JONAH.
#5 – The Lord converts the mariners.
Jonah 1
Sermon by:
Rev. E. Moerdyk
PUBLISHED BY THE
PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE
OF THE
FREE REFORMED CHURCHES OF NORTH AMERICA.
(April 2006)
(No 5 of a series of 10)
LITURGY:
Votum
Psalter 256
Law of God
Psalter 85
Scripture Reading: Romans 1: 18 –21
Romans 2: 10 – 15
Jonah 1
Text: Jonah 1
Congregational Prayer
Offerings
Psalter 241: 4, 5. 8, 9
Sermon
Psalter 168
Thanksgiving Prayer
Psalter 257
Doxology: Psalter 405: 1, 2, 3, 6, 7
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Beloved congregation,
There is an old Dutch saying that goes something like this: God can strike a straight blow with a
crooked stick. Jonah chapter 1 is a clear proof of just how true this is. God uses the testimony of
sinful rebellious Jonah – a testimony that God even has to force from Jonah’s sealed lips, to bring
heathen sailors to a saving knowledge of the God of Israel.
God uses a crooked stick to strike a
straight blow!
This truth is on the one hand humbling, and on the other hand comforting. It is humbling
because this is not a compliment for us. Part of God’s striking a straight blow with a crooked stick
is to expose how crooked the stick is. You and I are more often than we would care to admit
crooked sticks. This is not an excuse. It is your guilt, and when God keeps you honest with
yourself and with him, you will feel how painful this truth is. But on the other hand it is a
comforting truth. What kind of a God is He, that He can even take sinful people and use their very
sins for His glory, and for the salvation of others? To say that God can strike a straight blow with
a crooked stick is really to exalt God, and to reveal his awesome worthiness of our worship.
In Jonah chapter 1, God exposes who we are by revealing who He is. This is essentially
what needs to happen over and over again. The Lord needs to impress us with His majesty,
holiness, and power. But also with his abounding grace. So that you confess afterwards –
salvation is of the Lord! Let us take a look at how the Lord does this in the lives of the mariners,
with the prayer that He would do so in each of us.
Theme: The Lord converts the mariners
I.
He reveals Himself to them
II.
He teaches them to worship Him
Congregation, so far in our studies of the book of Jonah, we have focused on God’s
dealings with Jonah. This time we want to focus on God’s dealings with the sailors on board the
ship. To do this, you have to remember that while you and I know the end of the story, the sailors
do not. For them it is business as usual. When Jonah comes down to Joppa, he is just another
traveler to them. They might have thought it a little odd that he goes down into the hold to sleep
in the middle of the day, but then some people do strange things. So when the captain looks at the
sky with a practiced eye, and sees clear skies, and when he notices that the wind blowing from the
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right direction, things look just right for a voyage. He shouts the necessary commands that get the
ship underway. The sails are hoisted, the course is set, and the dry land quickly disappears behind
them.
But suddenly they are confronted with the living God. Because verse 4 says that the Lord
hurls a great wind on the sea, and there is a mighty tempest. Things get so bad so suddenly, that
these seasoned sailors fear for their lives. You can believe that when they pitch the cargo
overboard, which is their way of earning a living, things are desperate. Right away they see
something supernatural behind all this. Because not only do they follow the emergency manual,
but they cry out each one to his god. As sophisticated moderns, our first instinct might be to smile
condescendingly at their uncivilized superstitions. But maybe they see things more clearly than
we do. Maybe at times all our modern technology has made us more blind rather than wiser.
Why do these man cry out to their gods? Well, as our scripture reading from Romans 1
reminded us, everyone as a creature of the living God has a basic knowledge about God. They
know from the things that are made his power. Do you know when this becomes most painfully
clear to people? When a storm or some other display of power in nature makes them feel like
puny little ants. The reeling ship, the towering waves that roar above them, the repeated shocks of
the ship slamming into the next wave, tells them they are only specks before the awesome power
of God. Why, even our secularized insurance companies today still call natural disasters acts of
God. And the ultimate proof that all men know something about their creator is found in their
frantic prayers to him when they run stuck. Have you ever heard the saying there are no atheists in
a foxhole? When the bullets are flying, and your life is on the line, every man suddenly becomes
religious. Even the atheist when he slams on the brakes and sees a semi heading for his car on a
collision course, takes the name of God on his lips. Not so much to curse God as to give a
desperate call for help. He betrays that when he is calmer he is only suppressing what he knows
deep down to be true.
