God is
Present in the Storm
Jonah 1:3-6
Introduction: We had a pretty good Nor’easter blow through a couple of
weeks back, several of you spent a few days without power. The wind got blowing
pretty good that night – but nothing that we’re not used to, right? Have you
been in the path of a wicked storm that actually scared you with its power?
Maybe a hurricane, or a tornado? Perhaps a storm at sea—or extreme turbulence
in a flight? If you look around on the airplane, and the flight attendant looks
happy and calm, you take that as a good sign right? If they look worried, then, not so good. The pilot comes on and talks, always sounds
like he is sitting at his desk in an office—and that tends to instill confidence.
Our text today pictures a storm at sea—one so dreadful that it terrifies the
experienced crew—and leaves them in despair for their very lives. They recognized
their need for divine intervention! They were afraid for their lives. Rather
than running, rather than sleeping, Jonah should have had a proper fear of the
Lord!
What does it
mean to “fear the Lord” (cf.
1:5,9,16)? For the believer, I think it must mean to recognize, at least in
part, the awesome, immeasurable power of
God, His holiness and His righteousness, and to see ourselves as we really are:
one moment the prodigal son walking away from the Father who loves us; next, the
elder son, complaining about the Father not conducting “family affairs” the way
we think He should, or lamenting His grace in the life of another. Hopefully
with growing frequency, we can see ourselves as the prodigal who has returned
to the Father in repentance and experienced His mercy and grace. For the
believer, we “fear the Lord”
because we recognize that He is GOD, and we are not. And so, we “work out
our own salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that God is at work in us
both to will and to work for His good pleasure…” (Phil 2:12,13). Think
about that, whatever the storm we are facing we can know…
The Maine* Idea: God is present in the storms of life working for our
good, and for His glory.
Context (3): Don’t be tempted to deny His Word and run!
3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence
of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he
paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the
presence of the LORD.
God said “Go!” and Jonah said, “No!” Rather than heeding God’s call to
go to Nineveh, Jonah turned his back on God, and headed due west, toward the
sea, setting his eyes on going to Tarshish, on far western edge of the Mediterranean
Sea. He was fleeing “away from the face of the Lord.” This is not, like Moses did when he was called in
Exodus 3, struggling honestly with a call, voicing his concerns to God. Jonah hears
the Word of the Lord, understands it, and turns his back on the Lord and heads
in the opposite direction, or at least that is his plan.
The verb
translated “went down” occurs twice in v.3 and again in v.5 (see also
2:6). This same verb can also be a euphemism for death. For example, Jacob,
broken-hearted over what he thought was evidence that Joseph had been killed by
a wild animal, refused to be comforted and said, "No, I shall go
down to Sheol to my son, mourning." (Gen 37:35). The same verb, “go
down” is used. The repetition here in chapter 1, as well as a later
reference in Jonah’s own prayer in chapter 2 (from the fish’s belly) draws the
reader’s attention, inviting us to think about Jonah, running from God, the
source of life and light, into darkness... The further he goes in trying to distance
himself from God, the closer he comes to death.
Jonah had a word
from God, and foolishly chose to ignore it, and in fact he chooses to do the
opposite and flagrantly disobey. We would never do such a thing, right? "I'll go where you want me to go dear God, I'll do what you want me to do..." Whatever
God says, we are ready to obey, right? Love your neighbor, love one another…
do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith… Love your enemy…
don’t answer evil for evil, but overcome evil with good… “OK Lord, now you’ve
gone too far!” Let’s face it, we all fall short, we are all a work in
progress. And whenever we know what God would have us to do, and we don’t do
it, or even do the opposite, we’ve become Jonah… We need to learn from the prodigal
prophet about ourselves, and about Yahweh, the God who is. Jonah “paid the fare”
as he boarded the ship. It might have been his life savings, we don’t know. But
the cost of running from God would be much higher. And by grace, God was not
going to let him go. That brings us to…
***The Maine* Idea: God is present in the storms of life working for our
good, and for His glory.
I. God cares: Some storms are attached to our sin [but not all] (4)!
4 But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and
there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up.
