Into the Sea

Scripture Reading

Will you turn in your Bibles with me to the book of Jonah? The book of Jonah. I'm giving you your first scavenger hunt through the minor prophets. Have fun trying to find the book of Jonah. Jonah is after the book of Amos. If you get to a book like Malachi, you're too far. Get to Ezekiel, you're not far enough. Get to the New Testament, you're too far again. So, if you're using the Pew Bible, you'll find it on page 816. That's your shortcut.

Well, as you're looking, I want to say thank you so much for your prayers as we've been gone. It is a joy to be back home in Iowa. We are so thankful. This week has been filled with just thankfulness and praising God for putting us in such a beautiful place and reminding us how much we missed you all, specifically.

So let's go ahead and read the book of Jonah. Not the whole book, sorry. Jonah, chapter one. Jonah, chapter one. And we're just gonna read the first 16 verses together. Interestingly, in the Hebrew, that's where chapter one stops. So, Jonah chapter one, verses one through 16.

Now the words of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea.

So the ship was about to be broken up, Then the mariners were afraid, and every man cried out to his God and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep. So the captain came to him and said, what do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God. Perhaps your God will consider us so that we may not perish. And they said to one another, come, let us cast lots that we may know for whose cause this trouble has come upon us. So they cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, Please tell us, for whose cause is this trouble upon us?

What is your occupation, and where are you come from? What is your country, and of what people are you? So he said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to him, Why have you done this?

For the men knew that he had fled from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. Then they said to him, what shall we do to you that the sea may grow calm for us? For the sea was growing more tempest. And he said to them, pick me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will become calm for you. For I know that this great tempest is because of me.

Nevertheless, the men rode hard to return to land, but they could not, for the sea continued to grow more temptuous against them. Therefore, they cried to the Lord and said, We pray, O Lord, please do not let us perish for this man's life, and do not charge us with innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you. So they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice to the Lord and took vows.

Prayer for Illumination

Thus ends this portion of the reading of God's word. Brothers and sisters, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. And Father, we pray now that as we think about your word, as we go through it, Lord, we pray that your spirit would be working in our hearts. Lord, we pray that the things we ought to learn, you would soften our hearts that we would receive. Lord, we pray that when there are things that may be difficult for us to receive, we pray that you would give us willing hearts to be molded and sanctified. Lord, I pray that you would help me Lord, a sinful man, just as sinful as Jonah, to preach your word.

Sermon

Lord, please let it not return void. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, I'm just going to start off giving you a couple caveats. One, I'm sorry for my voice. I can't do anything about that. So you're just going to have to deal with it. Congratulations.

Number two is there's a lot of historical details, fun stuff that we're going to just have to punt to the afternoon time to chalk and talk. So there's lots of pictures and maps and graphs and all sorts of fun, nerdy stuff we're going to nerd out in the afternoon during chalk and talk. So I invite you to stay for that.

But when we come to the book of Jonah, We come to the very beginning of all the minor prophets. It doesn't seem that way because of its placement in the minor prophets, right? It's like smack dab in the middle. But Jonah is the first, historically, like in the line of time. It's Elijah, Elisha, Jonah. And then the rest of it. And so this is kind of the opening of God's prophetic word through a bunch of smaller prophets. And as we come to Jonah chapter one specifically, we find ourselves smacked in the face right away with two themes that hit us.

One is that God is absolutely sovereign. and that God's grace is for the whole world. One, God is absolutely sovereign, but he's also gracious. The Lord, we find in Jonah chapter one, is relentless in pursuing his purpose and his grace despite human frailties. God is relentless in pursuing his purposes. and showing grace despite human frailty.

And so as we pick up that theme this morning, I want you to first look with me at who's kind of the main character of this whole story. Let's read verses one and two together. Now the word of Notice here, if you're looking at your Bibles, how is the word Lord spelled? Capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. This is the divine name that God revealed himself to Moses. Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh, Jehovah or Yahweh.

