Brothers and sisters in the Lord, please turn in your Bibles to the book of Jonah, chapter one.
Wasn’t that tremendous, hearing those young people testify? Bless the Lord for what He does. I look back on my life, and at that age I didn’t have a clue about the Lord or the things of the Lord. How precious. How precious is the Lord.
And then, who’s that other guy come up stealing all my thunder?
As we come to the study of God’s Word, there is a principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable. Many things are helpful as you study the Bible, and I’m sure all of us have tapped into those helpful things: word studies, commentaries, atlases, books, sermons, and all kinds of help.
But at the end of the day, the bottom line is this: after all the academics, you had better get alone with the Lord and just cry out as a child and say, “Lord, You teach me.”
Only God, Who has given us the revelation, can reveal His Word to our hearts. And I’m not suggesting that we forget scholarship and study. We need that. But if that’s as far as we get, it’s a waste of time. It leads to pride. Knowledge puffs up.
And so we need to see the Lord, and only God can reveal Himself to us. He has promised that if we would come as little children, He would reveal these things to us.
He promised that if we came with our mouths open wide, He would fill us. He promised to rain upon the dry ground and to cause it to spring forth.
I’m going to ask you to join with me, please, as we commit this time to Him. Let’s trust Him corporately for His mercy, that He might dawn Christ upon us. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we thank Thee again that Thou hast not left us on our own as we study this precious Book. But the very life of God—the Spirit of God, Who searches the depths of God and reveals them unto us—is living in our hearts.
We know it is the Spirit’s delight to unveil the Son of God. And so we would ask again, by Thy grace, to give us the knowledge of God in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We thank Thee for every part of the Bible, but in a special way this evening, we thank Thee for Jonah chapter one. We ask Thee to dawn upon us the living Word.
And we ask it in the matchless name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
This morning, I attempted to introduce to you this wonderful book of Jonah. I’ll not give a lot of review, but let me just restate the general impressions of the book as a whole, just to get it before your heart so that we can go in the same direction.
This morning, I suggested three general observations about the book as a whole. First of all, I tried to show you that the theme of the book revolves around the crisis taking place in the heart of the prophet Jonah.
God promised in Amos that He would always address a crisis through a prophet. In this case, the particular crisis is in the prophet’s heart.
There’s no doubt in my mind that God was trying to deal with His own people, Israel. There’s no doubt in my mind that God wanted to deal with Nineveh. But in order to do that, He deals with the crisis in the heart of Jonah.
There’s a good possibility that what was going on at the time of the revelation to Jonah was prophesied by Moses in the book of Deuteronomy. Listen as I quote to you Deuteronomy 32:21:
They have moved Me to jealousy with that which is not God;
They have provoked Me to anger with their vanities:
And I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people;
I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
We know from Kings that Jonah lived at the time of Jeroboam II. That was about one hundred and fifty years after the split—that is, after Israel and Judah split. We know from the Bible record what wicked days those were, and how terrible Jeroboam II was.
In the days of that king, Israel turned in a wholesale way to idols. God addressed that crisis through Hosea the prophet. I won’t get into that now, but Moses prophesied that this would happen.
If Israel ever turned to gods that were not God, then He would turn to a people that are not a people. By that means, He would create a jealousy in the people of God.
There’s no doubt in my mind that God was attempting to minister to His people Israel. They had turned to idolatry, and God was making them jealous by reaching out to Nineveh.
That’s not to say that God was just using Nineveh as a show town. He also had a heart for them, and so God was reaching out to them.
But in order to reach His people, and in order to reach Nineveh—and here we are thousands of years later, and God is ministering to us by the same story—in order for God to reach the world, He had to deal with Jonah.
That’s the idea of the book: God’s personal dealing with the crisis going on in Jonah’s heart.
As I said this morning, I don’t think God could have selected a more non-missionary missionary, or a more anti-missionary missionary, than He selected when He selected Jonah.
God is going to deal with that non-missionary, anti-missionary part of him by transforming it into the missionary heart of God. And that, I think, is what this book is all about. God is going to make a sign out of Jonah.
The second observation we looked at this morning is connected with the first, and that is that this book is full of miracles. We talked about the physical miracles and the great moral miracle.
After the study, in a little conversation, Brother Burckhardt came up to me. He said, “There’s something in your message I disagree with.”
And I sort of live a cloistered life. I’m up in Rhode Island, and I’m locked in a room, and I just live in this little world. I don’t have a world vision. I don’t see what God is doing on the earth.