There is something else that the prayers of these men teach us. When push comes to
shove, deep down everyone knows that God can hear prayer. You don’t bother to call out to God
if you don’t think he can hear you. What is more, they know that God is judge. Because they
realize right away that something has made God angry. They know that someone has done
something to arouse God’s power to pursue them. How do they know this? Romans 2 says that
God has given everyone a conscience, a sense of right and wrong. Though that conscience might
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be out of tune, it still says something. The striking thing is that when God’s power in nature
makes men feel like insignificant little specks, their sense of having to give an account to God as
sinners actually increases. This week I was struck by this while listening to a secular talk show
host. While he was not willing to hear of God’s hand in it, he was very willing to talk about right
and wrong. He said – it is morally wrong not to do something to help the people affected by
hurricane Katrina down in New Orleans. He felt like a speck, but like a morally accountable
speck.
Do such storms in nature do the same to you? You have more than the light of nature, as
the theologians call it. You have the scriptures, and you know why God sends hurricanes and
other disasters on earth. Do such things make you tremble, and feel like a little speck on this
planet? When you see pictures of houses and trees ripped to toothpicks, and gaping holes in
strong levees, that are ripped as easily as a garden hose pushes through the mud dam built by a
child, do you feel like a speck before God? What is more, do you feel like a speck that is going to
give account to your maker? Does it arouse your conscience? Does it make you confess your own
sins before God?
This is important for spiritual life. The most important thing is not first of all who you are
or what you are supposed to be doing, but getting a fresh sense in your soul of who God is.
Because you and I might have the scriptures to help us interpret what happens in nature, and you
and I might have the help of God’s law to tune our consciences, but you and I also have hearts that
suppress and distort the knowledge of God. This is part of what it means to be a sinner. It means
that consciously or unconsciously, you try to make God smaller in your thoughts, rather than
larger. You downplay God, rather than exalt him. The proof of this is that you think quite highly
of yourself, but feel little awe in your hearts when you think of God. You don’t feel like a speck
all that often, do you? The proof of this is also that the voice of your conscience no longer roars,
but dies down to a whisper, or maybe even goes to sleep.
This is why God needs to confront us during this service with who He is. Sometimes a
good storm, a hurricane, a volcano, a tornado is needed to shake us into our senses. Turn back a
few pages to see how the prophet Amos explains the message behind God’s storms in chapter 5:8.
He describes God like this: “Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the
shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters
of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name.” Ponder this.
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Use your computer to look at the pictures of the devastation, or read about the power packed by a
hurricane. And tremble before the God of the whole earth. This God only has to blow, and
everything you have spent a lifetime working for, will become kindling. You should ponder this
till you feel like a speck.
What is more, this same God calls you to examine your heart. Because He is the judge of
the nations. He will hold all men responsible for their actions. You should ponder this until you
feel like a morally accountable speck. I say this now especially to the person who has lost almost
all fear of the living God. That may mean you are still unconverted. Don’t you realize that you
are in God’s hands? Don’t you realize that the awesome living God of heaven and earth will call
you to stand before his judgment seat? You can’t escape from him anymore than your house can
take a direct hit from a tornado or hurricane. Wake up! Tremble! Pray!
The sailors on the boat tremble, and pray in their desperation. There is something very
right about this. But their actions are also still touched by too much error to lead to a saving
knowledge of God. Their prayers are what we could call foxhole prayers. These men live in
disregard of God, until they get desperate. They ignore God until they run stuck. Then they pray.
But they don’t know how to pray, or what to pray for. It was a typically heathen thing in moments
like this to try to make a bargain with God. To say to God – if you get me out of this, then I will
do this or that for you. You could say to God – if you get me out of this, I will tithe 50% of my
income. Sometimes God even hears such prayers. Not because of our bargaining, but because of
His compassion. Then what happens afterwards? You say to God – well, that is not reasonable. I
will tithe 3% if and when I can. Such is the faithlessness of our hearts.
