Running Rebel (Part Two): The Raging Storm

Transcript

JROT 19
10/15/2023
Running Rebel (Part Two): The Raging Storm
Jonah 1:3-7
Jesse Randolph

Alright. Well, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord for those testimonies in baptism this evening. And praise the Lord for that work of salvation and regeneration, that He has done in each of those lives. The lives of Lucas and Kris and Austin and Michaela. He’s a good God. He’s a God who saves and saves of the uttermost. It’s so neat to even hear the different backgrounds. You know, some in the church. Some outside the church. Some Roman Catholic background. Some just ran away in different ways, until the Lord chased them down and saved them. Praise the Lord for their faithfulness in stepping into the waters of baptism. Just a reminder, after the service this evening, you’ll have a chance to greet and congratulate each one of them. For taking that important public step of obedience tonight.

Well, we’re back in the book of Jonah this evening. We kicked off our study of this short and powerful little book last Sunday night. In a sermon titled, “The Runaway.” If you were here for that, last Sunday night, you’ll recall that in that message, I essentially gave you two things. I gave us some very basic key background information about the book of Jonah. That’s how we started the message. We went through its dating. We went through its authorship. We went through its setting. Its veracity, as being truly from Jonah and truly inspired of God. We went through its purpose. We went through its literary genre, how it fits, and the genre, that being historical prophecy. Then we went into the first two-and-a-half verses of the book. The book of Jonah. Where we saw The Description. That was the first heading. That refers to the description of “The word of the Lord [which] came to Jonah.” I’m already in Jonah, by the way. I’ve got a short message tonight, I got to get right to it.

Look at Jonah 1:1, it says, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying . . .”
So, that was The Description, that we saw last week. The being “the word of the Lord came to Jonah.”

Then we saw The Decree, in verse 2, referring to the command that God gave Jonah. Where it says, “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.”

And then, we ended last week with, The Departure, which was the first part of verse 3, where it says, “But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” God had given very clear instructions. “Arise, go to Nineveh.” But Jonah openly defied those instructions. And went in an entirely different direction. It says, he “rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.”

Well, tonight, in a sermon that’s titled “The Raging Sea” . . . we’re simply going to pick up where we left off last Sunday night, in the narrative. The cliffhanger ending last week . . . was that Jonah, midway through verse 3 here, had risen up to “flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” A futile exercise if there ever was one. Psalm 139, which predated Jonah. Which I believe Jonah would have been familiar with. Declares “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me.”

So, God is omnipresent. He’s everywhere. You can’t flee Him. You can’t flee from His presence. So, as he fled, where did Jonah go? Where was he headed? Well, we pick up in the narrative in the second half of verse 3. God’s word tells us. “So, he went down to Joppa.”

Now, those words, “So he went”, they look rather inconspicuous to us. But to the original Hebrew audience of this letter. They would have known exactly what was being said here. They would have been familiar with the experience of other prophets. Who, in response to God’s command. Immediately went after the task that God had given them. For instance, Isaiah, in Isaiah 6:8. There’s the infamous heavenly throne room scene. And then, Isaiah is given his charge to go and proclaim. And in Isaiah 6:8, Isaiah says, “Here am I. Send me!” Or, I mentioned last week, Hosea. Who was given a command in the very first verses of that prophecy. To go and marry a prostitute, Gomer. What does he do? Right away, it says, “So he went” and married that very prostitute. Or Ezekiel. We know from Ezekiel 37, was commanded by God to go and prophecy over a valley of dry bones. And God said, the prophecy that he was to give them was, “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” You recall what Ezekiel did? He went. He went immediately. He obeyed! And he started prophesying. As it says in Ezekiel 37:7 – “So I prophesied as I was commanded to do.” Not Jonah. Jonah did the exact opposite of what he was told. He made a conscious decision to defy God’s order. He voted with his feet when, instead of going east to Nineveh, in Assyria. He decided to go to Tarshish. A far-west Spanish outpost. One of these places that Isaiah 66:19 says, the people there had “neither heard My fame [meaning God’s fame] nor seen My glory.” In other words, it was a pagan populus.

To get himself, rebelliously, to his final destination of Tarshish. We see in our text for tonight that Jonah started by traveling to the port of Joppa. It says right there in verse 3: “so he went down to Joppa.” Now Joppa was located on the Mediterranean Coast, near the border of Judah and Samaria. It sat adjacent to a natural harbor. It was an important seaport for the surrounding region, especially the people of Jerusalem. We see Joppa mentioned a few different places in the Old Testament. And each of those places we see Joppa, indicated as being a very important piece in maritime commerce in this part of the world in this day.

