This is the original to view the later abridged version, click here: https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2023/10/jonah-1-everything-is-under-control.html
I must admit that I am a fan of Leo Tolstoy, both his epic novels like War and Peace (probably my all-time favourite book) and Anna Karenina but also some of his religious writings like Confession. I have some quotes to share today from Tolstoy:
q Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
q All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
q It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
q Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority shares in it.
q If you want to be happy, be [happy].
Here are a couple more quotes by Tolstoy and others as well:
q Tolstoy: To get rid of an enemy one must love him.
q Shakespeare: An overflow of good converts to bad.
q Tolstoy: Shakespeare is repulsive and tedious
q Tolstoy: God is the same everywhere.
q Nietzsche: God is dead
q Tolstoy: Nietzsche [is] stupid and abnormal
q History: God is alive; Nietzsche is dead.
Of the aforementioned quotes the one that most fits with one of the major themes of Jonah is Tolstoy’s, “To get rid of an enemy one must love him.” Next week we will look more directly at the theme of God’s grace in the book of Jonah. This week we are going to look at God’s sovereignty as portrayed especially in the first 2 chapters of Jonah.[1] We cannot thwart God (cf. TSA docs 6&7). Jonah 1:1-3:
The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD.
Picture this: God has told His prophet Jonah to go and do something. God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh but Jonah – to get away – runs to the sea and gets on a boat. Nineveh is landlocked. That is like if, when we were living in Vancouver, God calls Susan the girls and I to Saskatchewan and we jump on a ferryboat to Japan. This isn’t just saying were not going to go. This is running in the opposite direction. If we look at the map here, we will notice that Jonah runs to the sea and hops on a ship to get as far away from Nineveh as he possibly can, to the opposite end of the Mediterranean Sea.[2]
God is good though. He still has everything under control. Jonah isn’t more powerful than God. He can’t thwart God’s salvation (cf. TSA doc. 6). Verses 4-7:
Then the LORD sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us, and we will not perish.” Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.
Jonah hops on the boat and he falls asleep. He may even have passed out.[3] I’m from an island in the Pacific, Vancouver Island; has anyone here ever been out on the open ocean? Even if you don’t get caught in a storm, it can be really something. You know those little anti-seasickness patches that people put behind their ears? You may have noticed them: sometimes people put them on when they are flying on an aero plane so that they don’t get sick. They didn’t have those back then in the 8th Century BCE. And in all likelihood Jonah had never been on a sea-going vessel before.[4] And the seas are so bad now in our text that even the experienced crew is afraid. They are scared for their lives. They are scared to death. They are tossing everything overboard that they don’t absolutely need. Jonah isn’t. Jonah is sleeping. Jonah is beneath deck. Jonah isn’t helping at all and this is an ‘all hands on deck’ situation. Everyone is working and everyone is praying – most of these people would probably be praying to the Phoenician gods but if any of the crew is from elsewhere they would be calling on their gods too.[5] You’ve heard the expression, ‘no one is an atheist in a foxhole’ – this may not be true but this is certainly one of those 'foxhole' type situations. Everyone is praying. Everyone is working, everyone except Jonah. The Captain himself comes and finds Jonah and says, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us, and we will not perish.” Presumably Jonah does do this but maybe he doesn’t. Either way God is good. He still has everything under control. Jonah isn’t more powerful than God. He can’t thwart God’s salvation here.
The people pray to their gods and roll the holy dice; they cast the sacred lots to try to figure out why all of this is happening: whose fault is it? And guess who the lot names? The lot names Jonah. You don’t think that is a coincidence do you? The sailors don’t; Jonah doesn’t. God reveals to everyone present who and what the problem is. God is good. He still has everything under control. Jonah isn’t more powerful than God. He can’t thwart God’s salvation. The pagans on this boat, however, who do not yet know the LORD, are no less afraid. Verse 8-11:
So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”
He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.”
This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the LORD, because he had already told them so.) The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”
These people are worried. These people may even be a little bit angry. God has revealed to them through the lot and Jonah has confirmed to them through a confession, that he is to blame because Jonah is blatantly defying God. Jonah has told them that he is intentionally doing the opposite of what God has told him to do. Even though Jonah knows God, even though Jonah has served God, even though Jonah has worked for LORD as a prophet of God, God gives him this assignment and Jonah says in effect, “No, I quit!” Can you imagine?
Can you imagine if you are a non-unionized worker and your boss, your employer gives you an important task to do and you just say, “No thanks I think I’ll take my holidays instead”? Can you imagine if you are a courier and your boss gives you this package and says, “You need to get this package to Regina in 3 hours or everyone will die”? Can you imagine then if instead of driving to Regina you hop on the next Greyhound bus to Medicine Hat (in the opposite direction). This is in essence what Jonah is doing.