Our brother was sharing a testimony with me of how, on at least one occasion, more than a million people came to the Lord at one time.
Bobby Cannon was standing by and heard the conversation. He said, “That’s not a contradiction. That’s an update.”
Exactly right. When I said this is the greatest moral miracle, it’s easy to amend my notes: this is one of the greatest moral miracles that the Lord did. I’m glad to hear that He’s saving more than that. I wish He’d save the whole country at one time.
But that’s a great miracle. The great miracle in the book of Jonah, I still believe with all my heart, is not all the physical miracles and the miracle with the fish, as great as it was.
It is not the moral miracle of half a million people turning to the Lord on one occasion. It is the miracle that God did when He changed the heart of Jonah—when He made a sign out of a prophet who was not a sign. That’s the great miracle.
The third observation—and we finished with this this morning—was the great mercy of God. I laid before you the great missionary Psalm 67.
God blesses us. God has mercy on us. God makes His face shine upon us, that His salvation might be known in all the earth.
God blesses Jonah in order to bless the world.
Before we move into our new material tonight in chapter one, let me suggest a little outline for the book. I’ll give you a little more than I gave you this morning on that outline.
The entire book, as I understand it, is the story of how a merciful God takes a man like Jonah, with a heart like his, and transforms that heart into the missionary heart of God—which we are expressing under the figure of a sign. He turns us into a sign.
The book shows us how He does that in each chapter. I don’t know what to call it. When you’re trying to share truth simply and in logical connection, you look for these words, and “characteristics” gets old after a while. There are four characteristics, four ingredients, four things, four parts—put down whatever you want.
But if you’re going to have a sign, if you’re going to be a sign, you need that characteristic which is in chapters one, two, three, and four. Let me lay them out for you now in principle, and we’ll develop them as we go.
The great change in chapter one is this: God brought Jonah to the place of full surrender.
In chapter two, God brought Jonah to the place where he apprehended—he laid hold of—the pure grace of God. Salvation is of the Lord.
In chapter three, Jonah identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection.
In chapter four, God raised up Jonah to the place where he would rest in the satisfaction of God’s heart.
Those are the four chapters. If you’re going to be a sign, there has to be total surrender. There has to be the understanding of the pure grace of God. There has to be identification with the Lord Jesus in His death, burial, and resurrection. And there has to be that miracle that raises us up to sit with Him and rest in the satisfaction of the heart of God.
In a nutshell, that is what we’re going to be looking at. Our Lord Jesus said to the sign-seekers of His day, the wicked generation, the adulterous generation, that no other sign would be given than the sign of Jonah. That’s the only sign.
Someone says, “Well, how does that tie into Mark chapter 16 and other passages that say, ‘Signs will follow’?” It has an s on it. It is plural: signs will follow.
Here is the difference: signs confirm God’s message to the believing listener. To the unbelieving, there is only one sign.
From that day and forever, the only sign God will ever give is the sign of Jonah. So we’re going to look at that wonderful sign of Jonah.
Turn in your Bibles, please, to chapter one of Jonah. I know you’re familiar with this, and we need to trust God together to take us over that hump.
You can get so familiar: “Yeah, I know. I’ve heard that before,” and so on. The truth is wonderful because it is true. It does not have to be new; it is just true. So let’s ask God to make it alive again and to thrill our hearts.
Chapter one really breaks itself up into three wonderful sections. I’m not going to give you verse divisions because they overlap, but here is the story of chapter one.
The first part of chapter one is a man with a non-missionary, anti-missionary heart—Jonah—fleeing from the presence of the Lord. That is how the chapter begins.
Then the chapter continues with a revelation of God and His pursuing heart. The chapter begins with Jonah running; the chapter continues with God running. God is running after His running prophet. God is chasing him down.
God is catching him and tackling him and doing many things in his life. Then the chapter ends with God apprehending Jonah, finally catching him and working that first change in his life.
Let us look at those divisions. Follow along as we read the first three verses.
Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,
Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it;
For their wickedness is come up before Me.But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord,
And went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish:
So he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it,
To go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
Notice in verse three, God tells us Jonah rose up to flee from the presence of the Lord. Then at the end of verse three: “from the presence of the Lord.” If you drop down to verse ten, the men knew he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he told them.
Jonah was fleeing from the presence of the Lord.