For instance, In Ezra 3:7, a post exilic book, after the Jews had come back out of Exile. It says, “Then they gave money to the masons and carpenters, and food, [this is the rebuilding process in Jerusalem] drink and oil to the Sidonians and to the Tyrians, to bring cedar wood from Lebanon to the sea at Joppa, according to the permission they had from Cyrus king of Persia.” Or in II Chronicles, going back a ways into the days of Solomon. Chapter 2:16. II Chronicles 2:16, as they’re talking about building the temple during Solomon’s day. It says, “We will cut whatever timber you need from Lebanon and bring it to you on rafts by sea to Joppa, so that you may carry it up to Jerusalem.” We also see Joppa mentioned in the New Testament in Acts 9 and 10 as this place where Peter received a vision from heaven to send him forth the Gospel to the Gentiles by way of Cornelius.

Now some have taken as you go through the commentaries on Jonah, it’s very interesting, some have taken this to mean that because Joppa was the place from where the Gospel was launched through Peter’s ministry later in history that there must be in the book of Jonah some symbolism associated with that. The idea here is because of what happened later in the book of Acts in the New Testament with the Gospel going out through Peter in Joppa, that there must be some preview here in Jonah as Jonah interacts with these pagan sailors, these unbelieving sailors who we’ll soon meet. In other words, there’s a precursor to what we see later in the book of Acts. Now I’m all for finding exegetically supportable connections between the Old and New Testaments. And I’m all for hunting for examples of fulfilled Old Testament prophecy in the New Testament but I found that one to be a bit of a stretch. Jonah didn’t go down to Joppa to pre-figure the fact that later, 800 years later Peter would receive a vision in that same city through which the gospel would eventually go out to the Gentiles. No, Jonah went down to Joppa because he was a rebel. He sought to flee to Tarshish. He sought, as we saw last week, to “flee from the presence of the LORD.” And he sought to flee to Tarshish because he didn’t want the Ninevites to experience the mercy that God was planning to extend to them.

So, Jonah trudged these sixty or so miles from his hometown of Gath Hepher to Joppa. When he arrived look what he found as we continue on in verse 3. The next part of verse 3 reads He “found a ship.” Not just any ship, it was a ship “which was going to Tarshish.” What a marvelous providence! It was just what he needed! Its almost as though God is sovereign. It’s almost as though God was sovereignly involved here even in Jonah’s rebellion. Not approving of Jonah’s rebellion, of course. Psalm 5:4 says, “You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness,” but allowing Jonah’s rebellion to play a part in God’s overall plan for Jonah, for the crewmates he was about to meet, and ultimately for the Ninevites.

Don’t miss this. Note the extent of Jonah’s determination to flee to Tarshish. We know historically that the Israelites were not a seafaring people. The Israelites were essentially a people of the land. They liked strong terra firma underneath their feet. And Jonah here was so determined to flee from the presence of the Lord that he was prepared to risk his life at sea rather than face up to God’s call on his life. He had what one commentator has called a “mad determination.” A mad determination to escape God’s call on his life. Look at the next part of the verse. It says he “paid the fare.” See what we don’t see described in this narrative is some sort of divine spotlight being shone upon the ship that was going to be going off to Tarshish. We don’t see Jonah somehow being supernaturally transported from his hometown of Gath Hepher to suddenly now being on this ship that’s going to Tarshish. No, instead what’s being described here is Jonah going through some very ordinary steps of living, traveling to Joppa, learning about this Tarshish-bound ship and paying the fare and then doing so going through these otherwise ordinary processes of life. Jonah was a rebel on the run to be sure but as he ran, he ran doing some very ordinary things which when you think about it, is how sin and rebellion tends to work in our day as well. The adulterer pays real money to book that hotel room. The drunkard pays real money to buy that additional case or that additional bottle. The murderer pays real money unless he’s stolen to pay for his instruments of death. That was also the case with Jonah. He “paid the fare.”

As we see in the rest of verse 3, it says he “went down into it,” meaning the ship, “to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.” And there’s that phrase again, “from the presence of the LORD.” As I mentioned last week, I don’t believe that’s a reference to Jonah delusionally believing that he could actually escape the presence of an omnipresent, omniscient God. Again, Psalm 139, of all else blows this notion out of the water. Instead, what this phrase, “from the presence of the LORD” appears to be referring to is Jonah’s futile attempt to escape his prophetic duties, to seek to have this task pass before him. To let some other prophet eventually pick up his slack. That’s the idea here when it says, “he sought to escape from the presence of the LORD.”