God won’t take this. Because when you bargain God, you have a distorted knowledge of
God. You act as if God can be bought, as if pushing the right buttons will get God off your back.
This views God as the problem, not your own sin. God won’t take this from them, and he won’t
take it from you or me either. When you examine yourself, don’t bargain with God. Confess your
sins, and forsake them. But don’t pretend God is the problem. You and your sins are the problem.
The Lord has to teach the sailors this. Just imagine the scene again. The captain hangs on
for dear life, desperate prayers on his lips. He sees that the stranger is not on deck yet. So with a
mounting feeling of helplessness and indignation, he shakes Jonah awake. Hello? Call on your
God. Maybe your God will hear us. This is our only hope. But while they make their way
topside, the sailors have taken things a step further. The majesty of the living God has made them
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feel small, and has aroused their consciences. Someone has done something wrong to arouse such
a pursuit. So they cast lots to figure out who did it.
Again, there is a mixture of truth and error here. The truth is, someone did sin. The error
is this: everyone who agrees to casting lots is actually saying, I did not do it. Imagine the sailors
shouting to each other above the noise of the storm. Did you do something to make God angry?
Not me. Their aroused conscience is not yet speaking of personal guilt. Not a man on board
would say he is perfect. We are all sinners – even these heathens would say amen. But to say that
you are such a sinner that you deserve the storm of wrath that is raging around the ship? Not me.
I am not that bad. So self-assured are these men, even in their terror, that they say – go ahead cast
lots. You’ll see. Only the Spirit of God can break through this self-confidence. It takes more
than a storm! Don’t you hear this on the talk radio shows? We are basically good people, and so
are the people affected by God’s storms.
This has application to us. You and I are just as liable to this. The proof of it lies here:
when you hear about the sins of someone else, especially when they are what we would consider
scandalous sins, your reaction is to think – what are people like that doing in our church? What is
a scoundrel like that doing among us good people? Isn’t this true? You are actually saying I don’t
deserve the storms of God’s wrath. I am not perfect, but I am not that bad. The Spirit of God is
needed to break through this self-assured attitude, also in you.
There is another error hidden in the casting of lots. It is superstition. It is based on the
superstitious belief that casting lots can force the gods to point out who they are angry at. Now
God also used lots in the OT, but that was different. When you read of Joshua or Saul casting lots,
they always prayed first, and asked God to guide them. But when heathens do this, they do it as a
substitute for prayer, or because prayer is not working. Behind it lies the belief that if prayer does
not work, you can force God to answer you another way.
Do Christians do this kind of thing? Well, do you read your Bible more or go to more
church activities when you need something from God? Do you ask your pastor to pray for you
specifically? I am happy to do so, don’t get me wrong. I do so, whether you ask for it or not. But
sometimes you can use it as a rabbits foot. If I pray hard enough, or if I read my Bible, then I will
get what I want from God. Really, when you do this, you are saying I am not praying or reading
because God is worthy of my devotion, but because I want something from Him. The problem is
this: if you use this as a substitute for repenting of your sins, if you do this as a way to remove
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God’s hand of discipline from your life, without being sincere about forsaking your sins, it is an
act of superstition. You are trying to fool God, rather than bow before Him in humble reverence.
God won’t allow the sailors to get away with it. Neither will he let you get away with it.
Someone will say – you can say that pastor, but look at the text. Verse 7 says the lot fell
on Jonah. Well? Remember the saying? God can strike a straight blow with a crooked stick?
God does use it to point the finger at Jonah. But more so, God uses this crooked stick to teach the
sailors some straight theology. Try to imagine it again. There they all are, hanging on for dear life
while the waves sweep over the deck, and the ship shudders from the impact. Someone shouts to
Jonah above the noise of the storm, tell us, whose fault is this? Why is this happening?
Then God breaks into the darkness of their twisted limited knowledge of Him. For God
has a spokesman on board who can teach them a saving knowledge of who He is. The light of
revealed truth, of the word of God, shines into the darkness. Jonah says to them with trembling
lips and knocking knees – I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the
sea, and the dry land. This is a pretty straight sermon from a crooked preacher. But God can
strike a straight blow with a crooked stick, and there is nothing crooked in Jonah’s theology here.