I emphasize that because a surface reading—and for years, this is where I was when I read it—would have you think that Jonah is fleeing from the commission of the Lord, or that Jonah is fleeing from the will of the Lord.
But the Bible does not say he is fleeing from the will of God. It says he is fleeing from the presence of the Lord. It does not say he is fleeing from the commission of God. He is fleeing from the presence of the Lord.
When a person flees from God’s Word—some specific commission or direction that God has given—he is really fleeing from the Lord Himself, from the presence of the Lord.
It is important to stress this because for years I was one of those Christians who got confused with the presence of the Lord and the will of the Lord.
For years, I did not run after the presence of the Lord; I ran after the will of the Lord. I was in bondage to the will of the Lord. I sought so much to find the will of the Lord, and I never even dreamed about seeking the Lord Whose will it was.
Jonah, I want you to see, was fleeing from the presence of the Lord. The presence of the Lord is the place of revelation. It is the place of fellowship with God, and it is the place of dependence upon the Lord.
At this point in the story, we are right at the beginning of God making a sign. At this point in the story, Jonah is full of Jonah.
You’re going to see that as we go through chapter one. He is independent. Jonah wants to do Jonah’s thing. He is blocking his ears to the Word of the Lord and closing the door of his heart.
That little chorus we were singing—I just love all those yeses in that chorus: “Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Yes, yes, yes, Lord.”
Jonah was not saying, “Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Yes, yes, yes.” He was saying, “No, Lord. No, Lord. No, no, no.” God said, “Go to Nineveh.” “No, Lord. No, Lord. No, no, no.”
By this commission God gave him, God was reaching down. Don’t forget the crisis. There is a crisis in his heart, and God is reaching down to that.
Jonah knew that commission was designed for this: that commission would bring to the surface the independence that was in Jonah’s heart.
God could have left him alone, because he was having a successful ministry up there in the north. His contemporary Hosea was not doing so well. He was also preaching at the same time, and he was having a hard time.
But Jonah—the Bible tells us in Kings—was given a prophecy: “You’re going to get that land that Syria took.” They got it back, and he was having a great time as a prophet.
God said, “I see a problem, Jonah,” and God began to reach down. Nineveh was the occasion. Nineveh is not the point. It is bigger than Nineveh.
God’s will in this book for Jonah is not merely going to Nineveh. God’s will in this book for Jonah is that he become a sign. That is God’s will for Jonah, and that is what God was working in his heart.
Nineveh is actually an incidental detail—one little cog in a great big plan.
One evidence that Nineveh was not the point—I think I mentioned it this morning, but I will underscore it now—is this: use your sanctified imagination and pretend that Jonah obeyed God the first time he was called.
God said, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it.” What if he said, “Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Yes, yes, yes,” and he went?
He was not a sign yet. Jesus said they repented because of the sign. He was not a sign yet. God knew he would not go. That is why He gave him that command.
He was set up.
God knew he would not go, and if he went, it would have been a colossal failure. They would not have repented under his preaching. God knew that.
The command to go to Nineveh was simply the occasion God took to deal with something far deeper than, “Are you going to obey what I said?” It is deeper than that.
There is something down inside that has to do with spirit, that has to do with being and who I am. God must reach down and change that.
So, to do that, He had to reach down and stir up the old independence in Jonah’s heart. Nineveh was a perfect way to do that.
The second evidence that Nineveh was not the point is the fact that there is life after Nineveh. Nineveh closes in chapter three, but the story of Jonah goes on.
The point is not Nineveh at all. The point has to do with God reaching down and changing Jonah.
I hope that God works in our hearts so that we do not think about God’s will in some surface way. It is bigger than geography: “God wants me to go here, go there, live here, and have this particular job.”
It is deeper than all of that. God wants you to live in His presence, in dependence upon Him, so that He can turn you into a sign through which He can work His everlasting purposes in your life and mine.
When I first started reading this book and studying this book, I thought one of the big issues was, “God wants Jonah in Nineveh, and He is going to get him there one way or the other.”
God does not want Jonah in Nineveh. The plan is not Jonah going in.
God wanted to go to Nineveh, and He wanted to go in Jonah. That is not the same thing.
It is not that God wanted Jonah to go to Nineveh. God wanted to go to Nineveh. There is only one missionary. His name is Jesus. He is the only missionary. We may be missionary channels, but we are not missionaries.
This independent person did not allow God to go to Nineveh in him. That is the issue, and God has to deal with that issue.