So went down to Joppa. He found a ship. A ship that was going to the very place he was hoping to go, Tarshish. He paid the fare. “He went down into it,” into this ship heading to Tarshish to flee “from the presence of the LORD” it says. And at this point he must have been feeling pretty good about himself. He must have been feeling pretty good about the odds of his plan succeeding. God seemingly had let him get as far as he had gotten. He hadn’t been struck by lightning on the way to Joppa. And he was now safely aboard this ship. So far, so good.

Jonah here had the posture of many who, in their sin and in their rebellion against God, think that because a few different parts of their plan have seemingly worked out, that they are safe from facing the wrath of God. Or that God, even worse, approves of the wickedness that they are engaged in as they think that somehow they’ve “gotten away with it” or escaped His notice. But while it is true that God does not always execute His judgment on every sin immediately, that doesn’t mean that He won’t ultimately bring down His divine hammer of justice. In his commentary on Jonah, Hugh Martin makes this point rather chillingly, but accurately. He writes ‘The Lord can afford to wait. You may trespass against Him, and pass on apparently unpunished, the Lord apparently incognizant. But the path along which you pass has the punishment lining both sides of it and looming dark at some fixed point further on.’” See, no thief plans being caught. The same is true of all who oppose themselves to God as Jonah did here. They expect to get away with it or else they wouldn’t give it a shot. So, they comfort themselves with this totally illogical thought that since God has not punished them so far, He is not going to punish them at all! That was Jonah right here. As he “went down” into the ship he had this wrong view of God’s seeming relative passivity in his situation. He mistook God’s silence, and he mistook the fact that God had not struck him dead and not struck him down as being implicit approval of his behavior.

But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the repeated use of the words “went down,” “went down,” “went down” in this text, like look at Jonah 1:3. “He went down to Joppa.” Or later on as we’re going to get into, he “went down into it,” the ship. Or Jonah 1:5, he goes “below into the hold of the ship.” Or in many weeks from now, Jonah 2:6 in his prayer. “I descended to the roots of the mountains.” All this “went down,” “going down” language is highlighting, it’s doubly emphasizing in the Hebrew language here God’s divine assessment of the wrong direction, “going down” associate with each and every one of Jonah’s movements. Through and through, Jonah was headed in the wrong direction.

As we move into verse 4, the scene shifts as the ship that was found there by Jonah in Joppa is no longer described as being in Joppa. It’s now being described as being on the sea. It’s not recorded here but there was obviously some moment where the captain caused the ship to shove off and this ship is now out to sea headed for Tarshish. Look at what comes next, here in verse 4. It says, “The LORD hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up.” This was no ordinary wind. This was no ordinary storm. No, it is described here as a “great wind” and a “great storm.” This was an extreme weather event and one sent by God Himself. Who literally, as it says here, “hurled” this storm in the very place where this ship was attempting to pass on its way to Tarshish. And the “great wind” was so great that it caused this “great storm on the sea” it says. And this “great storm” was so great “that” it seemed as though “the ship was about to break up.”

So, as this ship departed from the harbor in Joppa, Jonah’s plan seemed at least to that point to have been from his vantage point, somewhat successful. But what he had failed to factor in here was the sovereign persistence of the Lord. Yahweh had at His disposal all the forces of the universe and it was no trouble for Him to bring about wind and a storm to not only destroy this ship, but to destroy Jonah’s plans. Throughout the Old and New Testament there are many references to God’s ability to control and direct winds and storms. To direct oceans, lakes, and rivers. Throughout the Scripture God’s power to control the winds and the waves is highlighted as an aspect of His deity and His omnipotence. Job 26:12 says, “He quieted the sea with His power.” Psalm 89:9 says, “You rule the swelling of the sea; When its waves rise, You still them.” Psalm 135:7 says, “He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; Who makes lightnings for the rain, Who brings forth the wind from His treasuries.” Isaiah 50:2 says “Behold, I dry up the sea with My rebuke.” Nahum 1:4 says, “He rebukes the sea and makes it dry; He dries up all the rivers.” Of course, we remember that scene, Jesus resting in the boat in Mark 4 stilling, controlling the wind and the waves as He slept with His disciples there on the boat.

Here in Jonah the words of verse 4 here leave no doubt that this storm was all the Lord’s doing. Similar to the way that we’re going to see the sailors “threw” cargo into the sea in verse 5 of this chapter and similar to the way that the sailors will later throw Jonah himself into the sea as we see in Jonah 1:15, here, Yahweh is described as throwing, “hurling” wind at the sea in the specific area of this ship. As one commentator notes, "He took careful aim at the chosen target, and with all His strength He ‘hurled’ His chosen weapon,” meaning the storm. In other words, this was no coincidence. This was not Yahweh “hurling” a storm in some general direction where Jonah might run into it. This ship that Jonah was on would not “just happen” to bump into the eye of this storm. Rather, this text is clearly stating that Yahweh’s “hurling” of this storm was intentional. It was toward this particular ship at this specific time as a direct and divine indictment of Jonah’s rebellious ways.