God is good though. He still has everything under control. Jonah isn’t more powerful than God. He can’t thwart God’s salvation but this is in essence what Jonah is attempting here. He doesn’t want any part of pointing the Ninevites to salvation. The boat -and all of the people on it- it is being tossed around in the storm and people are franticly praying and working to keep it afloat. They are terrified. They ask of Jonah, “What have you done?” The sea is getting rougher and rougher. They ask him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?” They are terrified but God is good though. He still has everything under control. Jonah isn’t more powerful than God. He can’t thwart God’s salvation, neither for the sailors nor for the Ninevites. Though that doesn’t necessarily stop the sailors from worrying, nor does it necessarily stop Jonah from trying to quit his job, from trying to shirk his responsibilities, from trying to avoid at all costs his God-given mission. Verses 12-15a:
“Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.” Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before.
Then they cried to the LORD, “O LORD, please do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, O LORD, have done as you pleased.” Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard…
Now there are a couple of things worth remembering here. What is the task, the job that God has given Jonah to do? He has told Jonah to go to Nineveh. What does Jonah do in response? He so much doesn’t want to do this job that he runs in the opposite direction. Now, imagine this scene that we are looking at here. Everyone with Jonah asks him, “Since you are responsible for this calamity by not obeying God, what can we do?”
“Kill me” is basically Jonah’s answer when he tells them to throw him overboard. Jonah, if he is anything like most Israelites of his day and age, Jonah can’t swim. Israel is not a seafaring country. Again, I grew up on Vancouver Island. I am a kayaker and I am a certified SCUBA diver. Susan was a certified lifeguard and I don’t imagine that either of us could and I know that neither of us would want to have to try to swim for safety through a storm of this magnitude and Jonah, in all probability, can’t even swim. The strangers on the boat are asking what they should do to appease his God and Jonah says, “You should kill me.” Now, God is good though. He still has everything under control. Jonah isn’t more powerful than God. He can’t thwart God’s salvation.
This doesn’t stop Jonah’s request for the sailors to throw him overboard though. Jonah knows very well that God generally discourages human sacrifice (which is basicallly what this would be).[6] At some points in the Bible it even says that God hates human sacrifice (Leviticus 18:21, 20:1-5; Deuteronomy 12:31; 2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 7:31-32, 19:5-6; Ezekiel 16:20-21, 20:31). Jonah would know this. Jonah, who has been born and raised as a child of God; Jonah, who knows the Lord; Jonah, who knows the scriptures; Jonah, even in the midst of this terrible storm with all these other people’s lives on the line; Jonah, I submit, is still here intentionally defying the living God![7] God has told Jonah to go to Nineveh and Jonah hates this commission so much, Jonah hates the idea that God would use him to save the Ninevites so much that Jonah would rather die than do what God has told him to do. Can you imagine? Now, God is good though. He still has everything under control. Jonah isn’t more powerful than God. He can’t thwart God’s salvation but can you imagine?
This past weekend, many of you know that when we were in Winnipeg for Susan’s convocation, Heather, our baby, had a full seizure. It wasn’t just a little one. She was sleeping in my arms in a pew with Rebecca and Sarah-Grace beside us near the back of the church. All of a sudden she starts shaking for about a minute or more. Her eyes roll back in her head. I grab her and head to the door of the church where I know the ushers will be and I tell my older daughters to come with me. They come with me but not too close; they are scared. I ask one person specifically to get a nurse or a doctor from the congregation; I ask another person specifically –twice- to call us an ambulance. I even hand her my phone. She refuses. She refuses to call for help. I have never seen anything quite like this before. My baby is turning blue and she doesn’t call for help. She even hands me my phone back. Now, I imagine that she panicked; however, at the same time as she is not calling the ambulance someone else is trying to comfort me by telling me not to worry but I am looking down at my baby daughter turning pale; I am looking down at my baby daughter turning blue; I am looking down at my baby daughter gasping for air; I am looking down at my baby daughter unconscious and in those very few seconds it seems like I can’t get this person to even call an ambulance to help her. I can’t tell you the reflexive emotions that were aroused in me as someone –even though I am sure it was just that they were panicking – refused to help someone else in serious need. Now, God is good though. He still has everything under control but picture what I am feeling in that moment.
This must be a similar feeling to what God, the sailors, or even we reading this story centuries later, could have towards Jonah. Here is a man who has been told to help save not only one small child but to bring this news of salvation to a great city of many small children, their brothers, their sisters, their mothers, their fathers, their grandparents, their neighbours; and instead of calling the divine ambulance, Jonah hands the phone back to God, and says, “I’m not going to make the call.” Not only that. Jonah, by asking the sailors to throw him overboard, Jonah says, “I would rather die than to help you save those people, God.” Can you imagine? God’s children in the ancient pagan city of Nineveh are about to die and He asks Jonah to point them to salvation and Jonah says, “I would rather die than help You save them, God.” Now, God is good. He still has everything under control. Jonah isn’t more powerful than God. He can’t thwart God’s salvation.