And this is the Lord who himself comes to Jonah. God is the one who initiates This interaction, and this story in Jonah chapter one, yeah, the book is named for Jonah, but this is a story about God. And we know that because as we keep looking through the book of Jonah, just kind of scan down this first part of chapter one with me. Chapter one, and the word of the Lord came to Jonah.

And then we look at verse three, yeah, verse three. But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of who? The Lord. And then again in chapter 3, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. And then in verse 9, So he said to them, I am a Hebrew, for I fear the Lord. And then in verse 10, For the men knew that he had fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Verse 14, again, Therefore they cried out to, who? The Lord, and said, who? We pray, O Lord. And then it goes on. For you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.

And then finally verse 16. The men feared the Lord, exceedingly and offered a sacrifice to the Lord and took vows. When a name is mentioned in Hebrew again and again and again and again in this short 16 verses, Eight times. When the Lord does that in Hebrew literature, whenever anybody's name is mentioned that repeatedly, it's cluing you in that this is the main character of the story. This is the person we're thinking about. And so this story is really about the Lord, the covenant God, who had chosen the prophet Jonah. And this is one of the things that's really cool to me.

It's really fun that God has a purpose, God has a plan. He's going to go and He needs somebody to go preach to Nineveh for their sin, but He doesn't wait for a perfect person to show up. God's purposes and God's preaching isn't dependent on the preacher being perfect. Right? But God chooses Jonah knowing his frailty, knowing what he's going to do, because he's going to receive even more glory. Because God is relentless in pursuing his purposes.

So he's got a plan, and he's not going to wait for a perfect human to show up. But no, what does Jonah 1 and 2 say? Now the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come before me.

How good is it to know that the Lord doesn't need you to be perfect in your life right now to use you? You don't need to have all of your theology perfectly straight. You don't need to memorize the entire larger catechism before God's able to use you to share the gospel with people around you.

The Lord knows that you're struggling with your own sins and your own failures. The Lord knows you don't have all the answers. The Lord may know that at times you may even run away from the calling He's given you, but He is relentless in His purpose. And we believe in a sovereign God. And there are people who are perishing who need to know that their sin has gone before God, and the only way for them to be saved is to repent.

And He may be calling you as part of His plan, even though you are fallible, even though you fail, even though you may fumble, you're not perfect. That does not stop Him from using you. It doesn't stop Him from calling Jonah. It doesn't stop Him from calling us, praise God. But secondly, I want you to notice both the human weakness in this story and God's holiness.

Jonah has a certain amount of prejudice and a certain amount of fear. If we look back again at verses 2 through 3, we find that Jonah has a real reluctance to go to Nineveh. God tells him, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah, he arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. By the way, that word there, the presence of the Lord, the phrase is from the face of God. He wants to get away from God's face. He doesn't want God to see him. He doesn't want God to talk to him. He just wants to get away from God entirely. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. Where's Tarshish?

Timbuktu. We don't know. It's like south of Spain or something. Way on the other side of the Mediterranean. He's supposed to go east. He goes as far west as he possibly can. He really wants to get out of there. So he paid the fare. He went down into the ship to go with them to Tarshish to flee from the face of the Lord. In Jonah's mind, to go to Nineveh is to go to Thelm.

It's to go to other people out there. They're not Israelites. They're not people of the covenant. They didn't receive the law or the promises or anything like this. Why should he go to Nineveh? There are enemies. Nineveh is part of the kingdom of Assyria. Israel's been fighting with Assyria. It's a time of somewhat uneasy peace between these two nations right now. But it's going to be the Assyrians in just about a hundred years who are going to come, destroy the northern kingdom, and take the people away captive. He doesn't want to go to them. God's grace is for Him. God's grace is for the Israelites. God's grace is meant for Him and for us, not for them.