Storms happen,
they are usually part of life in a fallen world. There are storms, and then
there are storms! Here we read, “But
the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on
the sea…” This was not a simple convergence of weather fronts, this was
divine intervention! Verse 4 begins with the phrase, “But the Lord…”
Jonah sought to run from the presence of God, he turned his back and was going
as far away as he could, but God would not simply let him go. The
language here is striking, Yahweh, the Lord, “hurled” a great wind upon
the sea. The verb is the same that was used of Saul “hurling” a spear at David
(and then later at Jonathan when he spoke up for David!), hoping to pin him to the
wall. But this great wind, and the great storm it creates, is no fit of
anger from the Father as it was for Saul. It is an act of holy love. He is
present in the storm, working for the good of the prodigal prophet, and as we’ll
see, also for the good of the men on the boat, and the population of Nineveh
for that matter.
Pay attention to the wording here. In
verse three we are told, three times, that Jonah is fleeing from the face of the
Lord. God could have simply let
him go, and called another more willing prophet to go to Nineveh. But God was
interested not only in that great city, he was interested in Jonah, and in
those pagan sailors in the ship with him. He could have spoken again to Jonah
on the ship, but He chose to use circumstances to arrest his attention, and to
lead him to repentance.
So God was there
in the storm, chastening Jonah, getting his attention, calling Him to repentance. Jonah was going not only the way of disobedience, but heading for self-destruction. Do you think you can just give up on God? He won’t give up on you! He will
pursue you because he loves you. Who the Lord loves, he chastens. So, we can see pretty easily that the storm
had a purpose in Jonah’s life. But what about the sailors? They had simply
gotten in the wrong boat with the runaway prophet, right? Well, their sin didn’t cause that particular
storm it seems. Not every storm we face is the direct result of our personal
sin, but it is a consequence of living in a fallen world. But these sailors
were sinners, and though their sin didn’t cause the storm, God used that storm
to bring them to see their desperate need, and then to reveal his power and his
grace, leading them to repentance and faith. If news of that far-away storm got
back to Nineveh, they would surely think it had nothing to do with them, right?
But God also used it for their good as well, as it brought the prophet,
and the Word of God, to their ears. To God be the glory! And that is the Maine*
Idea: God is present in the storms of life working for our good, and for
His glory. God cares, and…
II. God acts: We should always be self-aware, and aware of needs around us, asking what
God may be doing, even in the storm (5). He is the Lord of History, in fact “history”
is “His Story.” The Christian life means recognizing and embracing our place in
His Story. He is there, in the storm…
5 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
lain down and was fast asleep.
The sailors were terrified, they knew they needed
divine intervention! They cried out to their gods but the storm continued. The
one who knew the true God, the God who is, was in denial, sleeping. Like the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, the
sailors cried out, but their gods were idols, powerless, unable to act.
Ironically, it seems that every person on that ship we praying—except for the
prodigal prophet. Jonah, the prophet of
the Lord, was fast asleep,
oblivious, in denial, of what was happening around him! It seems he doesn’t
pray until chapter 2, from the fish’s belly!
How different this story might have been had he wrestled honestly with
God expressing his struggle! Psalm 55:1-11 could have expressed the struggle of
Jonah to the Lord…
Give ear
to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy! 2 Attend to me, and answer me; I
am restless in my complaint and I moan, 3
because of the noise of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked. For
they drop trouble upon me, and in anger they bear a grudge against me. 4 My heart is in anguish within
me; the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
5 Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms
me. 6 And I say, "Oh,
that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest; 7 yes, I would wander far away; I
would lodge in the wilderness; Selah 8
I would hurry to find a shelter from the raging wind and tempest." 9 Destroy, O Lord, divide their
tongues; for I see violence and strife in the city. 10 Day and night they go around it
on its walls, and iniquity and trouble are within it; 11 ruin is in its midst;
oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace…
The psalmist expressed many of the concerns of Jonah, even
his dismay at the evil in the city, and his desire for judgment and justice. We
even see in verse 6 the Hebrew word for dove, “Jonah,” and the desire to
fly away from all the trouble! Instead of praying honestly to God, Jonah ran,
and brought trouble on himself and those around him.
The response of the
mariners emphasizes how terrible that storm must have been. They were experienced
sailors, they had weathered many a storm. V.4 says this one was so intense that
the ship “threatened to break up.” The wording seems a little strange
here, like the ship is talking, “If somebody doesn’t do something, I am going
to break up!” The groaning and creeking timbers said it all: the situation was
dire, and the sailors knew it. Their prayers to their gods unanswered, the
sailors did what they could, they threw the cargo overboard, so it seems the
hope for profit was gone, but maybe they could save themselves. They were desperate
to make it to land—desperate to save their lives! Ironically Jonah later
expresses the truth, in his last words from the fish’s belly in Jonah 2:9b, “…Salvation
belongs to the Lord!” So, please excuse the spoiler, but Jonah eventually learns
the Maine* Idea: God is present in the storms of life working for our
good, and for His glory. God cares, and He acts, we also see that…
III. God hears: We need to be alert and prayerful in the storms of life,
considering our needs as well as the needs around us (6).