God is going to work in your life and mine to conform us to Christ and to make us into a sign.
I am sure that if you studied this chapter, as many of us have, you hit the commentaries and the books: “What does this word mean? What does Tarshish mean? Where in the world is Tarshish?” Did you check the maps for that? I hope you did better than I did.
There are as many places Tarshish might be as there are commentators. It is on the coast of Spain. It is the Rock of Gibraltar. It is in England. It is the hometown of Paul. I do not know where Tarshish is.
Do not spend a lot of time trying to figure out where Tarshish is. What you need to know is this: it is in the opposite direction from the presence of the Lord. That is where Tarshish is.
Do not spend a lot of time asking why Jonah fled. You can have as many answers as there are commentators.
He fled because he was a good Jew. He fled because he hated Nineveh for their violence. He fled because he was trying to protect Israel. He knew that one day they would rise up and come against his people.
He fled because he was afraid to go all by himself and stand before such a wicked nation, with all their testimony of violence. What would they do to him if he went there?
He fled because he was afraid God was going to make him look bad. You know, the sign of a prophet is that his word comes to pass. So he is going to get up there saying, “Forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” and then it does not happen.
It would make him look bad. It would make God look bad, because God changes, and so on. There are all kinds of reasons people give.
Nothing is gained by trying to figure out why he fled, whether it was godly zeal or just carnal rebellion. I will tell you why he fled: he fled because he was Jonah.
He fled because he was independent. Somehow, if we are going to be made a sign, Jonah has to die. I am talking about self. Self has to die.
It does not matter what occasion God uses to bring up that independence. This book begins with a man saying, “No.”
The command is all incidental. It is a relationship. It is a dependent relationship, and that dependence is broken. He said, “I will do my own thing.” The book begins with him running with his independent heart.
I have found through the years that there are many roads to Tarshish. I do not know where it is, but there is a business route to get there.
I do not know where it is, but there is a pleasure route to get there. I do not know where it is, but there is an educational route to get there.
I do not know where it is, but there is a domestic route to get there. I do not know where Tarshish is, but there is a religious route to get there.
There are all kinds of ways to show our independence. The point is that Jonah needs to be dealt with because there is a relationship problem.
Notice, please, in verse three of chapter one: Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship going to Tarshish, and paid the fare.
He went down to Joppa and found the ship. If you want to run from the presence of the Lord, if I want to run from the presence of the Lord, if you want to act independently of God, if I want to act independently of God, you will always find the ship sailing in that direction.
He found the ship going there. In other words, if you want to run from the Lord, if you want to sin, there will be plenty of occasions and provisions for you to carry that out.
There will always be a sin. There will always be the means and the help to do that. There will always be the faculty to sin.
Only a miracle of God can keep the murder weapon out of reach of the man who wants to commit murder. Only a miracle of God can do that.
If you want to sin, it is at your right hand. If I want to sin, it is right at my right hand. You will have the money. You will have the time. You will have the occasion. With the push of a button, you can do it—if you want to do it.
There is always a boat going there. It is amazing how circumstances will come together for the one who wants to flee from the presence of the Lord.
They will not only find the boat, but everything else will work together. In this connection, let me just warn you: it is pretty dangerous, I think, as many Christians do, to judge the will of God by favorable circumstances.
Be careful about that. Thousands, I think, are led astray because everything seems to work out that way, and so they say, “That is the will of God.”
“The open door. God opened the door. Things fell into place. Everything worked out. I know it is God’s will. I was accepted. I know it is God’s will. I was promoted. I was recruited.”
Every door that opens does not have God’s fingerprints on it. You ought to be real careful about that.
Everything was laid out perfectly for Jonah. He could have raised that argument: “This must be God’s will. There is a boat, and it has not left yet. I have just enough money, and they have another cabin. It is calling to Tarshish. It is perfect. It is God’s will.”
Except we know the reality: it was not God’s will. The ready way is not always the right way. In that case, the circumstances lied.
Of course, the other side is true too. If you really want to honor the Lord, everything will be at your right hand. That will also be provided for you.
Before we look at the second part of this chapter, let me make a devotional application to verse three. Jonah paid the fare. Guess where I am going with that.
I know literally what it meant: this Mediterranean cruise was not free, and he had to buy a ticket. He paid the fare.
But I will tell you what: beyond that, he paid the fare all right. You are familiar with Proverbs 13:15: “The way of the transgressor”—finish it—“is hard.”