I got to tell you, I think we fall into that trap sometimes. There are times we fall into that. I'm really tempted when I go on YouTube or Facebook or something and there's all these reels and they're really funny, right? And I was watching one that kind of really made me chuckle about how the whole LGBTQ stuff has just kind of ballooned and ballooned and ballooned and demands from just wanting acceptance and stuff to like, no, you must do these things and the tyranny of that. And I sat there and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right. But then I realized, hold on. Hold on, while those things may be true, those are the people who need the gospel.

It's easy to put people in the bad guy pocket, right? They're just bad people. We're not going to talk to them. We're not going to pray for them. We're definitely not going to go share the gospel with them because they might be mean. Right? They might attack us.

Jonah doesn't want to go to Nineveh. He also knows who the Ninevites were. Now notice what God had said. God called Jonah to preach an unpopular message. He doesn't tell him to go and, hey guys, God's love is perfect. You can just keep doing everything you want to do and life is going to be great. That's not what God tells him to do.

Look at verse 2. God himself says to Jonah, arise and go to Nineveh, that great city. And here's his preaching. Here's his commission. and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me." God is holy. And even though the people of Nineveh were Assyrians, not Israelites, God takes note even of pagan nations, pagan people, when they are going their own way and doing their own evil things. God takes notice of all of that and God is offended by it and God is going to hold them to account for it. And he tells Jonah to go and to preach a very politically incorrect message. Y'all are sinners, you need to repent, turn from your wicked ways. You can imagine, in most scenarios, without the working of the Holy Spirit, that's going to go over like a lead balloon.

But what were the Assyrians like? They had been a major power. They had been a major international power during the time. We're talking about a nation that Nineveh is a little bit north of Babylon, along the Tigris River. Again, I'll show you a picture of this later. They were powerful and they were masters of economic exploitation. They loved when they would conquer other people. They weren't the type of people who would come in and conquer them, but like, okay, you can still have your temples, you can still have your religion, you can still have your own government.

No, no, all that was gone. When the Assyrians came in, What they did is they wiped out the society. They wiped out all the temples, all the priestly class, all the royalty, everyone. It's just gone. And by gone, I mean either killed or deported. Right? Think chains around your necks, rings in your noses, drag you to a foreign land so that the land is decimated. And anybody who is still living there, You want to talk about high tax rates, 80-90% tax rates on the people. Anybody who stays in the land, you know who your master is because he takes all your money. Your harvest isn't yours. Your animals aren't yours. Everything is the Assyrians. Everything belongs to those who live in Nineveh.

There is a hierarchy in the society of Assyria. that the nobles, the priests, the merchants, and the farmers, everybody knew exactly where they lined up. It was a very stratified type of environment. They were agricultural experts. They knew how to take the water from the Euphrates and from the Tigris and make these long canals and to flood into their fields during the rainy season and to give them ample harvest. The Assyrians weren't these backward dummies. They were literate people. Highly literate.

Some of the main writings we have from the Ancient Near East are the cuneiform tablets because there's tons of them from the Assyrian Empire. We find these clay tablets and they have writing on them about the administration of the kingdom and about their various literature and scientific knowledge. Even one of the most famous libraries of the ancient world that has ever been found by archaeologists is in the city of Nineveh. It's the library of Ashburnipal. And in this library, they have found collections of cuneiform tablets talking about astronomy and medicine and mythology.

These were illiterate people. They had extensive trade. They would go all throughout the Middle East and Asia and throughout Turkey and Africa. They dealt in textiles and luxury items. Right, they were skilled artisans. Even today, some of the most amazing reliefs we have from the ancient world are in places like Nineveh, where there's, if you look on the walls in Nineveh, there's entire walls, I mean, way longer than this, that are just filled with carvings. And I mean, intricate type carvings. It would put the Egyptian hieroglyphs to shame.

And it showed that they loved hunting, warfare, and their religion. They were a polytheistic people. They built massive temples and ziggurats to their god. They worshipped Ashtar, the goddess of love and war, the queen of heaven. And I believe these are the types of things that the Lord found detestable in his sight, as they worshipped this fertility goddess. As they worshipped Asher, the god of the main city in Assyria, Asher. He was the Lord of the gods and they claim that he was the creator of the universe. Could you imagine the Lord himself who made the heavens and the seas?