It was a violent storm. A fierce storm. A gale so furious that it can rightly be called “a storm of the LORD” which is referred to in Jeremiah 23. Jeremiah 23:19-20 says “Behold, the storm of the LORD has gone forth in wrath, even a whirling tempest; it will swirl down on the head of the wicked. The anger of the LORD will not turn back until He has performed and carried out the purposes of His heart.”

By sending this storm God was communicating to His disobedient prophet, Jonah that He would no longer be brushed aside or ignored. The wind was whipping, and the sea was raging, and this ship was starting to break apart because this disobedient prophet, who to this point had been allowed to go his own way, unhindered, needed to be brought to his senses. Needed to be brought to a place of repentance. The Lord was no longer content with being a passive spectator of Jonah’s disobedience and rebellion so the Lord hurled a storm upon the sea the way He might hurl a job loss or a deadly illness or a season of grief to halt any one of us here this evening from proceeding any further down a sinful path we’ve been on.

Jonah’s sin of rebellion, as sin always does, had consequences. See Jonah was not the only one on the ship. No, there were other sailors on this ship who we’re introduced in verse 5. Look at Jonah 1:5. It says, “Then the sailors became afraid, and every man cried to his god, and they threw the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.” Now interestingly we’re not introduced to these sailors before that text. There’s no mention of these sailors taking payment from Jonah back in Joppa when he paid his fare. There’s no mention of them welcoming Jonah aboard the ship when he first embarked there in Joppa. No, our first introduction to them is right here in verse 5 when we’re told of their reaction to this mighty storm that Yahweh hurled upon the sea. And as we see here their reaction was one of fear, terror, panic. It says, “the sailors became afraid.” These were sailors. These weren’t amateurs. These were mariners. These were seamen who were surely accustomed to the unpredictable weather patterns there on the Mediterranean Sea. Who surely had been through storms of various sizes and forms in their careers. In fact, we know this because the root word here for “sailor” is actually a Hebrew word for salt. So, when we see that word “sailor” this is actually an allusion to their salt-encrusted clothing and their salty smell, and their salty texture all brought about by the fact that these men had spent many hours on the sea. These men weren’t novices. These men were experienced mariners, veterans of many high winds and rough tides. But this storm made them tremble and their fear here really stands out. This storm truly must have been ferocious for it to strike fear in the heart of sailors likes these. I mean, just like no one wants to hear a panicked pilot in the middle of some rough turbulence up in the air, no one wants to hear a panicked sailor in the midst of a storm on the sea. But that’s exactly what’s being described here. These sailors were terrified because this was no ordinary tempest.

And then look at what their fear produced here in verse 5. It says, they became afraid and then “every man cried to his god.” Now we’re not told exactly what sort of personal religion these men practiced or who their gods were. We suspect, based on external research and evidence, that they were Canaanites, Phoenicians, sort of the same thing. We’re not told what degree of devotion any of them had to their personal “gods.” But the reaction here is fascinating. Verse 5 tells us that “every man cried to his god.” As the old saying goes, “there are no atheists in foxholes.” So that’s what’s pictured here as these men crying out, praying, as they had never prayed before and to their credit, they recognized that this is no ordinary storm. And to their credit they recognized there’s some sort of divine involvement, however they define that term involved here. Which is why “every man,” as it says, “cried out to his god.”

Now I read this text and I always have to be careful taking a book like Jonah and transposing it in our context or vice versa, but I can’t help but compare what we see here. These men when the storm is raging suddenly being interested in praying to their so-called god. I can’t help but compare that to what we experienced in America in churches in the wake of 9/11. After those tragic events happened, 20-something years ago now, what happened? Churches filled up, didn’t they? Churches expanded as people at least temporarily recognized, as the sailors did here, that they needed some sort of divine assistance and guidance for the worry and the anxiety and the state of unsettledness they were feeling. Those churches which filled up post-9/11 largely shrunk down only a few weeks later because people who were starting to fill up those churches with some sort of instantaneous spark of religious zeal, well that zeal wasn’t necessarily rooted in a fear of the Lord. Rather it was rooted, rather, in a fear of the unknown and a fear of dying. That was the case with the sailors here. They weren’t crying out to their gods because they were, in fact, God-fearers. They were crying out to their gods because they were afraid of their circumstances. They were afraid of dying.