Do you see how this corrects the thinking of the sailors? These men are like any other
pagans – just like the typical pagans you meet in Canada. You have your god, and I have mine.
You do it your way, and I will do it my way. You have your ideas about God, and I have my ideas
about God. You pray to your God, and I will pray to mine. Jonah says I fear the Lord, the God of
heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Jonah puts a name to God. He says – this is who God
is, like it or not. This is the truth about God: whatever you might have believed is wrong.
What is more, Jonah says in verse 10, I am running away from this God. You’d better
believe this makes them shake. Verse 10 says that they became exceedingly afraid. And
increasingly helpless. You can’t out sail the God who made the sea. His territory does not stop
once you are far enough from Israel. You can’t out row his wind and waves. What is more, what
good will reaching the dry land do? He made the dry land too, so even if they manage to get to
shore, God will be ready and waiting for them. This only confirms the natural knowledge they
have of the one true living God – He is almighty! What can they do? They have no idea.
There is more that Jonah’s words emphasize. Jonah’s confession puts the spotlights on the
holiness of Israel’s God. God is so holy that He will not put up with sin. He chases down the
sinner, and will not stop until He has caught him. You cannot pull the wool over His eyes. It is
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useless to try. Even being one of His servants will not get you off the hook. God has no favorites
when it comes to his holy hand of discipline upon sin. Everyone is in the same boat when it comes
to God’s holiness. The only thing to do is to make a complete and honest confession – just what
Jonah does. You might think you can run for a day or an hour, but you can’t escape God’s
pursuing justice. This makes the sailors feel all the more helpless. What can they do to calm this
God’s anger? They have no idea.
Do you need the same lesson? Do you need the reminder as you examine yourself in
preparation for sitting at the table of this almighty and holy God? Don’t try to fool God when you
confess your sins. Don’t say you hate them and want to flee from them, unless you mean it. God
sees right through you. You can’t fool him. He won’t have it from you. Don’t just say, I guess I
am a sinner, but thank God there is grace for sinners. If that is your only response to His word,
this would be a shameful thing. God’s eyes are on you. Let Him find sincerity in your soul. Let
Him see you confess your sins. Don’t minimize them. Don’t make them out to be less than they
are. Don’t cover up. God has no favorites who can sail around his perfect holiness! Be careful!
Be honest.
But these heathen sailors do not know enough yet to do this. What they have heard about
the one true living God is enough to make them even more afraid. So they say why have you done
this? Jonah’s God has taught them to fear sin and its consequences!
Then comes of course the burning question. What shall we do? How can we get out of
this? Jonah’s answer is straightforward. God is busy straightening out Jonah’s thinking. His
discipline has a way of doing that – whether that comes through the storms of the deep, or through
the words of His servants the prophets. That word also comes to you both ways. Sometimes
through storms, and now through His word.
Jonah says – throw me overboard, and then the sea will calm down. I know that this is all
my fault. I will bow under God’s righteous pursuit, and say amen to His judgments. Should you
and I not do this too? Get honest – Lord, my sins are bad. They deserve wrath. Thy justice is
inflexible on this matter, and it is right that it should be so.
The sailors are not ready to do this however. They now fear this God in all His holiness.
They say to each other – what will He do to us if we through his servant overboard? You can’t
mess with this God. So in their desperation they do their best to row back to land. This is really
rebellion. But it is the typical response of the sinner who is being taught God’s truth. He tries to
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save his own skin, to get out of the situation through his own efforts. He thinks to himself – this
can’t be it. I will try harder. I will find my own way. The Hebrew is graphic here. They dig in
their oars with every muscle in their bodies.
You and I are capable of this too, aren’t we? Sometimes in your desperation, when God is
beginning to make it clear to you that He is determined to deal with your sins, you still don’t give
in. You can still try to get out of it on your own, to avoid the humbling process of confessing your
sins, and bowing beneath his holy anger. You can think – I will remove myself from the hand of
the living God. No you won’t. God won’t have it. He can bar every door, block every window,
and make sure you don’t have an inch of wiggle room.