And in our situation from the other weekend, again I don’t attribute any malice to the person who refused to call the ambulance for us. She was incapable of helping; she panicked: she was useless. The point is that God saved Heather regardless of that girl’s inaction. God provided someone else to call an ambulance; God provided someone with some sort of medical training to be with us; God provided someone to pray with me and for Heather; God provided Dusty and Laurie Sauder to look after our older daughters, Rebecca and Sarah-Grace, while we were in the hospital with our baby; God provided Dr. Burke to make special arrangements even for Susan’s graduation. God provided so many great and caring people in that building and that congregation – including that person who panicked, I am sure – God provided so many great and caring people who prayed for Susan, the girls, and I, and who prayed for Heather’s salvation in the here and now.
As God provided for Heather, so God provided also for the pagan sailors on that ship in that storm on that day in our text and, as we will see next week, God also provided for those many small children in the great big city of Nineveh as well. Verses 15-17:
Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. At this the men greatly feared the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows to him. But the LORD provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.
God saved the sailors. The raging sea grew calm and they were saved and there is more than that to this here as well. You will notice that it says that these men, the sailors, greatly feared the LORD. The word LORD is written all in capital letters. Whenever you see LORD written like this in English, in Hebrew it is YHWH; the tetragrammaton; YHWH; it is God’s Devine name. These sailors aren’t praising the same false gods at the end of this adventure that they were at the beginning. They are now praising YHWH, the one true God: the God of heaven and the God of earth. They are saved and they are praising the LORD. God saved the sailors.
God also saved Jonah but God did not save Jonah from doing the work that Jonah is supposed to do. Jonah still has to deliver God’s message of salvation to the children of Nineveh. You could even say that when He sent the giant fish, God didn’t let Jonah of the hook. The fish, unlike Jonah, swallowed his responsibilities hook, line, and sinker.
In Chapter 2 then - we won’t read all again now - Jonah prays to God for salvation. Jonah, like the sailors now, Jonah knows that salvation is from the LORD. He prays for salvation and salvation he gets. Jonah 2:10-3:3a records this:
And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh.
God did not give up on Nineveh. God did not give up on the sailors. God did not give up on Jonah and God will not give up on us. As bad as everything can get in our lives: when the storms kick up, when everyone around us seems to be panicking, when it looks like all those who are around us are going to perish, when we are caught in the midst of trouble, God is good. He still has everything under control. We aren’t more powerful than God. We can’t thwart God’s provided salvation. Even after maybe we have disobeyed or even defied God like Jonah did in today’s story - as long as we still have breath in our body there is still time for us to repent, there is still time for us to turn, there is still time for us to dial that phone of Salvation which Christ provided between the cross and the empty tomb (cf. TSA docs 6&7). As long as we have breath in our body, even if thus far we have turned and run the opposite direction from God, as long as we have breath in our body, we can still repent, we can still return to Him and we can still be a part of His salvation both now and forever more.
Let us pray.
---
[1] R.B.Y. Scott, "The Sign of Jonah: An Interpretation," Interpretation: a Journal of Bible and Theology Vol. 19 no. 1, ed. Balmer H. Kelly (Union Theological Seminary: Virginia, January 1965): 16. Identifies three thematic movements in Jonah of which God’s sovereignty is the first.
[2] Donald J. Wiseman, T. Desmond Alexander, and Bruce K Waltke: Obadiah, Jonah and Micah: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1988 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 26), S. 65
[3] H. L. Ellison, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM: Jonah/Exposition of Jonah/I. The Disobedient Prophet (1:1-2:10)/B. The Storm (1:4-6), Book Version: 4.0.2
[4] H. L. Ellison, Pradis The Expositor's Bible Commentary, CD-ROM: Jonah/Exposition of Jonah/I. The Disobedient Prophet (1:1-2:10)/C. Jonah's Responsibility (1:7-10), Book Version: 4.0.2
[5] H. L. Ellison, Pradis The Expositor's Bible Commentary, CD-ROM: Jonah/Exposition of Jonah/I. The Disobedient Prophet (1:1-2:10)/ B. The Storm (1:4-6), Book Version: 4.0.2
[6] R.B.Y. Scott, "The Sign of Jonah: An Interpretation," Interpretation: a Journal of Bible and Theology, Vol. 19 no. 1, ed. Balmer H. Kelly (Union Theological Seminary: Virginia, January 1965): 16.
[7] cf. Donald J. Wiseman, T. Desmond Alexander, and Bruce K Waltke: Obadiah, Jonah and Micah: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1988 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 26), S.
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