Here's another commentator on Jonah from this passage. He says, “We learn, then, from the conduct of these heathens, how deeply rooted in human nature is the conviction of a God. But we learn also the great worthlessness of prayers wrung out under terror. There is inlaid in human nature a central assurance or conviction of a God. In the case of the ungodly it is allowed, for the most part, to lie utterly dormant and concealed. If imminent and appalling danger force out some alarmed manifestation of it in some excited cry to God for mercy or protection, there is really as little evidence of grace or virtue in such a prayer, as when the war-horse, in the instinct of self-preservation, rears in terror as the gleaming sword flashes round his head. The prayer that is acceptable to God is the prayer of faith, of calm confidence and reliance on the word and love and wisdom and power of a gracious and a reconciled Father.” These sailors were not praying in faith. They were praying out of fear like those church attender’s post-9/11 who were attending church not in faith, but out of fear.

As we move on to verse 5, we see that these sailors’ prayers went unanswered because this storm was still raging. So next, they move on from praying to now throwing. Specifically, to throw the items of cargo into the sea. Look at the next part of verse 5. It says, “every man cried to his god and then they threw the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.” Now some have surmised that the sailors threw this cargo into the sea as an intentional sacrifice to the gods of the sea who they apparently worshiped. If that was the motive, we don’t see it in the text. The text suggests directly a very different motive which was simply to lighten the load of the ship. See the cargo on the ship was making the ship full and the ship heavy and as the storm raged and as the ship began to break apart apparently the decision was made that having a lighter load would help the ship to remain intact. And this would have been a very costly decision because this was likely a a cargo ship and the whole purpose of ships like these was to convey goods for a profit from one place to another. Meaning, these mariners were throwing out not only their possessions, they weren’t throwing out their own, you know, duffle bags and sleep gear for the night, they were throwing out their profits. With their lives at risk, they didn’t hesitate to jettison, to toss out, their possessions if only to increase their chance of safety by a little bit. So, they tossed the cargo overboard. And by the way, that was apparently a popular, familiar strategy. In Acts 27 when the apostle Paul and his crew go through that heavy storm, they do the same thing. Acts 27:17, it says “The next day as we were being violently storm-tossed, they began to jettison the cargo; and on the third day they threw the ship’s tackle overboard with their own hands.”

In other words, here back in Jonah, the sailors moved from treating this as a religious problem which led them to cry to their gods to a practical problem which led them to start throwing cargo overboard. But what they failed to realize was that the root of the problem here was not the weight of the cargo on their ship or even the violence of the storm. Instead, the problem that was on this with the ship bound for Tarshish, was lying under its decks, inside a hold in the bottom of the ship. See Jonah’s sin, Jonah’s rebellion was of the most private sort. It was the most private type. He alone knew of his disobedience to God’s commands. He alone knew that he was on the run from Yahweh. God had offered Jonah the blessing of preaching repentance to Ninevites, but Jonah had chosen disobedience so that not only would Nineveh not, at this point, receive that message of repentance and mercy that God intended to give to it through Jonah, but now these unsuspecting sailors on this ship along with Jonah would pay the price, losing their cargo and potentially losing their lives.

Which is a reminder that sin always leaves behind it a wake of victims. We think back to the sin of Achan in the book of Joshua which eventually led to the defeat of Israel at Ai. We think of David’s sin in numbering the people in the census and the tens of thousands of Israelites who would die as a result of that. And because of Jonah’s sin here, because of his outright disobedience to and rebellion against the Lord, these sailors were on the verge of losing their lives at sea. Jonah’s sin, in other words, had consequences. Now, surely this really bothered him, right? Surely this was really shaking him up. Surely somewhere in the lower hull of the ship he was pacing around, concerned about how his sin was affecting other people. That’s how the story goes, right? Wrong.