It is very hard. Do not try to make it easy for any transgressor, or you will find yourself working at cross-purposes with the Lord.
Any Christian who is independent will find his way very, very hard. He will pay the fare.
It is interesting to see how many times the word down is used in these first two chapters.
He went down to Joppa, down to the ship, down to the hold of the ship. He lay down to go to sleep. They threw him down into the sea. He went down into the deep, down into the fish, down into Sheol, down to the roots of the mountains.
Down, down, down, down, down.
The first time the word up is mentioned in these first two chapters, it says the fish vomited him up. Finally, there is an up.
Part of the fare we pay for running from the Lord is down, down, down, down. If you have run from the presence of the Lord, you will verify this testimony.
The bottom is different for each of us. It is amazing sometimes where the bottom is. You think you are at the bottom, and then you go down some more.
When we get into chapter two, we are going to see something tremendous: Jonah’s problem was so deep, he had to keep going down, down, before God could get all the way to the bottom.
The more we advance away from the presence of the Lord, the deeper down we go.
May I just say in passing that the Lord will not interfere with your downward path. He will chase you. He is going to get you.
Jesus said in Luke 14:28 that to follow the Lord, you need to count the cost. That is half the truth. The other half is that, to not follow the Lord, you also have to count the cost. Jonah certainly did pay a fare.
Well, I would not trade anything for the second part. Let us look at it: the mercy of the Lord in chasing Jonah down.
The book that begins with Jonah showing his independence and running from the presence of the Lord continues by showing that God is running after him. God has a pursuing heart. He chases him down.
The Lord will let you have your own way, but only for a time. Only for a time. He will let me have my own way, but only for a time.
Some of you, I know, could come up here and give testimonies of how the Lord chased you down.
I think way down deep in Jonah’s heart, he knew he was not going to get away with this. I think that is why, in chapter four, he says, “I did it to forestall.”
Notice, he did not say, “To stop it.” He knew he could not stop God, but he did it to stall. He did it to put it off.
Many times when we run from the Lord, we are just putting it off: “Not now. Not today. I am too young. Tomorrow I will deal with that. Next week, next year, in the future, down the road—I will deal with it someday.”
But God keeps coming.
In order to make this intensely practical, let me give it to you in principle, illustrated by how God pursued Jonah—the ways of God.
How does God pursue the independent Christian whom He wants to make into a sign?
It would have been a wonderful thing to read that God, in His mercy, chased down to restore again some blundering Christian. We all blunder. We all blow it. We all make mistakes.
Jonah is not a blundering Christian. He is a rebellious Christian.
It would be wonderful if God just chased those who are blundering. But God chases those who are rebelling. He is not drifting from God’s presence; he is running from God’s presence.
It is one thing to believe that God will have mercy on His ignorant children. But can this be true? Will God actually run after, pursue, chase down a true child of God who is saying, “No, I do not want it,” and going the other way?
Bless God, yes. Believe that with all your heart. The book of Jonah illustrates the wonderful ways of God, and how God will chase down the most rebellious child.
Jonah chapter one illustrates three principles concerning the ways of God. What does God use to chase us down?
Principle number one: when God is chasing down His disobedient child, He will use whatever it takes.
In this wonderful chapter, He used almost every part of creation to bring him back. In verse four, the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea.
Jonah might not be obeying God, but the storm is. The storm is obeying the Lord. It does not say a storm arose; it says God hurled the storm on the sea.
In chapter 4:8, He appoints a scorching east wind and the sun. He not only uses the weather, but He uses the animal creation, and He appoints a great fish.
Not only that, but He uses the vegetable creation, and He appoints a plant. He also uses the insect world. He appoints a worm—or perhaps a family of worms; it might be a family, the word that is used there.
He is going to bring Jonah back, and He is going to use whatever it takes.
I will never forget when I went to Moody Bible Institute. Down the hall there was a young man, a student and friend of mine. I almost had to close my eyes to look at his face—it was so ugly.
He was not ugly because he was born ugly. He was ugly because he was mauled by a bear. He had all those scars on his face.
I got to know this man, and I got close to this man. He said, “Hear my testimony.” Oh, he praised God for that bear.
What will God use? Whatever it takes.
You have heard testimonies of how God has used fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, accidents, disease, financial loss, adverse circumstances, the violence of wicked men, and the strong arm of the law—whatever it takes.