So the
captain came and said to him, "What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call
out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not
perish."
What irony that
this pagan captain could see the need for supernatural intervention—only a god
could rescue them from this storm! All the while the prodigal prophet, the one
fleeing from the face of the God who is, running from the Creator of the land
and the sea, was asleep below deck! The pagans were calling out to their false
gods, doing what they thought they could in the face of imminent death. They
jettison the cargo, hoping the lightened ship could make better headway toward
land. Nothing is helping. Somehow the Captain realized there was one man still
sleeping in the hold of the ship, maybe his God could do something! “What do
you mean, you sleeper?!” I like the way the NLT puts it, “How can you
sleep at a time like this?” It strikes me that this is almost the opposite of
another scene we see in the New Testament. In that case, a prophet greater than
Jonah is asleep in a boat, on a stormy lake. The crew is terrified that they
are about to sink. We read about it in Mark 4:37-41…
37 And a great
windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the
boat was already filling. 38 But
he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him,
"Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" 39 And he awoke and rebuked the
wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and
there was a great calm. 40 He
said to them, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?" 41 And they were filled with great
fear and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even wind and sea
obey him?"
Jesus was sleeping in peace, perfect faith that the situation
was under control. It was the peace the psalmist spoke of in Psalm 3:5 and 4:8.
Jonah’s sleep was that of spiritual dullness and denial, the idea that Paul addresses
in Ephesians 5:11-14,
11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but
instead expose them. 12 For
it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. 13 But when anything is exposed by
the light, it becomes visible, 14
for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, "Awake, O
sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."
That quotation is not precisely found anywhere in the Scriptures.
Could it be that Paul was paraphrasing a part of the captain’s words to Jonah,
and applying it to his teaching to the Ephesians? Jonah was not dead, though
spiritually speaking, he was moving in that direction as he moved away from the
face of God, and “went down” to Joppa, “down” into the hold of
the ship, and eventually into the deep and the belly of the fish! But God so loved the world… that One
greater than Jonah came, a faithful Son, the Servant of the Lord, and He
faithfully carried out the Father’s plan. He bore our sins and carried our
sorrows! God so loved us!
What is God saying to me in this passage? The “Maine* Idea” in this story is that God is
present in the storms of life working for our good, and for His glory. He was
working for the good of the Ninevites, as He had determined they would be warned
of the impending judgment. He was also working for the good of the prodigal prophet,
Jonah, as he tried to ignore the Word of the Lord. We’ve had some wind and rain
on the mid-coast already this Fall. Personally, some of you may feel you are in
the midst of a storm right now. God was there in Jonah’s storm—and He is here
in yours—and He knows exactly what is happening. Remember, “Nothing touches us that
has not first passed through the hands of our loving heavenly Father… Nothing!”
(C. Swindoll).
What would God have me to do in response to this
passage? I am
convinced that I can’t know for certain when God is chastening another
Christian. Remember the disciples’ question to Jesus in John 9 about the man
born blind, “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he should be born blind?”
Jesus said it was neither, but that God might reveal His power and be glorified
in the man’s life. When we see someone else going through a storm, we probably
should not presume to think we know what God is doing. We can know that
He is there in the storm, and that somehow he will use it for the good of his
children, and for His own glory.
But, like Jonah
when he woke up, when he knew the storm was because of him, because he
was running away from God, because he had turned from the Word of the Lord—I
think we will know when God is chastening us. I know that is true in my
life. By the way, the storm was not caused by the unbelief of the pagan
sailors, but they were caught up in it, they were in the boat with Jonah, literally,
and we’ll see that it leads them to faith.
So, God was there,
working in their lives in the midst of the storm, to bring them to faith, as
surely as He was breaking Jonah’s rebellious will, and leading him to repentance. Think about Job, who, as far as we know, never knew why his storms came, but he grew through them, he learned about himself, and about God. Whatever storm you may
be facing today, or may face tomorrow, don’t despair, trust God, cry out to
Him. He is there in the storm. What a mighty God we serve! To God be the glory, Amen.
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