Look at the next part of verse 5. “But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship, lain down and fallen sound asleep.” What a guy. Above deck these pagan sailors are facing the storm of their lives, fearing for their lives. Crying to these “gods” who aren’t there. Tossing cargo into the sea to prevent the eventual breaking up of this ship. What is Jonah doing? He is conked out. By the way, that’s an exegetical choice I just made. If you go to the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it’s rendered snoring. He was snoring. Jonah’s conked out. He’s the prophet of Israel. He’s serving a God who neither slumbers nor sleeps but here he is slumbering away. The Hebrew term by the way, for this deep sleep that he was in is similar to what is used of Adam back in Genesis 2:21 where it says, “the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.” The word here for Jonah’s deep sleep is also similar to what Abram experienced back in Genesis 15:12 where a “deep sleep fell upon” him. It’s similar to what King Saul’s servants experienced in I Samuel 26:12, when David was pursuing him and David ultimately spared him, It says, “So David took the spear and the jug of water from beside Saul’s head, and they went away, but no one saw or knew it, nor did any awake, for they were all asleep, because a sound sleep from the LORD had fallen on them,” meaning Saul’s entourage. Jonah, in other words, was experiencing an extremely deep sleep, almost a hypnotic sleep. Even through the roaring of the wind and the breaking of the waves and the tossing of the ship he slept like a baby. Completely dead to the world. How ironic that the only one on that ship who had any level of understanding about what was truly happening in this scene, the only one who could actually, because he had, he was a Jew and had a connection to the living God, the only one who could effectively pray and act effectively in this scenario, the only one who could do anything about any of this was completely unconscious. Dead to the world while these pagan sailors struggled in their ignorance upstairs, praying with no effect and acting to no avail.

Now, all sorts of theories have been offered as to how and why Jonah was able to sleep so soundly in such a chaotic moment. Some have said he was simply physically exhausted from the taxing journey down to Joppa. Some have said that he was downcast and depressed stemming from knowing he was directly rebelling against the revealed will of the God and that depression sucked his energy out of him. Some have said that it was his anxiety caused by his unsettled mind. Some have said that it was his state of total relaxation, now that call to Ninevah was over, he’d run away from it. Some have said it was his insensibility of his sin. He was just numb to his sin and that allowed him to fall asleep. Now one commentator notes, "he must have wanted complete seclusion, even the deep, undisturbed sleep of sweet forgetfulness. This would silence the divine voice and give relief!” We don’t actually have an answer on this one just yet as to how he was able to sleep the way he was sleeping. We know he was sleeping, and we know he was snoring. We know he was knocked out and whatever the cause, Jonah was out of commission for the moment, unaware of this danger from this storm. He’s in this deep sleep fully unconscious, totally unaware of all the trouble that he was causing above the deck on this ship.

What a picture that paints for any seasons of rebellion we might find ourselves in. Where, like Jonah, we have certain comforts. Clothing is on our backs and food is in our bellies and money in the bank and a soft pillow like Jonah to sleep on. We think ourselves safe from our neglect of God or our rebellion against God the way that Jonah thought of himself safe below the deck of this ship because we’ll say things like “God is gracious.” And “God forgives” but all the while a storm is fast approaching. Jonah’s experience here reminds us that there are times in which we need to be awakened from our sinful stupor so that we can receive the discipline that is due. Hebrews 12:6 says “The Lord disciplines the one He loves and chastises every son whom He receives” so that we can eventually turn back to God in repentance. That’s what’s pictured here, what Jonah needed.

As we turn to verse 6, we are going to see that Jonah was in, quite literally, for a rude awakening. It says, “So the captain approached him and said, ‘How is it that you are sleeping? Get up, call on your god. Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish’” So Jonah is dozing. He’s sleeping right in the middle of this storm and as he does so the “captain” of this ship approaches him to wake him up. What likely happened here was the captain was above deck and now he’s going below deck to find even more cargo to jettison to throw off the ship to further lighten the load of the ship. But what he found was not a box or a bag, he found human cargo. He found Jonah! And as we can see here the captain was not at all impressed with what Jonah was doing when he found him. You can tell from the tone here he was perturbed. He was annoyed. Which comes out in this abrupt nature of his words. He says, “How is it that you are sleeping”? He is greatly disturbed that Jonah could sleep when this ship, his livelihood was in peril. This was no time to rest!

Then we get a feel for the captain’s own sense of religion and religiosity in the next part of his interaction with Jonah. He says, “Get up, call on your god. Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish.” See, this “captain,” like the sailors above deck, was a pagan. He did not know the true God. His ideas of religion were undoubtedly filled with superstition and since he did not know Jonah or what god Jonah worshiped to him it was possible that Jonah worshiped a god who could do something about this raging storm in case all the other gods everybody else was worshiping failed. So, to this captain what the crew needed to do was to tap into every divine possibility. The thought being they’d eventually hit the bullseye with the right “god” sooner or later and that “god” would eventually still the storm.