What a stench that would be to the Lord's nose to know that these people are worshipping someone else who they believe is the ultimate creator. This god of Asher is commonly depicted on their reliefs as an archer, and he's drawing an arrow, and the sun is beaming behind him, and he's got a crown on his head. It really symbolizes what these people were like, because what they were like, what they were known for in the ancient world was their high society and their war, violence and war.

Their brutal military campaigns and harsh treatments of conquered people were known far and wide. They were experts in terrorizing their enemies. When they decided to go and conquer a people, they're the ones who invented siege warfare. What is siege warfare? You have a city, you want to conquer that city, you put your troops all around it, and you starve the people out. You just camp around them for three years. You don't let food get in, you don't let water get in, and eventually people get so starved and so dehydrated that they'll eat their own children and drink their own urine. That's what the Assyrians were known for inventing.

And if you survived the siege, it was only going to get worse for you because you're going to either be killed in a mass slaughter or you're going to be taken away captive. But if you were one of those who had led the people, it was going to even be worse for you. Besides mass executions, and I'm going to try to keep some of the graphicness out of this, but I need you to get a sense of why Jonah didn't want to go to these people. If you were one of those leaders that they wanted to make a show out of you to show, to tell everybody, hey, if you're like this person and stand up against us and our gods, you're going to end up like this.

They would literally skin people alive in front of entire crowds until they died. The Assyrians, if that wasn't enough, If flaying wasn't the right, then what they would do is they would impale people, put you on a pole alive, and let the animals and the weather beat you to death. This is where the Persians and later the Romans got their idea for crucifixion from, the Assyrians. Would you want to go preach there? You think you're gonna have a warm welcome into that type of city?

No. No, it's totally understandable that Jonah doesn't wanna go there, but you see, God is sovereign and he has a relentless plan. And he is going to show his grace. He is going to show that he is holy and that he is God and that he will show grace to those who repent. And he's going to do this even despite Jonah's and those Assyrians' human frailty. But what Jonah is known for is not just his being in the belly of the fish, but also his fleeing from God himself. Jonah tries to run from God's presence.

Look with me at verse 3. But Jonah arose of leave to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa. I'll show you Joppa on a map later. And he found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. This takes a lot of determination.

If you're trying to just skip town and you don't want people to know who you are, If you're from Morningside, you're not just going to go to Mediapolis. People might know you there. You don't even necessarily go down to Burlington or Mount Pleasant, right? Because you may run into people you know there.

You've got to go far away. You've got to go to Des Moines. But if you're really serious, if you're trying to get away from the presence, what would you do? You go to Seattle or Los Angeles or Newark or somewhere. If you were really serious, you might go all the way to something like remote India. That's the type of journey that he decides to do. How far is this away? Well, when Solomon sends ships to Tarshish, it takes three years for them to get back.

We don't know if Jonah has a family. We don't know if Jonah has an estate, if he's got a farm. He's so determined to get away from the Lord's presence, so determined to not do what God's called him to do, that he's willing to forsake everything and everyone. And it costs him dearly. Most commentators believe that when Jonah did this, he didn't just buy his cruise ship ticket. No, when Jonah did this, he hired the whole boat. He paid for the whole thing, just get me as far away from here as you can. He was serious about this.

But I think you know it in your own bones and you know this in your own experience, trying to run away from the presence of God is a futile attempt. Trying to run away from God isn't going to go well. Even the psalmist tells us this. God is omnipresent. Psalm 139, 7-10.

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend up into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there. If I take to the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, you are there. Even there you shall lead me. and your right hand shall hold me.