That is what God is going to use to bring back His rebellious child.
In this connection, I love Deuteronomy 33:26 because it is so graphic. I love these pictures.
There is none like unto God, O Jeshurun,
Who rideth upon the heavens for thy help,
And in His excellency on the skies.
God saddles the universe and comes galloping into your life. He is going to get you. He is going to come after you.
There is no doubt about it. God uses the weather, the plants, the worms, the fish, and people to recall His child.
The great illustration in chapter one is this storm. It is an amazing storm. Verse four says, “The Lord hurled a storm.”
I think it is true that every act of independence creates its own tempest. But on top of that, God hurls a storm in order to bring His child back.
This is a terrible storm. These are experienced Phoenician sailors. We know they are Phoenicians because of the word used to describe the captain of the boat. He was Phoenician, and so on.
But these mariners were afraid, and the ship was about to break up.
Probably some of you do not believe in going to movies. Those of you who do, did you see The Perfect Storm? The waves in that picture—my son bought the picture, and he has it on his wall—were tremendous.
I tell you, God knows how to throw a perfect storm at His child, and He did here.
Did you notice in chapter one, verse four? The storm started off stormy. It is not too deep, but it is a tremendous thing. The storm started off stormy. It began with violence, rocking things, shaking things.
He will rock your boat, and He will rock my boat.
Then look at verse eleven: it became increasingly stormy. Then look at verse thirteen: even stormier.
What is worse than an increasingly stormy sea? An even stormier sea.
I think all of us can identify, at one time or another, that the Lord hurled a storm into our lives. It might have been a health storm, a financial storm, a social storm, a mental storm, depression, anxieties of some kind, fears, hurt, storms, confusion.
Jonah runs; God runs back. Behind every wind that blows in the life of an independent Christian, God hurled it. God has done it. It is the Lord Who has done it.
What else does He use to hunt us down? He will not only use whatever it takes, but notice in this chapter that God used Jonah’s relationship with the people who were in the boat.
He will use our relationships, especially with those who have less light than we do. How God uses that.
When the Lord is pursuing us, He convicts us by the grief that we bring into the lives of other people.
I want you to think of David. When he sinned by numbering the people, he cried out, “Why will You not just punish me and mine? What did these sheep do? They are not responsible.”
For God, that is why He uses this.
This storm, with all its violence, not only affected Jonah, but it affected all those around Jonah. Jonah was the cause of the storm, and he was causing a lot of problems for a lot of people.
In verse four, it says the ship was about to break into pieces. That was not his property, but it was his fault.
In verse five, they started to throw their wares into the sea. That was not his property. I do not know what that cargo was; the Bible does not tell us. But they began to dump their cargo overboard, and it was Jonah’s fault.
There is no question that God was dealing with the mariners too. I mean, they had their idols. They were idolaters. But that does not take Jonah off the hook. It still was his problem, and it was his fault.
He brought grief. He brought pain. He brought a storm into the lives of others.
God does not record everything. He just tells us about that one ship. I am sure there were other ships at sea that were affected by that storm. Who knows how many people were hurt by that?
Part of God’s pursuit of the independent Christian is convicting him of the pain that he brings into the lives of other people.
Remember what a mighty factor that was in restoring the brothers of Joseph: how they remembered how they had hurt their father.
There might be somebody here tonight running from the presence of the Lord. You have hurt a lot of people. Have you hurt your husband, your wife, your parents, or your kids? You are running from the Lord, and you have brought a storm into other people’s lives.
Or maybe you are on the other end of that. Maybe somebody is hurting you because they are running from the Lord. You need to trust the Lord in that.
Take that as part of the sufferings of the Lord, because God is chasing them down. All the pain that comes into your life is part of God’s weapon to bring them back and bring them to the Lord.
The mariners undoubtedly were being dealt with too. I think they learned the value of things. Isn’t it interesting? They were ready to die, and all of a sudden, “Throw your cargo overboard.”
You learn what is of value when you are facing that. These men learned what was of value.
The Lord not only lets us feel the pain of hurting somebody else. I do not know whether I will get into the testimony, but God brought me back one time by shaming me through someone whom I felt had a lot less light than I had.
That is an embarrassing thing, when God uses someone with less light than you have.
These mariners were heathen. They were not Ninevites, but they were Gentiles. They were not Jews. Jonah was the Jew. He was the proud Jew, and in his mind, he was the spiritual man.