We have to appreciate, at least in some sense, the irony that it was a pagan, of all people who’s calling on Jonah who allegedly knew the one true God to pray. And we have to appreciate the irony that we have this pagan ship captain rousing this Israelite prophet to wake up urging him to pray to his God, the very God who had sent Jonah on a mission to preach to pagans like him to repent! Not only that, by saying to Jonah here “Get up” and “call” on your god the captain’s words here would have rung in the ears of Jonah as he gradually shook the cobwebs off and roused himself from his sleep because those two words, those two verbs, “get up” and “call” are the same two verbs and the same two commands God gave Jonah when He said to “go to Nineveh,” back in verse 2 when He called on Jonah to “arise,” “go to Ninevah” and “cry out against it.” Jonah as he is coming out the fog of sleep here must have been thinking, I’m having a nightmare. Because the captain’s words here would have had this haunting echo from the past reminding him of the “word of the LORD” that God had given him which he had ignored and exposing him once again for his guilt and his flight from God. Though the captain didn’t know what he was doing so, that he was doing so, the command he gave Jonah here was actually a rebuke from God against Jonah. It was a deserved rebuke because Jonah here actually presented this remarkable example of irreligion. Not only running from the Lord but sleeping on the job when he’d been given this high calling of serving as a prophet of the Lord.

Now note. We see the captain here asking Jonah, commanding Jonah to call on his God. We don’t actually have a record of whether Jonah did pray to his God at this point. We have the command, “Get up, call on your god.” And then we have this statement which follows, “Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish.” But there’s no indication that Jonah actually prayed. That’s an important omission. I don’t think it’s coincidental because we are told in other places in the book of Jonah when various people prayed. We’re told in Jonah 1:14, which we’ll get to eventually that that these very sailors prayed. Look at Jonah 1:14. It says, “Then they called on the LORD and said we earnestly pray O LORD, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life and do not put innocent blood on us; for you, O LORD,” interesting they are using the covenant name of Yahweh there, “have done as You pleased.” We are told in Jonah 2:1 that Jonah prayed. Specifically, “from the stomach of the fish.” We are told, later, in Jonah 4:3 that Jonah prayed that the LORD would take his life. He says, “Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.” But where we are in the narrative tonight in Jonah 1:6 we’re given no indication that Jonah actually prayed. We’re told that the captain called on him to pray, but we’re not told if he actually did so. And on balance, considering that there are these other indications very specifically stated when people prayed including Jonah and considering where Jonah was in his spiritual decline and at this point in the narrative it’s very unlikely that he prayed. We can’t simply “will” or “wish” that a prayer happened here when one is not recorded.

But while we don’t have a record of Jonah actually praying here, we do have a record of a different type of religious activity taking place in verse 7. Look at verse 7. It says, “Each man said to his mate, ‘Come, let us cast lots so we may learn on whose account this calamity has struck us.’ So, with prayers to their non-existent gods having been offered by these sailors, with cargo having been jettisoned, with this sleeping prophet below deck. A prophet who had been urged to pray by the captain but as I just mentioned, I don’t think he did, the sailors on board now are down to their final religious straw. The only way they can determine what had happened, why this storm had suddenly descended upon them or, in their words, why this “this calamity,” literally, “this evil” “has struck us,” had struck them. The only way they could get to the bottom of it was to cast lots.

Now this scene has actually shifted by the way from where we were in verse 6, where the captain is attempting to rouse Jonah and to get him to pray beneath the deck, to the sailors here, in verse 7, now above the deck and determining as the storm is breaking up their ship that this is the result of divine wrath. Some form of divine wrath that is coming upon them based on the wrongdoing of somebody there on the ship and the casting of lots in this context was designed to find the culprit.

You’ve got to remember; these sailors are pagans. They’re not worshipers of Yahweh. Their pagan background would have led them to attribute whatever was happening in this ship to the action of the gods, lower case “g,” who must have been offended. So powerful and so terrifying was this storm that they rightly concluded that divine vengeance must have been its cause. They even rightly inferred that this ship contained somebody that had angered the deity. Note that by casting lots and going down this path of saying let’s cast lots to see who did this, each of these sailors were deflecting his own complicity. None of them was willing to say I’m guilty. I’m responsible, I’m an unholy sinner before a holy God. No, if God was angry or a god was angry, they believed, He must be angry with someone else, not me. None of them could have thought that their own action could have incurred divine wrath.

What a picture that is of natural man’s attitude toward his own sin where people are perhaps willing to admit that they haven’t always done right and that they sometimes do wrong, but they are not willing to concede that they are in fact sinners. Or people might be willing to admit that they have faults but not willing to admit that their faults, i.e., their sin, deserves the wrath of almighty God.

