The God Who Saves The Godless

Jonah Series | 1:12-17 | Pastor Duane Smets

This an exegetical sermon of Jonah 1:12-17 looking at human tendencies to avoid God and not be honest with ourselves. The sermon pays special attention to how God reaches out and saves both those who are Godless because they don’t know who God is and how God saves those who may feel as though they have lost their God. This sermon was originally preached on March 13th, 2011 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.

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The Resolved Church
Pastor Duane Smets
March 13th, 2010

The Book of Jonah | The God Who Saves The Godless | 1:12-17
I. God’s Justice
  A. The Hurling & The Rowing: Helplessly Avoiding God (v11-13)
  B. The Condition & The Confession: Honestly Admitting to God (v12-14)
II. God’s Grace
  A. Calms the Storm: God Saves Godless Pagans (v15)
  B. Commands a Fish: God Saves Godless Prophets (v17)
  C. Causes Worship: God Saves All Kinds of People (v16 & 2:1)

Introduction

Good morning everyone. My name is Duane if you don’t know me, I’m one of the pastors here under our great head pastor Jesus. If you’re just now joining us, we’ve been studying the book of Jonah and this is our third week into it.

We left off last week in the middle of a great storm. So let me first kind of repaint the scene for us and then we’ll pick up the text and read the verses we’re going over today. Sound good?

So what’s up is we’ve got this dude named Jonah. He’s a prophet of God, that’s his job. But he gets a job assignment he doesn’t like, to go preach to some people who killed a bunch of his friends and family. So instead of obeying God and doing what God asked him to do he hardens his heart and hires a ship and it’s crew to get as far away as he possibly can. He attempts to go to the literal end of the earth of that day.

But some time after he sets off on this journey God hurls down a mighty storm on the sea. It’s such a great and ferocious storm that even the experienced sailors don’t know what to do. At first they’re trying to hurl cargo off the ship and when that doesn’t work they do what everyone does when you realize you’re about to die. They start praying. They’re not super religious so they start calling out to any and every god they can think of. They go get Jonah who’s avoiding the whole thing and yell at him to get up and start praying to his God. But to no avail. When that doesn’t work they start doing the next thing everyone does when they’re about to die, they start trying to think of what or who someone did to make God so mad. They roll some light and dark colored dice and begin to start taking turns fessing up their junk but out of all the crew, Jonah’s dice are the only ones which turn up guilty.

At this point in the story Jonah is forced to come clean and he tells them about the LORD, YHWH, the God of the Bible who made and rules over everything and Jonah tells them how God asked him to do something and how Jonah instead fled. In response to this the crew and their captain start really freaking out because now it’s clear this storm isn’t just going to go away. God’s mad at Jonah. So they turn to him and ask him, “What are we to do?”

And that’s where we left off. I know it was kind of mean. Sort of like hitting pause in the middle of high suspense action scene in a movie and then going to the bathroom. Someone really ought to do a movie of the story of Jonah and not just some lame Veggietales version.

Okay, so let’s pick up the text at verse 11 and we’ll work through and read to the end of the chapter today. (read Jonah 1:11-17 and pray).

Alright, so basically the two big themes we’re going to look at today is how we deal with God’s justice and how God shows us grace.

I. God’s Justice

A. The Hurling & The Rowing: Helplessly Avoiding God (v11-13)

The first thing I want us to look at this morning is Jonah’s conversation with the sailors and what he says to them when they ask him what to do. So let’s talk about “The Hurling & The Rowing.”

In verse 11 Jonah quickly moves from being the culprit to the expert. One minute the sailors turn from being hysterically upset at Jonah and the next they are left with no other option but to turn to him for help because God’s hurling of the storm isn’t relenting. Notice in the last part of verse 11 it says “the sea grew more and more tempestuous.”

I was reading and re-reading this story several times this week and one of the dangers you fall into in working with the Bible and really dissecting it and analyzing what’s there is you can miss the the full energy and emotion of this scene. I mean they are in the middle of a violent storm…the wind is howling, rain is plummeting down on the deck of the boat, the ship is rocking back and forth, it’s hard to hold your footing. It’s loud!

It’s not just like they took a time out and sat down and had a nice theological discussion over tea. This is intense! So when verse 12 comes you’ve got to imagine it. Jonah is shouting, “Hurl me into the sea and then God will stop hurling this storm…It’s my fault, it’s me he’s after, throw me overboard and you’ll be saved!”

