Overboard and Overwhelmed by Grace

Good morning. I am Alex. I serve as a deacon currently, and my wife and I have been attending gospel church for almost three years now. This morning's scripture reading comes from Jonah 1: 1-17. Please turn with me in your Bibles as we hear God's word. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son 'Emma' of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. ' But Jonah rose to flee to Tarsish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Jopah and found a ship going to Tarsish, so he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarsish, away from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord hurled a wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his God, and they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had leaned and was fast asleep.

So the captain came and said to him, What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call to your God. Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not perish. And they said to one another, 'Come, let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us. ' So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. They said to him, 'Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And what people are you? And 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. And then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, What is this that you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. Then And then they said to him, 'What shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us? ' For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. And he said to them, 'Pick me up and hurl me into the sea.

Then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you. Nevertheless, the men rode hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore, they called out to the Lord, 'Oh Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood for you. 'Oh Lord, have done as it pleased you. ' So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. This is the word of the Lord.

What happens when we run from what we know we're meant to do? This is our big question for this morning. What happens when we run from what we know we're meant to do? Maybe it was forgiving someone. Maybe it was admitting that you were wrong. Maybe it was telling the truth when it would be easier to lie. Maybe it was answering a call from God that scared you. This issue is so pervasive in our human experience that it's been written about in nearly every culture throughout all time in history. One of the most famous examples of this is the play Hamlet. You're probably thinking, Man, I wish I would have read that in high school, too. Yeah, they're here with you. But the reason that we are supposed to read that is that this touches on some human experience that we all have See, in the play, Hamlet's father is murdered, and Hamlet knows who did it. He knows what he needs to do, but he spends most of the play putting it off. He at one point says this, O cursed spite, that I ever was born to set it right. And that, in modern English, means why me?

Why this? Why now? We've all been there at the crossroads between, O obedience and comfort between trust and fear. We've all been there like Jonah, standing on the dock, ticket in hand, feeling the tug of the Holy spirit, begging us not to board the boat. And yet, time and time again, we find ourselves aboard. Like Hamlet, who knew what he needed to do but couldn't bring himself to it, Jonah knew exactly what God wanted and ran the other way. And that's the story we see in Jonah Chapter 1. So stay with me. Keep your Bibles open as we look at these three points in Jonah. We'll see that God calls, God corrects, and God appoints. In this chapter, we see a God who saves his disobedient prophet as he flees God's word. So let's look at that first point. God calls verses one through three. Last week, we said that asking good questions of the text is important, and there are some important questions that we need to ask this week as well in this chapter. First would be, who is Jonah? Jonah is our main character. In this story, he fulfills an important role.

It's important to understand what he does. He is a prophet, and a prophet in the Old Testament fulfills a certain position in redemptive history. They They speak to people on behalf of God. They are the mouthpiece for God's word. And that's what Jonah is called to do. He is called to speak a prophetic word to Nineveh. And that begs the question, where is Nineveh? Where is Tarsish? Where is Japa? It's important for us to understand these things. It's more than just geography, but it shows the heart of Jonah. Nineveh is in modern day Turkey. Tarshish is in modern day Spain. And there's 2,500 miles that separate the two. Jonah, in running away, runs to the farthest point West in known existence at the time. This is the end of the known world. This is how far Jonah looks to run away. He's not running away to the city, the next door neighbor city. He is going as far away from God as he can. So why was Jonah running? Jonah likely saw Nineveh not just as a sinful city, but as a threat to his people's survival, to Israel's survival. Preaching repentance to the enemy felt like helping the oppressor.

And remember, during this time in Israel's history, there's rampant idolatry. Oppression of the poor, people taking advantage of the least of these, and general disobedience to Yahweh. Nineveh would become the capital of Assyria. And later, just after Jonah would invade Israel and siege warfare against the Northern Kingdom. Another question that we need to ask is this. Let's go back. Why would the author say, Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord? ' This is an important question that we can probably ask of almost any text that we read. Why does the author say this in this way? Well, let's look at verse three. Why does he say, 'The presence of the Lord? ' Says this, But Jonah rose to flee to Tarsish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarsish. So he paid the affair and went down into it to go with them to Tarsish, away away from the presence of the Lord. It doesn't just say that Jonah fled what God wanted or even fled God. It says that Jonah fled the presence of the Lord. We know that we cannot get away from God's omnipresence.