Back to the casting of lots here in verse 7, this practice of casting lots was common in Israel. It was common in the Ancient Near East at the time. It likely involved, though we’re not certain, the process of putting some color-coded marked stones in a jar or a container and as you drew them out that would indicate your specific answer to whatever question you had or whatever specific decision you sought to make. Sometimes yes, sometimes no, sometimes yeah or nay. We see the practice of casting lots in places like Leviticus 16:8 where it says, “Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats, one lot for the LORD and the other lot for the scapegoat.” We see it in Nehemiah 10:34, “Likewise we cast lots for the supply of wood among the priests, the Levites and the people so that they might bring it to the house of our God.” We even see the casting of lots in the New Testament in Acts chapter 1 for the selection of the twelfth apostle after Judas died. That’s all pre-Pentecost, pre-Holy Spirit descending, pre-Spirit being the guide into truth for New Covenant believers, this casting of lots. :26 — “and they drew lots for them, and the lot fell to Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.” But when Israelites were casting lots back under the Old Testament days it wasn’t necessarily an attempt to pry into the future, to predict the future. That would be divination which would be in violation of Deuteronomy 18. Rather it was a way of trying to bring one’s conduct into conformity with the will of the Lord. In the casting of the lots and the drawing of the lot out of the jar or the container was seen as being secured by doing the will of the Lord. That’s Proverbs 16:33, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.”

Then look at how this last part of the narrative concludes for this evening. Look at the end of verse 7. It says, “So they cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.” So, the lot that they cast, Proverbs 16:33, I just quoted it, was in the hand of Yahweh. And as it was cast it pointed out Jonah as being the man of the hour. He could no longer claim anonymity. He could no longer below in the hold. He could no longer keep silent. He could no longer maintain his innocence.
No, God had expressed His sovereignty over Jonah’s affairs causing the lot to “fall” on this disobedient prophet. And when the sailors cast lots here the lot pointed to guilty Jonah. It all happened according to God’s perfect timing and according to His perfect will.

Lesson from this section of Jonah, God eventually exposes all of the sin and all of the rebellion that happens against Him in this world. That’s the principle from Numbers 32:23. A principal Jonah would have been familiar with where it says, “be sure your sin will find you out.” That warning echoes down through the centuries knocking on the door of countless human consciences in different generations on different continents living under different dispensations.

The experience of Jonah is an example of a person’s sin finding him out. He’d been given this task by the Lord. He had defied the Lord. He had disobeyed the Lord. He had gone his own way. And the account of his flight thus far, from Gath Hepher, his hometown to Joppa to the hold of the ship to having been found out through the casting of lots all highlights in capital letters the spiritual disintegration which characterizes conscious disobedience. Jonah had been a disobedient prophet. He had lost his spiritual moorings. He was adrift. Before the sea started raging, He was already at sea spiritually speaking. And it had caught up to him. His sin had found him out. He was about to be confronted and cast overboard as the Lord continued to chase him down. What cautions, what reminders for each of us this evening from this little book, the book of Jonah that gives it so straight to us and so clearly to us. These cautions about spiritual drift. These cautions about disobedience to God. These cautions about our sin as was the case in Jonah eventually finding us out.

That’s it. It’s an amazing book. I hope what I’m imparting to you even though we’re two lessons into it tonight is this is not a book about a fish. This is not a book, it’s not the whale of a tale. This is a book about a sovereign God chasing down His disobedient servant. Sin finding him out, stubbornness, repentance, God’s love for people even outside the covenant community and using a man like Jonah despite his flaws, despite his warts, despite his disobedience to bring about His perfect objective and aim.

Let’s pray. God thank you for the chance again to be in the book of Jonah. It’s in many ways the narrative is simple, the narrative is clear but beneath the surface are these deep and profound truths about who You are and how You view disobedience and how You view sin and repentance that You allow for Your people. God thank you for teaching us tonight through the book of Jonah, through the negative example of his disobedience, through the negative example of his wayward ways. God, I pray that we would take these lessons, though from a far-off land and from a faraway place and written so many years ago, that we would remember that these truths come from Your hand, from an unchanging God. This same God the Israelites worshiped is the same God we worship. You haven’t changed. You are forever the same. God may we take the timeless eternal truths that we have found in this book and seek to apply them to our lives as we seek to live faithfully for You. We can only do so, God, if we have been made new in Jesus Christ. We can only do so if we put our faith in the Son of God so God I pray that if there’s somebody here tonight who has not put their faith in Christ that what they would not hear tonight is a lesson in morality but rather a lesson in what it means to be made right with You which is to trust in what Jesus Christ has done on the cross two-thousand years ago. To believe that it is only by faith in Him by which a person might be saved and have their sins forgiven. So, thank you for this book. Thank you for this time. Thank you for this day of worship. May we glorify You in all we do this week. In Jesus’ name, amen.