It doesn't matter, you can't run from the presence of God. I don't care if you try to go to the top of Mount Everest, you will find God displaying all of his glory there. You could try to escape the presence of God by getting in a little sub and going down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and if you somehow survive that pressure, God will still be there. You can't run from God's presence. And just like we can't run from God's presence, I'm sorry, we can't run from God's plans. We can't run from God's plans.

Why? We believe in the sovereign Lord that is presented here for us. The Lord is relentless in His purposes. And He is relentless in pursuing His grace, despite even human frailty. As we go on, we see that things kind of take a change, starting at verse 4. Look with me at God's providence, and then human surrender. And we see as we start reading through verse 4 that it is very, very clear the Lord Himself is in charge of what's going on. The storm and the sea describe or show us that God himself is the one who is coordinating these events.

In verse four, the Lord tells us, but the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so the ship was about to be broken up. By the way, in the next few verses here, in the next, I think it's like 12 verses, the sea is mentioned 10 times.

Why? Now, I don't know how many of you have been on water. And I mean not by on water, I mean like the Mississippi River. I mean like go up to Lake Superior or go to the Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic Ocean. If you get to a place in the sea, when you look at the horizon, and no matter where you look 360 degrees, there's no sight of land. If things go haywire, if things go sideways, you know it's just you.

And it's a dangerous place to be. I mean, this is so serious that when I was in the Navy and we were on ships, if you were going to work on the flight deck, you had to wear these kind of vests. And the vests had multiple ways to try to save your life because the sea will just kill you. You can only tread water for a certain amount of time before you just get tired and die. If you fell off, life would automatically inflate. That's great. You can live for a little bit of time in a ship that's been torn apart, but you're not going to last too long.

You've got to have somebody to find you. All right, and so we would have on these vests, you would have a whistle that you could blow into, hoping that maybe somebody could hear you. You would have a strobe light that, if it hit the water, would automatically flash to try to let planes know, hey, somebody's here. And even dye packets in it that would dye the water around you orange or green to tell people, whoa, look, that's not normal. There must be somebody there.

Why? Why? Because people who are seafarers, people who are in the water regularly know you never control the sea. You just navigate it. You cannot control the sea. And this is one of the things that people in the ancient world, especially, well, it's not just ancient world, even today, there's all sorts of pagan kind of myths or kind of ways people treat the sea. Right. They're kind of like, oh, well, there must be even these things don't even existed when I was in the Navy. Right.

You cross the equator. And when you cross the equator on a U.S. ship, you get a shellback ceremony. And the height of the shellback ceremony, after you do all these things, is you come up to the biggest, nastiest, ugliest master chief on the ship, and he's got a trident in his hand, and he's playing King Neptune. We're talking about 2006 here, right? This is a recent past. This stuff still goes on in the Navy, right?

Because people who live by the sea and are in the sea still hold to a whole bunch of these traditions. And the ship's about to be broken up, but notice, it's the Lord who sent the wind on the sea. And the sailors recognized that this is something out of their control, verses 5 and 6. Then the mariners were afraid. That's an understatement. And they cried out to his God, And they threw the cargo that was on the ship into the sea to lighten the load.

They throw the cows off. They throw the money off. They throw the food off. They throw the oil off. They throw the wine off. They throw everything off, just trying to get the draft up so that the ship might float a little bit better. And it's to no avail. And finally, the captain realizes, hey, we got this bomb in the bottom of the ship. He's sleeping. He's in a deep sleep down there. And he hasn't prayed to his God. I'm going to wake him up.

So he goes down there and he tells Jonah, what are you doing, man? Why are you sleeping? Arise, call on your God. Perhaps your God will consider us so that we may not perish. They've all been crying out to the various different gods. And he's saying, look, it ain't working. We need you too. Maybe your God will listen, because our gods ain't listening.

And so we find in verse 7 that Jonah comes up. And they said to one another, they start reasoning, okay, we've got to figure this out. What's going on? Why are we about to die? Come, let us cast lots that we may know for whose cause this trouble has come upon us. So they cast lots. What does it look like to cast lots?