We can't run away from that. But we can resist intimacy with God. That's what Jonah is doing here. The reason that this word is used is because Jonah doesn't just dislike what God's asking him to do. Jonah doesn't want anything to do with God. Jonah hates God's heart. The main idea of this book that we talked about last week is Do you pursue God's Heart? Jonah isn't struggling whether or not God is real. He doesn't have doubts about his faith. He isn't questioning who he believes in. He hates who he knows. Jonah doesn't have a location problem. Jonah has a Lordship problem. And part of this problem is perspective. Jonah believes that he understands reality better than God does. So Jonah flees from God, from the presence of God. He gets in a boat and sails to the end of the known world. God called Jonah to Nineveh, a place that Jonah was saying, God, anywhere but there. Where is that for us? Where in your heart today might God be calling you to that you would say, God, anywhere but there? Maybe is it to a new job or to be honest with someone about something that might offend them, but it's important for them to hear.

Maybe to confess a sin struggle you have or to serve people who annoy you or to be kind to people that you feel like you don't need to be kind to. Where would you say, Anywhere but there, God? Rather than running to God, Jonah runs away. Rather than trusting God. Jonah flees. Yet God isn't done with Jonah, and that's what we'll see in this next section, is a God who corrects. Verses 14 through 16. God's correction isn't not an act of anger, but an act of love. So let's see what happens in this section. God creates a storm so strong, it's looking to sink the ship. So the sailors or mariners start throwing cargo overboard. It says that the mariners were afraid. I was hoping that this was a prophetic word for the tigers this year, but that didn't seem to come true. Throwing the cargo overboard doesn't work. It doesn't stabilize the boat. And so they wake up everybody on board and they find out that Jonah has been sleeping, and so they wake him up and bring him on the main deck. And they cast lots, or this is an old-fashioned way of rolling dice, and it falls on Jonah.

They ask, Jonah, who are you? Jonah says, 'I'm a Hebrew. I fear the Lord. My God controls the Earth and the sea. Jonah gets caught doing something as someone who follows the Lord that isn't very fearful of God. I don't know if you've ever been caught doing something as a Christian that wasn't so Christian-like. I, as a pastor, run into this maybe more than the average person. This typically comes out when I play sports. Sometimes I'm a little bit competitive. Whether it's cards or the World Series, I'm I'm pretty competitive. Sometimes I can smack talk and I'll play sports with someone and talk to them after the game. My friend will come out and rat me out and say something like, For a pastor, you played pretty good. They'll look at me like, Man, you said some stuff out there and I have to go, Yeah, you're right. I did. It's a little bit embarrassing. I don't know if you've ever been in that situation, but... Jonas in this situation. He looks foolish because he's acting foolish. The solution In verse 12, he says, To throw him overboard. So the mariners, they don't want to do this right away, so they try to row back to shore, but that doesn't work.

So they know what they have to do. They know that throwing him overboard will stop the storm. So that's what they do. They throw him overboard. And as soon as Jonah enters into the water, the storm stops. And as soon as the storm stops, the mariners start to worship God. They offer sacrifices. This incident shows us where Jonah's heart is. Rather than repenting, rather than saying, God, I'm sorry. I get that if I don't turn back now, everyone If someone's going to die, he says, Throw me overboard. I'd rather drowned. I'd rather die than do what you want me to do. More than that, I'd rather die than be aligned with you, then be caught on your team. But like I said, God is correcting Jonah. God's correction, God correcting us, is there to save us from sin. See, sin matters to God. It's more than just breaking his rules. I think as parents, we can get these things convoluted because oftentimes our kids break rules, the rules that we make for them, and they can be frustrating to us. It can absolutely be frustrating. It is disobedient. It's wrong when they do that. But there's a difference between when kids disobey and when kids do something dangerous.

The response can be different. You can be frustrated when your kid doesn't listen to you, when you ask them to stay in bed over and over and over. That doesn't happen in our house, but I can understand how that might be frustrating. But it's different than when your kid does something dangerous. If your kid climbs up on a ladder that they're not supposed to and slips. You don't run and scold them. You throw your arms around them and say, This is why we have a rule for this. There's a difference as parents between breaking a rule and doing something dangerous. But to God, these things are the same. To God, sin is dangerous. It's dangerous to our soul. God's correction isn't out of anger. It's not an act of anger. It's an act of love. Often when God creates a storm in our lives, it's an act of mercy, not an act of anger. And that's what we'll see in this next section. We see God's love, grace, and mercy as God appoints in verse 17, God sends a fish to swallow him, to swallow Jonah. And we need to see this here in this passage, that God God could have just not done anything.