That is precisely what God does. The sea only gets rougher, and these sailors realize that
Jonah’s solution is the only way out. There is no other hope. So once again, in their helplessness,
they pray. Look at verse 14. But this time, they are no longer praying each one to his own God.
This time they use the name of Jonah’s God. Literally the Hebrew starts their prayer like this: O
LORD, O Jehovah. God has through His servant Jonah given them a key that fits into the door of
prayer. Children, you can understand this. What happens when you have the wrong key? Will it
open the door? While my wife and I were moving, I came across some keys in my desk drawer. I
had no idea what they were for. I tried them on different locks. When none of them would open
anything, I threw them in the garbage. That is what these men now do with the names of their
own gods. They are tossed overboard. They have thrown these keys away, and now use the name
of Jehovah as the only key that opens the door.
Is this not rich instruction for us? This is the key that opens the door of access to God –
the name of Jehovah. Not my attempts to bargain with God, not my superstitious attempts to fool
God, not my desperately trying to hold my head above water. But the answer surely starts here.
In your helpless, with the weight of your sins pressing on your conscience, to say O LORD.
Listen to the words of their prayer, because the Spirit of the living God wants to teach us
some important truths. The sailors say – do not let us perish for this man’s life! The more they
learn, the more sensitive their conscience becomes, doesn’t it. If it were not for the fear of God
that has been instilled in them, you would think they would throw Jonah overboard in a heartbeat.
Jonah after all says that it is all his own fault. These men realize that taking another life is wrong.
Even to save their own! Would that God’s Spirit would produce this kind of conviction in our
country as part of the aftermath of hurricanes and other disasters.
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There is something else that becomes clear from their prayer – look at the last words of
verse 14. For thou O Lord hast done as it pleased thee. These men have learned about the
sovereignty of God. God’s will is the most important thing in the universe. God’s will must be
and shall be supreme! No one can deny God something once God sets his mind on it! How far
these men have come in their knowledge of the living God! But God’s Spirit is an outstanding
teacher – don’t we sing with the words of Psalm 119 that God’s word can convey truth to the
simplest minds?
What happens next surely is one of the most solemn scenes that has ever taken place at
sea. There they are on the heaving deck of the ship, with the fear of the one true living God
piercing their souls. Verse 15 says that they pick up Jonah – surely with fear and trembling – and
pitch him overboard. The moment Jonah hits the water, something happens. The waves die
down, as if a giant hand pressed a button, and turned them off. This summer, my wife and I spent
a day in a water park where they had a wave pool. Every so many minutes, you could jump in and
get tossed around. But as soon as they turned off the waves, the pool became calm. The living
God is so almighty over the wind and the waves, that the oceans of the world are as much in his
control as if they were his private wave pool. What a majestic God. This is a God of whom to
stand in awe.
That is precisely what the sailors do. The Lord converts the mariners not only by revealing
Himself to them, but He also:
II.
He teaches them to worship Him
These things go together don’t they? Realizing who God is, and worshipping Him with
awe? How can you not worship such a God? True conversion always produces worship. Because
you feel yourself to be small in God’s presence, and in awe of His power.
That is what the Spirit of God teaches these sailors. There may have been doubts in the
sailor’s hearts about if what Jonah was telling them was really the truth. They can doubt no more.
God has made it impossible to doubt. Jonah’s words and Jonah’s interpretation of the storm have
the unmistakable ring of truth, backed up by fact. You see their response in verse 16. Then the
men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice to the LORD, and made vows.
Let’s look at how their response gives every evidence of true conversion. In the first place,
it says that they fear the Lord. Do you see the progress? In verse 4 we read that they feared the
storm. In verse 10 that they feared Jonah’s sin. Now after the waves calm down, they, like Jonah,
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fear Jonah’s God – not just a little, but exceedingly!
What does this mean? Well for one thing, it involves awe for God’s majesty. They have a
healthy respect for God’s holiness. They recognize who God is, and respond on their faces. They
tremble. They realize that Jonah’s words mean that this God is not just Jonah’s God, but God of
all the earth, and therefore their God too. Striking, isn’t it how God’s discipline of one sinner can
make other sinners tremble? Once while preaching elsewhere, an elder told me that between the
services, a young man from the congregation had driven his car recklessly and crashed into
another car. He had tried to pass on a hill, and could not see what was coming. This elder took his
two teenage boys along to the scene of the crash, and said to them – this is what happens when
you drive like this. Do you think his boys learned anything? God’s discipline of Jonah does this
to the sailors. And it should send the same message to you. Sinning against this God is reckless
living.