I don't know, maybe they had dice. that was one way in ancient Assyria they cast, but this is most likely seafaring Phoenician people. So maybe they had like, you know, have you ever seen this? Maybe you've watched like Dude Perfect or something, right? People put their names on a piece of paper and they put them in the hat and you just draw out the paper and who it's ever named, right?

That would be a form of casting lots, right? And so this is this idea that somehow they realize God is in control of the lot, right? Now at this point, I don't think they think it's God, Jehovah himself, But it's just, the gods will figure this out for us. Whose fault is this? And lo and behold, we know for certain that it's the Lord himself who knows a lot, and it falls on Jonah. And so 21 questions starts flying, right, in verse 8.

Who are you? Where'd you come from? What's your job? What are you doing? Why are you here? What's your country? And Jonah just, this is the point. He's got a choice here. What does he do? Does Jonah just lie, zip his lips, let everybody die? No, he says to him in verse 9, I am a Hebrew. He's giving him his ethnic identity there.

And I fear Jehovah, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. He makes a confession to these sailors that he doesn't just serve some little sea god he's made mad. He doesn't make mad just the god who brought the storm and the wind. No, he is a Hebrew, a monotheist who serves the one true living God, the maker of heaven and earth and everything that it contains. This don't go over so well with the sailors. Then the men were exceedingly afraid. Right now they're scared out of their pants.

Why? Because, whoa, whoa, whoa, you served that God and you ran away from him? Are you nuts? What have you done to us? Why have you done this? Verse 10, for the men knew that he had fled from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. I mean, you can imagine what it was like before when they left the sea of Joppa and they were just kind of talking and, hey, why did you hire the boat, Johnny? He's like, well, I'm just trying to run away from God. That's so funny, right? Water's placid, nice calm breeze, everything's going great. Now they're like, what have we done? We're gonna die. And so they ask him. He's the one who knows the Lord. They know now that God has shown he's the one that's there, that they're in trouble for. And so he says, they ask him, what shall we do that the sea may be calm for us?

And the storm's just getting worse and worse and worse. I mean, you can imagine the waves, they have white caps on them, and the spray is hitting them in the face, and they've had to pull down the sails, and the wood is creaking and screaming because it's straining. And he says to them, now notice how radical this is. Well, that's the only answer. You've got to kill me. You've got to sacrifice me to the sea. You gotta throw me overboard. Then the sea will become calm for you. Jonah knows it's his fault. He was perfectly fine beforehand, sleeping in the boat and letting everybody die if nobody knew what's going on. But now that everybody knows what's going on, he's still the problem. But the men, they're not ready to do this yet.

Verses 13 through 16. They can't see land, but it's just out there and they know it, so they just try to row and row and row as hard as they can. Their biceps are sore, their shoulders are tired, their heads are just dripping with sweat and they can't do it. They're trying to row the land, they can't make it. The sea just gets worse and worse and worse and worse. The more they try, the worse it gets. The more they try, the worse it gets. It just seems like this is never going to work.

Final Point

Finally, notice what happens in verse 14. It's very important what happens.

Notice they stopped crying out to their pagan gods. They stopped crying out to their kind of minor gods, right? And they take the name of Jehovah themselves on their lips. We pray, O Lord, please do not let us perish for this man's life. And do not charge us with innocent blood.

For you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you. Man, it's amazing. These pagans become Calvinists really fast. They know God is sovereign here. The Lord's chosen to do this. The Lord is the one in control. They tried not to throw him overboard because they were worried that they were going to become guilty of murder. And so they cry out to the Lord himself. And even though they don't normally serve this God, they submit themselves to him. So they do the radical thing.

Verse 16, they picked up Jonah. Imagine their hands actually grabbing him. I wonder if Jonah was still or if he was squirming. They picked him up. Is he screaming in the air? I don't know. And immediately, the waves are calm. The wind is gone. just lapping against the boards. And notice in verse 16, the sailor's response.