When you read the story, did you notice? It looks like they are the believers. They are the ones praying. He is sleeping.
They are doing all the praying, and they are calling on God. Notice chapter one, verses eleven and twelve. When they found out it was his fault, they said:
What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us?
For the sea grew more and more tempestuous.And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea;
So shall the sea be calm unto you:
For I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.
You would expect them to say, “Why, you scoundrel! You ran from the true and living God, the One Who made the earth and the sea. You are the cause of it. We almost lost our ship. We lost all our cargo. You put our lives in danger. I cannot believe you did this to us. We are going to throw you overboard.”
But look what happened in verse thirteen:
Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land;
But they could not:
For the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them.
I wonder what went through Jonah’s mind. Do not forget the big occasion of all this. Jonah is non-missionary, anti-missionary. He does not want God to have mercy on the heathen.
Now the heathen are showing mercy to him. Oh, God turns things around. All of that is part of God pursuing him.
I think it is amazing to read verse five. Jonah was sound asleep.
Unlike the Lord Jesus sleeping in the hold of a ship on a stormy sea in the will of God, Jonah was not in the will of God. He was fleeing from the will of God.
The Hebrew word for sleep there is the word snore. He was snoring. He was dead asleep.
It is one thing for someone to come to a sluggish Christian—a dear family member—and say, “Hey, come on now. Wake up.”
It is one thing for some brother in Christ to put his arm around you and say, “Come on, man. You have been running from the Lord.” Or for some sister in Christ to pray and share a verse with you.
It is one thing for God to use some book, some radio program, some telecast, some tape, or something like that—some elder who is in the Spirit and in the Word of God.
But it was, in chapter one, verse six, the ship’s captain who rebuked the prophet: “Wake up.”
I think the most embarrassing verse in this chapter is verse ten, when the heathen come to him and say, “How could you do this?”
I stood in the middle of a storm that was my fault, and I had to hear the unsaved say to me, “How could you do this?”
You talk about the Lord chasing you down. Like I said, it is one thing for a Christian to do it, but when the heathen have to wake you up, when the heathen have to come along and say, “How could you, a Christian, do this?”—it is all part of God’s recovery.
God uses everything. God used the storm. God used the mariners. God used the pain Jonah brought into their lives. God used the fact that they had less light, and yet they were shaming him.
I think it comes to a climax when God used Jonah to bring Jonah back.
It is a great missionary book, probably the most missionary book in the Old Testament. But missions does not begin with Nineveh in this book.
Jonah was fleeing from the presence of the Lord with an anti-missionary heart. He did not want to be God’s instrument. Yet, right in the middle of his rebellion, he gives his testimony.
In chapter one, verse nine, he confesses that he is a fugitive from the Lord and that he is a servant of the true God Who created the sea and the dry land.
Then they fear the Lord. They turn to the Lord. They begin to believe in the Lord. They pray to the Lord. They vow to the Lord. They offer sacrifices to the Lord.
I think God was saying, “Jonah, this whole issue of missions—I want you to get it straight. I do not need you.”
“I can use you in fellowship. I can use you out of fellowship. I do not need you. I want you to have a part in My plan, but I do not need to use you.”
Then, brothers and sisters, finally it works. God chases him down, using every means: using the storm, using people, using what they said, even using Jonah himself and, in mercy, turning it around and blessing him even when he is in rebellion.
All of that pursuit paid off.
One wonders when he reads this record: when did Jonah repent?
When did he repent? Did he return when the captain rebuked him? Did he repent when the lot found him out? Did he repent when he finally confessed his guilt?
Did he repent when he went sailing through the air off the ship? When he hit the water? When he started going down? When he got gobbled up by the great sea monster?
Was that when he repented? The first day in the fish’s belly? The second day in the fish’s belly? The third day in the fish’s belly? When did he begin?
I have an idea that his repentance was not a one-time thing. I have an idea that it was a gradual turning.
Part of that repentance, I am convinced, took place on the boat. Verses eleven and twelve—especially verse twelve.
And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea;
So shall the sea be calm unto you:
For I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.
People, understand what God is doing. Jonah has a non-missionary heart, an anti-missionary heart. He does not want God to have mercy on the heathen.
Now, for the first time, he is willing to die for the heathen.
“It is my fault. I caused the storm. I will do it for you.”
At this point, he volunteers to be a living sacrifice. He could have chosen to run from the storm. He could have chosen to try to save his life.