However, there is more to this fear than terror. After all, it is not for nothing that this fear
of the Lord is aroused precisely after the waves are calmed down. The fear of the Lord in this
verse involves a childlike confidence in God’s mercy. These sailors can only fear the Lord rightly
because they have seen something of this mercy. In what? They are not like you and I. You and I
know what happened to Jonah – he was also shown mercy. But to the best of their knowledge,
Jonah died in the waves.
In what did they see God’s mercy? Well, in two things. For one, in the storm. God’s aim
was so perfect, that the storm was bad enough to make them despair, but just not quite bad enough
to send the boat straight to the bottom. Why would God take such perfect aim? If God wanted to
kill them, if God was vengeful, he would have sent the whole lot down together. God’s will is
supreme – have they not said in their prayers that God does precisely what pleases Him?
Obviously it pleases him to spare their lives!
There is another evidence of God’s goodness to them. God has heard their prayers. They
cried out to him – O Lord. Do not let us die because of him. God heard their prayer. It is this
goodness and mercy of God that makes them fear Him. Their awe at his majesty is mixed with the
amazed realization that He is merciful! This is why the calm only increases their fear of the Lord!
Really, the fear of the Lord is just another word for faith, for trust in God. That is why they now
offer a sacrifice to the Lord.
What about you and I? We know unspeakably more than the sailors. We know more than
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even Jonah knew. We know in some measure the lengths and depths and breadths of God’s
delight in salvation. Look at the connections. The sailors cried out O Lord, O Jehovah! We can
cry out O Lord Jesus – which name literally means Jehovah’s salvation! O Lord Jesus, have
mercy on us sinners, and do not let us perish!
The Lord reveals Himself in this chapter of His word as the majestic holy one who does
what pleases him – and what pleases Him is salvation for sinners. That is why this is called the
day of grace. That is why this pulpit is not the judgment seat of the courtroom, but the microphone
of God’s ambassadors of peace, proclaiming the gospel of the Lord Jesus who died for sinners, so
that they can be set free.
Like Jonah, Jesus Christ stood before the storms of God’s wrath. Unlike Jonah, Jesus
Christ was not being confronted with his own sins. Like Jonah, Jesus Christ knew the solution –
throw me into the waves of God’s wrath, and the storm will be calm for you. Unlike Jonah, Jesus
Christ also prayed as he was faced with the storms of God’s wrath – O Lord, take me. Let them
go free. O Lord, thy will be done! This same Jesus Christ still prays in heaven. O Lord, grant
that every sinner who is crushed by the load of his guilt, and who comes in humble honest
repentance, pleading my name and my cross, may find forgiveness! O Lord, let them find mercy.
O Lord, grant that the roar of their conscience, awakened by the majesty of God, might find peace
by being sprinkled with my blood! Will God not surely hear His prayers?
There is one last element to the worship that the Lord teaches these sailors. Verse 16 says
that they took vows. This is not the foxhole prayer or vow all over again. Foxhole vows are born
out of a sense of desperation. These vows are born of thanksgiving. Foxhole vows are bargaining
chips that attempt to escape God’s will. These vows are an act of worship in which they surrender
their lives to doing the will of this God. God has used Jonah, a crooked stick, to strike a very
straight blow.
What about your vows? If you taste God’s mercy, should you not out of thankfulness
devote your whole life to God? Will your submission to God take place not only in the storms,
but in the calm after the storms? This is the test of true conversion, isn’t it? Who are the children
of God? Those and only those who fear the Lord. Those and only those who have awe for God
awakened in their hearts. Those and only those whose conscience accuses them of deserving
God’s wrath in hell. Those and only those who no longer try superstitious attempts to escape God.
Those and only those who get honest before God. Those and only those who find in Christ rich
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reasons to approach God with a childlike confidence in His grace. Those and only those who out
of a sense of thanksgiving say – I want to devote my whole life to serving this God! Has the Lord
taught you these things? Amen.
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