Nothing is Hidden From God - Jonah 1:7-10

Nothing is Hidden from God (or, “Christians off the Grid?”)

Jonah 1:7-10

Introduction: Last week was a significant anniversary. No, I am not talking about the 502^nd anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation! It was the 50^th anniversary of the start of the internet!  I am sure that start was humble. In the early years services like AOL and Compuserve were used by many, dial-up modems the means of getting “connected.” As slow as ours was, when we finally got a computer in the 1980s, you could do about as well with the post office! Times have changed. People today are always “connected” via their electronic devices… Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, people are ready to let you know what they are thinking or doing minute-by-minute. My life is really not that interesting! Or, as they say in New York, “Nobody cares!” What seems to me as revolutionary as the internet, is how connected people are because of their mobile phones. When I was young Maxwell Smart was talking into his shoe phone, and that was fantasy. Our phones were still rotary phones, and yes, with wires! Now today, when cell service is down, that is when life gets tough. Or if there is no power to charge your phone! Occasionally someone will “take a break” from social media. I had a pastor friend who a couple of times, during Lent, went off of Facebook. That’s a choice. Some of you have cancelled your accounts for a time. But what about when you are traveling in a remote area, or spending days “off the grid” with no service, that can seem a little weird, you feel disconnected, right?

        What about your connection with God? Can you hear me now?  In our passage, Jonah was trying to go “off the grid.” His problem was not that he couldn’t get online with God, but rather that he didn’t want to… He wanted to get so far away from God and the mission He was calling him to, that God would need to send someone else to bring His warning to Nineveh. Remember Psalm 139, Where can I hide from his presence? God is omnipresent, and omniscient. Nothing is hidden from Him. That included Jonah and his rebellion, and it includes our sin.

The Maine* Idea: God will expose our hidden sin, causing us to face the truth about ourselves, mercifully calling us to repentance.

The context (6): “Arise… call out to your God…” It seems the only one not praying on that ship, in that storm, was Jonah, the prophet of God! Why? He was closing his heart, his mind, and his ears to the Lord. He had turned away from the Lord. How could he ask God’s help when he willfully turned from the face of God?

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." 

       Jonah was running from God. He was not in a praying state of mind. Had he repented and asked passage back to the coast, would the storm have relented? We don’t know. But Jonah was not ready to repent, or to talk to the Lord. Have you gone through times in your spiritual journey when you found prayer increasingly difficult? Were there times when you, consciously or subconsciously, “cut the cord” and went “off the grid” spiritually speaking? Maybe staying away from church? Missing reading the Bible? Avoiding people or situations that might lead to spiritual discussions? I don’t know all the details of your story, but I know this: if you tried it, God didn’t let you go. He pursued you, like what someone called “the hound of heaven,” He would not let you get away. And here you are, by grace!

       I want to notice another detail here. Jonah is silent, withdrawn from the living God. These men are crying out to their impotent idols, desperate for rescue. Notice that captain’s justification for urging Jonah to pray to his God, “Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.” If you read ahead in Jonah, we see an almost identical statement on the lips of the king of Nineveh… “Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.” The pagan captain and the pagan king are willing to cry out for mercy to the God of Jonah! Still, the prophet is silent. He doesn’t reflect the character of his God, who “…is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Pet 3:9). He doesn’t show the heart of God who “…so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life…” (John 3:16).  The prophet greater than Jonah came in the fulness of time, speaking the truth, and fulfilling all righteousness. Willingly, He took on Himself the guilt of all who would believe. Jonah thought his sin was hidden. But God will expose our hidden sin, causing us to face the truth about ourselves, while He mercifully calls us to repentance.

I. How do we know what God expects of us? We need revelation. For us that means not casting lots, but the Word illumined by the Spirit (7).

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. 

       Casting lots doesn’t seem like a very spiritual activity! But Jonah, the prophet of God, waylaid by his own sin, was silent before the sailors… It seems he had no response for the captain’s appeal in v.6. So, they did what they knew, maybe “the gods” would reveal to them through lots who was the cause to their perilous situation. It was clear that this was no typical storm at sea. It had come on them so quickly and with such ferocity that they could only think there was a supernatural force behind it. The ship was about to break up, they had to try what they knew.

