagan idea.

What should we give God so he'll be more good to us?

But our focus is entirely on ourselves.

In contrast, jonah lifts his eyes to heaven, begins talking about God and his focus turns to God, not himself.

How do we know that?

He says throw me in the sea, I deserve to die.

I know what I did.

Jonah finally comes to his senses, in a sense by looking at who God is, and is probably thinking to himself at this point how can I run from the Creator?

How can I be so ungrateful?

When Jonah starts focusing on God, he leads him to admit his sin no blame, no excuses, no rationalizations and he offers himself up.

Now he becomes calm and courageous.

True repentance always has a way of clearing your mind.

We're going to have a lot more to say about this as we go through our study in Jonah, but today I think it's true.

Sometimes God will send a storm into our life, and it's purposeful.

There's always a lesson in it.

Don't try to deny the storm.

Put the storm in a box.

Just keep living the way you are.

Give attention to what God may be trying to say to you.

What is he revealing?

What am I trusting in?

Where's my heart?

Where's my true treasure?

What's my true reliance?

What's my true God?

There's always a lesson and ultimately, as with Jonah, I do believe that the storm's, god's sins are meant to lead us to his grace through repentance.

When we admit our sin and repent which we'll have an opportunity today to do before communion that's when we begin to see God's grace.

If we hold on to our self-sufficiency, the result will only be a hard, bitter life.

Let's pray, father.

Thank you today for the Lord Jesus Christ.

You sent more than just a storm into our lives.

You sent your son, jesus, into the world and he endured the storm of your wrath for us so we could experience your grace when we believe in him.

I pray for anybody here today that's never really personally experienced your grace through believing in Jesus.

I pray that you give them grace now, allow them to open their heart and mind to you and really invite you and welcome you into their hearts In Jesus.

You tell us we've received grace upon grace Through him.

We've died for our sins.

Would you please help us to be quick to confess our sins, admit how we've fallen short, forgive us for our judgmental, critical, rebellious attitudes of thinking Other people are worse sinners than we are and we deserve a wonderful life.

Help us to keep our eyes on you, especially when the storms bear down on us.

I ask in Jesus' name Amen.