God could have left Jonah alone, and Jonah would have died. Jonah asked to be thrown overboard, not as some step out in faith, knowing, I know God's going to send me a big old fish that's going to save me? No. Jonah knew what he was doing, yet God wasn't done with him. The word 'appoint' will come up a couple of times in this story, mostly in chapter 4 after this, but it happens here in verse 17. It's important for us to understand this word, understand what it's trying to communicate. God wants us to see that he is in control, that he is sovereign over everything. The Heidelberg Catechism says it best, What do you understand by the providence of God? Providence is the Almighty and ever present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures And so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty, all things, in fact, come to us, not by chance, but by his fatherly hand. God wants us to see. God wants Jonah to see that he's the one who takes care of Jonah, that he's the one who sustains Jonah, he's the one who saves Jonah.

God is reeling Jonah back in, out of his disobedience. Most of the time when you hear a sermon on this passage, we get to this point, and a pastor will say, This is God judging Jonah. This is God disciplining him, this is God bringing him back from his disobedience through punishment. And that's absolutely true, that this is discipline, this is judgment, but it's also saving. I don't think we talk about that as much. Jonah could have died. God didn't need to do anything. He saved Jonah by sending him this fish. And these two ideas, judgment and salvation go hand in hand throughout the entire biblical narrative, throughout the entire biblical story. God is glorified in salvation through judgment. Whenever there's salvation, God is judging. This happens in the Garden Eden. When Adam and Eve, they will surely die by eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. And when they do this, God doesn't put them to death immediately. He saves them. Though he judges them, though he kicks them out of the Garden of Eden. Instead of getting what they deserved, God saved them because he wasn't done with them. And instead of getting what Jonah deserved, God saved him because he wasn't done with him.

And that leads us into our main idea. Our main idea for this text is to fear God and to run to him. Fear God and run to him. Remember that we are supposed to do the opposite of what Jonah did. Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord. Jonah writes this book to plea with us, to beg us to run into it. We have to recognize Like I said before, that this problem with Jonah is a perspective one. We have to recognize that God's perspective is so much more infinite than ours. If we're lucky, we'll get 100 years on Earth. So far, I have 30 years of perspective on this Earth. I know a lot of you guys were wondering about my age. I wanted to slip that in there. I'm 30. I've got 30 years on this Earth, and yet I have the goal, Jonah has the gall, we have the gall to question God or to say to God, God, if you only gave me the chance, I think I could bring out a better outcome. God has seen eternity past. He was there eternally before he created anything. He's going to be there.

He's seen eternity future. He's seen how the world ends. He's seen what happens next. God has seen every second of every minute of every day, of every month, of every year since creation. And we sit here and say, God, I think that with my limited perspective, I actually might have a chance to show you something here. No. This passage isn't just about being good because the consequences are bad. That's not the point of the sermon. That's not the point of this passage. It's not to obey because God might discipline you. He might send you a fish to swallow you if you're disobedient. That's not the point. The point of this passage is to fear God and to run to him, not from him. That leads us into our point of application, one of our two. This ought to change the reality of how we parent. We cannot parent children to obey just because the consequences are unpleasant or are harsh. We parent our children to obey because it's right and good for them to obey. We parent our children to love what is good, not just to love what is easy. It's easy to teach children the punishment game, right?

And I was guilty of this for a long time until Elizabeth, my wife, helped me see the danger of it, right? The punishment game is teaching your children to obey because the punishment is going to be uncomfortable or it's going to not be fun for the kids. But if we do this, what we're doing is we're teaching our children to find the path of least resistance rather than the path of obedience. And this bleeds into our children's spiritual life. It bleeds into how they see God. If we just teach them to do the path of least resistance, that's why people come to church only when things are hard. That's why we turn to God in prayer only when things are hard. We don't come just because it's right. We don't go before him in prayer just because life is good. We go because we need something from him. It teaches our children to be sneaky, to get away with what you can get away with if no one's going to hold you accountable. That has devastating effects for our spiritual life. We obey because obedience is good. We obey because we love what's right Punishments are necessary.