       “So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah…” Jonah was exposed as the reason for the storm!  Casting lots may seem like a strange way to find truth in a situation like this. The use of “lots” to discern the will of God is not unheard of in the Bible. A couple of examples from Scripture…

Numbers 26:55-56  “…But the land shall be divided by lot. According to the names of the tribes of their fathers they shall inherit.  ⁵⁶ Their inheritance shall be divided according to lot between the larger and the smaller." (cf. Josh 18:6-10).

Joshua 7:14  “In the morning therefore you shall be brought near by your tribes. And the tribe that the LORD takes by lot shall come near by clans. And the clan that the LORD takes shall come near by households. And the household that the LORD takes shall come near man by man.” And so, the sin of Achan was exposed!

Proverbs 16:33 “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” 

Acts 1:26 “And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.”

What is noteworthy, is that after the pouring out of the Spirit on the believers on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2), there are no more examples in the Bible of lots as a means of seeking God’s will. Why? First, Christ commissioned the Apostles as His authorized representatives and spokesmen in the foundational period of the church. They brought the word of Christ to the early church, and in their teaching, which is preserved in the New Testament, we have the Word of God written. Secondly, the Holy Spirit himself abides in every believer. And so, we are led by the Spirit, guided and empowered by Him, and when necessary convicted by Him. And God has given us a community of which we are a part, brothers and sisters who also are filled with the presence of God. So, we can make decisions based first of all on the objective truth of the Word, guided by the counsel of fellow believers, and checked by the inward prompting of the Spirit. When those things align, we can know that we are on track. No need for lots!

       By the way, it starts with being in the Word. Do you have a regular program for reading the Bible? I like the idea of giving a regular, daily time to Bible reading and prayer. For me that is in the morning. Whatever works for you. Prayer goes with Bible reading like air goes with life. Jonah isn’t praying yet, even though the storm is raging around him. Remember the song, “Oh what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.” Don’t let sin keep you from praying. Let it drive you to Him, knowing that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness… (I Jn 1:9). After all, we can’t hide, if you are a believer know that God will expose your hidden sin, causing you to face the truth about yourself, mercifully calling you to repentance.

II. How do we know the truth about who God is?  (8-9).

⁸ Then they said to him, "Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?"  ⁹ 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." 

        The men question Jonah, seeking an explanation (8). They pepper him with a series of questions about his work and his nationality. Part of the motivation was no doubt a search for information about the god of the land from which he came, something that would give them a clue about what to do to save themselves. Jonah never says he is a prophet. The one question he doesn’t answer is their first question, about his occupation. He was taking a sabbatical, he was off-duty, taking a break from his calling. I am not trying to be harsh, but think about this, have you ever decided to “take a break” from church or from involvement in church? I recently had someone say they were listening to their favorite preacher from home and reading the Bible on their own. Those things are fine. But the Bible clearly says that we are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together (Heb 10:25). God has designed the church as His means of building up His people in the faith. We need each other! God has gifted us and called us to build each other up, to provoke one another to love and good works.

       Jonah answers his questioners in part. It is interesting that he first identifies himself as a “Hebrew.”  He doesn’t call himself a prophet, but at least he admits to being a descendant of Abraham.  Let me answer that last question first… “I am a Hebrew…” Jonah, even in this moment of crisis, puts his race, his ethnicity, before his confession of “faith.” I don’t want to offend anyone by saying this. I am proud to be an American. I recognize the many privileges we have here. But first of all, I am a Christ-follower, by God’s grace, a child of the King! Our defining identity is not race or nationality. If we know God, we are first of all a part of His family.

        Jonah does say “…I fear the Lord [Yahweh]…” He says it, but he has admitted that He was running from the presence of the Lord! You fear the Lord? Really Jonah? Your practice does not reflect that profession! There are moments when that will be true in our lives. When I first came to faith, I was the only believer in my family. My siblings, and my parents, the people I worked with, they were all ready to let me know when my choices didn’t measure up! “Is that how a Christian acts?” I heard that more than a few times! We are His witnesses. The question is, will we be a good witness or a poor one?

       Jonah called God, “…the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land…” That is the God who Jonah should have believed, and feared, as he professed. But he was trying to flee rather than obey! God wouldn’t let him go. Nor will he let you go. He loves you too much. God will expose our hidden sin, causing us to face the truth about ourselves, mercifully calling us to repentance.

III. What can we do about the problem of sin? Our sin will impact our lives, and often to lives of others (10).

¹⁰ 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.