The men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice to Jehovah and they took vows. They realize he really is who Jonah said he is. Jonah tried to run away from the presence of God because he didn't want to tell some ugly, pagan, you know, no-nothing, out-of-covenant people about God. And yet in the sea, God is relentless in pursuing His purposes. He even saves these sailors, showing them that God is the one who is powerful, Jonah had a plan to run from the Gentiles and yet others are saved because of his actions. God had a plan for these sailors to come to this point where they would confess that the Lord is in charge and to fear Him. By the way, that word fear there is the same word in the Hebrew that we would use for worship. God is relentless in pursuing His purposes. and His grace despite even Jonah's human frailty.

And so our last point, we see so often in Jonah foreshadowing of Christ and of the mission to the Gentiles. There was another time in the Bible when a bunch of people realized who God was. We looked at it in Mark chapter 4. when Jesus was sleeping in a boat and it was being torn apart by the wind.

The disciples were scared and they come to Jesus and they said, don't you care that we're about to die? Jesus gets up and he rebukes the wind and the waves. Mark tells us immediately it became quiet. And what was the disciples response to that? Notice the words.

And they feared exceedingly and said to one another, who can this be that even the wind and the seas obey him? The disciples were sea-faring people also on the Sea of Galilee. And they knew that Jesus was the one who controlled the wind and the waves.

The sailors in Jonah had that same fear when they realized it too. But we also see in Jonah this willingness at the very end of this episode for him to submit himself to the Lord, knowing that the only way for other people to be saved was for him to die. The only way for those sailors to be saved was for Jonah to die. Make no doubt about it, getting thrown overboard off a ship, is a death sentence. There's a reason why you watch the movies, and it's really funny, right? Walk the plank. No, walking the plank was a death sentence.

Jonah knows walking off that, getting thrown off that ship is going to cause him to die, but it's going to save the sailors, and so he does it. How much better is Jesus' sacrifice for us? Jonah is a fickle and sinful man. full of prejudice and trying to run from the face of God. He doesn't want to do God's will. And yet Jesus Christ is willing to lay down his life for us, knowing that by his dying, a death he didn't deserve, he would save us and give us eternal life.

This is why Jesus will use Jonah in Matthew 12, verse 40. When he says, for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Jesus ties himself to the story of Jonah for a reason.

So my question for you this morning, as we walk away from here, is do you submit yourself to God's purposes? Who are you in the story? I don't think any of us are necessarily perfectly Jonas, right? But if you caught yourself at times running away from what you know God has called you to do, talking to that person, entering into this evangelistic conversation, going and dealing with such people, because you just don't like them. Maybe they're not the same ethnicity as you. Maybe they don't smell like you. Maybe they don't eat the same food as you. Maybe they don't have the same morals as you do. But God's purpose for us is that we go and make disciples of all nations. So I wonder how many of us even shy away. I'm not talking about just like global missions. I'm talking about even here. Who are the people you're avoiding?

Because I gotta tell you, you try to run away from it for too long, the Lord's gonna end up bringing it right back in your lap. Because you can't run away from God's purposes. He is relentless in pursuing His purposes. And He will show mercy to whom He shows mercy. So the question is, do you submit yourself, or do you fight against the Lord? When you point people to Jesus, or will you try to run from the face of God?

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Lord, we confess to you that we are people who are often afraid. Lord, we're afraid of where your purposes would lead us. Lord, we pray your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, but Father, we know that sometimes that scares us to death. Father, we pray that your spirit might give us strength to accomplish the good works that you have prepared beforehand for us to accomplish in Christ Jesus. Lord, we pray that even as we've worked through this passage in your word, Lord, if there's sinful things I've said, I pray that it would just be blown away like chaff in the wind. But Lord, where there is gold, where there is honey, for your people's hearts to savor, Lord, I pray that you would please. Let us love you. Let us know who you are as our sovereign Lord and our gracious God. Lord, we thank you that you pursued us even when we were like the Ninevites and like these sailors who pray these things in Jesus' name.