They are a necessary way to reinforce that belief. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a gentle parent at all. But discipline when punishments cannot be the primary motivator. Again, otherwise, we're teaching children to be sneaky. Jonah didn't like God's decision, and he threw a fit. God's here to show us in this book, to show Jonah that obedience in action isn't good enough. We need obedience in heart. We need a heart change. This has to be built on love and trust. God wants to show Jonah that he knows what's best for him. And we need to show our children that what we want for them is best. This book, God could have come down and just said, Jonah, I know what's right, and you need to listen. You need to do this. You have no reason to question who I am. You have no reason to disobey, and you're going to obey. He absolutely had every right to do that. And yet at the end of the book, we see God gently asking Jonah questions. We have every right as parents to come down hard, but that doesn't lead to true heart change. Being gentle with our children will.

This leads us to our last point of application. It's this, that we need to trust Godly men and women in our lives around us. Too many times as a pastor, I see people making horrible choices with no input from the people that love them most. The reason that we do this, and the reason that we don't seek out people who love us, Godly men and women around us, is because we know what's wrong. We know what we're doing is wrong. We don't want someone to come and correct us. In my last church, part of my role was to to oversee the Benevolence Fund, which meant that at least twice a week people would come in to request benevolence, and 99% of the time, those people weren't in. They weren't a member of a church. They weren't in a church home. I wrestled with that. I was just baffled that that was the case. In the more and more cases that I saw, I had to come to the conclusion that being in a gospel community, being in a part of people who love you, who care for you, who can speak into your life, that that was a correlation for these people.

These people didn't have people in their lives counseling them against horrific decisions that would lead them into terrible situations. That's one of the reasons that I'm asking you guys to have this, to have godly men and women in your life, around you. Find a friend who can offer you wise counsel. Or this is just a tip for men. Men, just ask your wives when you feel like you don't know. I know we say that as a joke, and sometimes we talk about our wives as nagging, But I think the reality is that as husband, sometimes we just don't want accountability. We don't want the wisdom that our wife has to offer us. If you don't have anyone, if you can't think of anyone in your life that can offer you Godly counsel, I want to take that away from you. You might have seen that in the newsletter, in the email that goes out in the last couple of weeks. But pastoral counseling is an offer that I offer to anyone here. It's something that's free. It's something that historically the church has done for 2,000 years. I think we're too fast sometimes to go to therapists or counselors when there are sometimes spiritual matters that we need to.

I'm not saying that going to a counselor, going to a therapist is a bad thing. In fact, it's an important thing in different stages of our life. But some things can get handled by free counseling from a pastor. Not only is it a good thing that you'd get good biblical counsel, but maybe you'll save some money, too. I don't know. There's two for one there. As we come to a close, we talked about this this reality of salvation in judgment going hand in hand throughout the Bible. We see this all throughout God's word. This happened in the Garden of Eden. This happened to the Egyptians. They were judged through the Pharaoh's army. They were judged through the Red Sea to save Israel. We ultimately see this on the cross. We ultimately see this on the cross that judgment came down, not on us, but on Jesus, so that way we could be saved. We see this in this story. God hurled a great storm at Jonah. He hurled a great... He hurled his son at the cross. Jonah was thrown into a sea to calm a temporary storm, and Jesus was thrown into death to calm an eternal one.

This is why we fear God. We We fear God because he has the power to crush us, and he doesn't. This is why we love him, because he's the only one powerful enough to save us. My question for you today is, where are you running? What are you running from? Where are you running from God in your life? I promise you, Prosper Church, the storm that you're fearing is the one that he wants to save you from. Fear God and run to him. Would you stand with me as we pray and we prepare our hearts for our closing songs? Father God, thank you for who you are, that you are the one who saves us, that you sent your son to be judged in our place, that we would not have to bear that, that we weren't the ones who were crushed for our iniquity, but you sent your son to be crushed for our iniquity. Father God, I pray as we respond in worship for who you are, that coming off of the heels of Reformation Day, that we would worship knowing that you are our only comfort in life and in death, and that we would proclaim that truth throughout all of our life.

God, we love you. We love to do your will, so help us do that. It's in your name we pray. Amen.