       Jonah claimed to fear the Lord, but his actions seemed to contradict that. These sailors, hearing that Jonah was running from the Creator God, the very God he claimed to fear, were “exceedingly afraid,” literally, they “feared a great fear.” We don’t know how much these sailors knew about the God of the Jews. This was happening early in the period of the divided Kingdom, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. They had certainly heard that these people had some relationship with the God of David and Solomon, and perhaps they even knew the story of God having brought these people out of Egyptian bondage through the Red Sea. They surely knew what they were seeing with their own eyes, Jonah was running away from this God, the God of the Hebrews who made the sea and the dry land, and now this God had brought a tremendous storm out of nowhere, a storm that threatened to break up the ship and drown them all!

      In their fear they ask Jonah, “What is this that you have done?!” (1:10; cf. Gen 3:13; 12:18; 26:10). Does that question sound familiar? It is used elsewhere of a pagan rebuking a follower of God for doing something that put them in danger of offending the God of the Hebrews. For example, Abraham (Abram) in Genesis 12, told a half truth, failing to mention that Sarah was his wife…

¹⁰ Now there was a famine in the land...  ¹¹ When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, "I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance,  ¹² and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife.' Then they will kill me, but they will let you live.  ¹³ Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake."  ¹⁴ When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.  ¹⁵ And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house.  ¹⁶ And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.  ¹⁷ But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife.  ¹⁸ So Pharaoh called Abram and said, "What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?

There is that question again, just as the sailors asked Jonah, so Pharaoh questions Abram, essentially rebuking the man of God. Well, like father like son, because we have almost an exact repeat of that story in the life of Isaac, in Genesis 26:6-10…

⁶ So Isaac settled in Gerar.  ⁷ When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, "She is my sister," for he feared to say, "My wife," thinking, "lest the men of the place should kill me because of Rebekah," because she was attractive in appearance.  ⁸ When he had been there a long time, Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out of a window and saw Isaac laughing with Rebekah his wife.  ⁹ So Abimelech called Isaac and said, "Behold, she is your wife. How then could you say, 'She is my sister'?" Isaac said to him, "Because I thought, 'Lest I die because of her.'"  ¹⁰ Abimelech said, "What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us."

You have put us in jeopardy of offending your God! How could you do such a thing? How sad to see such situations when believers, those who know the truth and who have a relationship with the true God, act in such a way that they evoke a rebuke from the world! By the way, in many of these cases, as in the case of Jonah and the Phoenician sailors, not only the mortal life, but the immortal souls of the pagans were at risk. Instead of living a life of witness and testimony to the truth, the man of God was silent about who God is and what He expects of us.

       By the way, that same question comes up earlier in the Bible, in Genesis 3:13, in the midst of confronting Adam and Eve for their disobedience, God asks the woman, “What is this that you have done?” In chapter 4, using almost the same phrase, God asks Cain in Genesis 4:10, “What have you done?” The first sin, in the garden brought death and the curse. The first son committed murder. The question to Jonah echoes these earlier scenes, and reminds us that we live in a fallen world, and that all humans have a sin problem. Whether it is a distorted view of God, or outright rebellion and refusal to acknowledge His rightful rule over us, we need God to rescue us from our sin. One writer said, “…He [God] wants to do for us what He did for the lot-throwing idol worshipers on the ship with God: He wants to break down our idols and teach us to rely solely on the grace of God in Christ…” (Jonah, Eric Redmond).

What is God saying to me in this passage? God will expose our hidden sin, causing us to face the truth about ourselves, mercifully calling us to repentance.

What would God have me to do in response to this passage? On this first Sunday, as we prepare for the Lord’s Table, we can ask ourselves if we, like Jonah, have been trying to hide ourselves, or our sins, from God. He knows. After Jonah’s sin is exposed, he volunteers to be thrown into the sea so the sailors can be saved. But he would offer himself not for their sin, but for his own. 800 years later or so, a greater prophet came, and took our sins, drinking the cup of the holy wrath of God against sin, offering Himself, so that we could drink the cup of blessing. What love! How could we deny Him? Why would we flee from His presence? Still we do, every time we choose to sin. As we prepare for the Table, let’s bow before Him, confessing our sins, and receive the cleansing from unrighteousness that He offers (I Jn 1:9). You don’t have to bear the weight anymore. Trust Him!  Come to Him. He is waiting. Amen.