Now, this is a step in Christian circles that we are so familiar with. Let us have a big invitation, call everybody forward, and say, “Give your life for missions.”
I do not know if you have been through it. I have been through it many times. This is the idea of the dedication service: throw your life away. Throw yourself overboard. Give yourself to the heathen.
Some of you attend the Richmond Conference. I had the privilege of attending this year. Stephen Kaung gave his testimony of how he, as a young man, gave himself as a missionary to go to Mongolia.
Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he said, “Heroic. Heroic. Total surrender. I will go to Mongolia. Heroic.”
Can that be total surrender and still be heroic?
Even after this great change in Jonah’s life: “All right, all right. You have chased me now. You have used everything. You have used the storm. All right. I have hurt people. I have caused the storm. All right, I surrender. I will give my life. Throw me overboard. I will give my life for them.”
That was still Jonah. That was normal. That was vain. That was heroic.
But he gave his life for the heathen. That was a big change in his life. Do not just read by that.
The heathen do not need his life. They need God’s life.
At this point in his experience, he does not have a clue that he is going to rise again. He thinks it is over.
“I have arrived. I surrendered. I have given all. Do not ask me any more. I have given myself to missions. I have given myself to the world. I have thrown myself overboard. I have thrown it away. No more life for me.”
Until I am willing to throw my life away for the heathen, He cannot work step two.
Is this a contradiction? Surrender—surrendering everything, throwing your life overboard for the sake of others—is worthless. But it is necessary.
Both of those are true. They do not need your life; they need His life. But you had better come to the place where you have given everything and thrown yourself overboard. That is the place God brought him to.
Jonah is in for a great surprise. All he knows at this point—and I have been through it, and I know others have—is, “All right, Lord, take it. Take it.”
When my wife and I got married, I was so big on this because I had not faced missions, and God dealt with me about facing missions.
I almost got kicked out of Moody Bible Institute because I would not go to the missionary conference. I knew God would call me, and I did not want to get called.
I did not take missions seriously. I did not even know the people in Africa. I did not hate them. I just did not want to learn their language. I was so afraid God was going to call me.
But after God dealt with us, and I gave my life to missions, when we got married, I insisted that Lillian always have a suitcase filled with clothes.
We had a sign on it: “Any place, any time. Whatever You want, Lord, call us.” We kept a suitcase packed at all times so we could go at a moment’s notice.
Then we ran out of clothes.
So you see, at this point all Jonah knows is, “I have surrendered. I have thrown my life away. I have given it to missions.”
He does not have a clue that he is going to rise again.
We close with this. Verse fifteen:
So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea:
And the sea ceased from its raging.
Well, he comes to the place: “All right, I will surrender.” They pick him up, they throw him through the air—splash—he hits the water. A mighty miracle of God: instant calm. The storm is over.
The sea is calm, but Jonah is alive.
This is the kind of thing an artist would love to paint: Phoenician mariners on the ship, on a glassy sea, worshiping the true God of heaven. Not a ripple.
But all they could see with these eyes was Jonah go down for the third time. Probably they did not see the fish; there is no record of that.
All they could see was the surface: a man surrendered his life for us.
But underneath the surface, a deeper work was going on—something these men could not see.
God was preparing a strange salvation for this man.
As the mariners thought it was over—“He is dead. He is gone. He has given his life for us”—and Jonah thought it was over—“I have surrendered. There is nothing else. What are Christians supposed to do after they surrender?”—God says, “You must now learn the next step.”
God begins to do a work under the surface.
Tomorrow, Lord willing, we will go down under the surface and look at the second thing that God does.
The first part of being the sign is throwing your life overboard: “I surrender all for the sake of all.” How God brings you to that point, I am sure, is different in different ways, but you have to come to that point.
If you do not come to that point, you cannot come to point two. You cannot reverse it. You cannot start with chapter two. You have to start with chapter one.
Even though it is worthless, it is necessary. You have to come to the place where, “I have given it all, given it all to the Lord. I have thrown my life away.”
Then God begins a deeper work. In the next chapter, He raises—oh, it is marvelous.
Father, thank You so much for what You have done in Jonah, and what You promise to do in us.
Bring us to the place of full surrender. Bring us to the great place where we understand pure grace, where we can identify with Jesus in His death, burial, and resurrection, where we can rise and rest in the satisfaction of Your heart.
Will You work these things in us, we pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.