(Audio and Text)
Title: Sleeping in the Storm
But the Lord sent out a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was about to be broken up.
Then the mariners were afraid; and every man cried out to his god, and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep.
So the captain came to him, and said to him, “What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God; perhaps your God will consider us, so that we may not perish.”
This was sudden, not gradual.
The Sailors were afraid, they knew this type of sudden storm was not normal.
The fear caused, “every man to cry out to his God.” (Crisis of faith)
I’m not saying there is anything wrong with this. If I was on this boat, you’d better believe I’d be crying out to Jesus, stat!
But something does come to mind here. Are the cries of these sailors, crying out to false Gods, going to do them any more good than the cries of prophets of Baal to call down fire on their offering?
Then why are we allowing ourselves to be so conditioned to caution when talking about the reality that there is only one God who saves us?
Why are we so polite, thinking that politeness and respect are the same thing?
If a train is bearing down on my son as he foolishly walks along the train tracks, and I yell at him to MOVE! And he replies, “Hey Dad, you just have to respect my choices.”
My response will be several expletives, followed by a forceable removing him from the train tracks.
And when he says, “Dad, why couldn’t you just respect my decision?”
I will say, “Because I love you too much to leave you too much to leave you to your own foolishness, stupid!”
(I see some of you have had this conversation with God before.)
Getting back to our story, though…think of the desperation of THESE men to go down and wake Jonah up. In order for them to call on Jonah, what can we conclude about THEIR faith in THEIR gods?
(Another way to think of it…what would it take, if you were on this ship, for you to ask a Muslim to call on Allah or a Hindu to call on Brahman?)
Frankly, I’d just accept it was God’s will for me to die, then insult him by calling on false God out of panic and desperation.
No circumstance out there is going to change what he has changed in me in here…and I welcome all challenges.
Great Truth: Real faith is revealed in fire and famine, not in blessing and abundance.
This is why followers of the health and wealth ministry tend to be so immature. They don’t WANT difficulty, they see it as a lack of God’s blessing. I see it as a sign of his presence.
If Loree can walk through cancer, and be stronger in Faith, then CANCER is a blessing from God.
Lord, let me suffer ANYTHING if only I can be drawn closer to you.
We see, in just a few short lines of verse, that both these sailor’s Gods and their faith in them is wanting.
Meanwhile Jonah is asleep. (This is the First of several Parallels with Jesus we will see in the story of Jesus.)
But they don’t go to Jonah right away, first they start shedding weight and throwing stuff overboard. (Crisis of Pragmatism).
If you are driving down an icy road and start to slide, you don’t just yell, “Jesus save me!” You hit the brakes, maybe while screaming, but you do what you know to do, what wisdom tells you to do, to save yourself, right?
These men are trained sailors, they know that if they shed enough weight, they may have a chance to survive this catastrophe. Lighten the ship, it may not run aground, we may have a chance.
But after some time, (we don’t know for certain how long), the captain himself wakes up this “sleeper” (and quite an apt title for Jonah at this point, is it not?) and says, “Hey call on YOUR God (I’m willing to try anything), you may be willing to sleep through this and die, but WE ARE NOT!”
There is a sense for the captain, and the rest of the ship, that this is entire event is supernatural…is from God…and therefore they sense it is personal. (And they right!)
Everyone else has tried to call their God, and no one is picking up…what about this foreigner sleeping in the hold…could it be because of him. We have nothing to lose except our lives, we might as well give it a shot.
And that is it, my friends…that is place where people will come to Jesus. When they realize they have nothing left to lose, except their lives. For most people, this is not the first time they hear the Gospel. For most people it’s after they have heard the Gospel, perhaps several times (like yours truly) and become broken by the realization that everything else they have tried to fill their lives with, false Gods, gods of money, sex, power, influence, reputation, medication, meditation, warm fuzzies, karma, ritual, discipline…when all these things fail them, then they are ready to have their hearts pieced, broken, and healed by the one true savior to mankind.
I don’t want to give too much of this away, because we will deal with it in spades in the coming weeks, but I would be willing to be that a lot of the men on this ship, would say, “That was the most important day of my life, and that storm was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
And let’s close by focusing on the exact words of the captain as he wakes Jonah up from his slumber:
“..perhaps your God will consider us, so that we may not perish.”
If we look really closely at the narrative here, we see something perhaps in Jonah’s character that is striking. In our first two weeks of studying Jonah, we have already seen how and why he’s dead set against Nineveh receiving the word of the Lord, and having a chance to repent…and we know why. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, they were enemies, and a constant threat to Israel, and in a few years they would indeed capture the Northern Kingdom of Israel.
But what about these men on this ship? Does Jonah “mind” if they come to know his Lord?
Does he not spare them by confessing that he is indeed the reason all their lives are at stake? (We will look more at how this unfolds in the coming weeks…)
But what do we learn about Jonah’s position on foreigners coming to know the one true God?
Answer: He’s not against all Gentiles coming to the faith, just certain Gentiles he doesn’t like.
Can we think of any parallels that exist in American Christian Culture today?
Like Jonah, how many of us are sleeping in the storm? We have access to God by his grace. We have the ability to share this God with them. They are in danger of dying…and we are curled up in a ball, warm, cozy, comfortable, and fast asleep…
(Pray/Q-A)