But how do the sailors respond? They don’t like that idea. They may have accepted that there was a God like Jonah said who made heaven and earth and maybe he’s even the only God…but they were not yet convinced that giving Jonah to God would make the storm stop.

Now there’s a couple interesting things here. One, Jonah is actually doing his job here as a prophet. He started back in verse 9 when he told the sailors who God was. Now here in verse 12 he prophesies. Jonah is a good Jew. He understands some things. He knew the principle of Romans 3:23 which says the wages or the cost of sin is death. The whole Jewish sacrificial system was based on this principle. When you sin, you pay a sacrifice of blood and God in his grace allowed animal’s blood to take the place of human blood. This showed that God is holy and that sin is serious.

Jonah here really acts like a prophet for the first time in the book. He tells them the truth. He tells it like it is. And he predicts the future. You sacrifice me, the sea will calm.

We’ll talk about Jonah in a minute but let’s zone in the sailors here. Rather than responding, listening, believing and following Jonah’s words they resist…at least at first. Check it out. Verse 13, “Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them.” Their rowing is no match for God’s mighty hurling.

This is the second thing I think is interesting about this scene…the sailor’s response to the prophet. It’s a picture of so many of us in what happens to us spiritually. Many of us are like the sailors. Things happen in life, it has the effect of sort of waking up your spiritual senses. You become interested and maybe even partially open to the idea of God. But then when you realize what it’s going to cost you to really follow him…you back off.

Then something happens. Usually before whatever happens to bring you to the place where you’re interested in spiritual things…at least if you’re kind of like these guys…didn’t grow up Christian at all, no religious background really whatsoever. If you’re like these guys you really didn’t think you had any kind of problem or needed any kind of saving. Now you do!

But instead of turning to God to save you, you start trying to save yourself. You turn to and make up you own self-salvation project. And this looks different for all different people. For some it’s exercise. You realize your life sucks and is out of whack and so you figure I’ll save it by getting in shape and eating better. For some it’s financial. You realize money has wrecked you so you figure you’ll save your life by getting a new job, a better career and you’ll handle your money different. For some it’s moral. You realize you’ve just been doing a bunch of “bad things” so now you figure you’ll just stop and then you’ll be happy and saved. For some it’s a new relationship, new friends, a new hobby, a new house, a new outlook…it could be a hundred other things.

But here’s what they all have in common…they’re all at their root self-salvation projects and every one looks away from the Word of God and dependance on God to save you and instead look to yourself and your own efforts.

For the sailors…they tried rowing. But it doesn’t work. Self-salvation projects never work. Or when they do, like say you actually run on your new treadmill, you find out your heart is still just as jacked up and you still need saving.

Here’s the principle, we are helpless at avoiding God. You will never get to a point in your life when you are not in need of God. No matter how hard you try, everything, always, will consistently boil down to your need for God and for him to save you!

I’ll move on to our second point, but before I do…let me just ask, are you trying to avoid the God issue in your life thinking you can just fix yourself? Let me just tell you, you can’t. What you need to do is hurl yourself into the sea and trust God to save you.

B. The Condition & The Confession: Honestly Admitting to God (v12-14)

Okay, second point, “The Condition & The Confession: Honestly Admitting to God.” We’ve got two conditions and two confessions here. We basically just talked about the sailors condition. Now let’s talk about Jonah’s before we go back to the sailors confession.

So Jonah. He’s a marked man. God has him marked. He’s after him. It’s one of the great mysteries of the Bible…why God chooses to set his love upon certain people and pursue them ferociously. When God has chosen to love you he will stop at nothing in order to bring us to the point where we are humbled and confess him and entrust ourselves to him…even if it means churning up a whole storm to get it done.

Jonah here knows his condition. There’s no question. He told the sailors back in verse 10 that he was fleeing from God. It’s why verse 12 is just huge. Now some have debated about whether Jonah is being selfish here and still trying to get away from God. But I just don’t think so, I think it takes a lot of humility and compassion to be able to say what he does in verse 12.

Look at it again, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.” Wow! Such brutal honestly and really such love for the life of these sailors, that Jonah is willing to give up his own life in order to save them.

Here’s the thing…I’ll just straight out be real you. I don’t think many of you…wait, let me include myself…I don’t think many of us are that honest with ourselves. I don’t think we like taking responsibility for our own junk. I don’t think we like admitting fault. I think we like to thing of ourselves better than we actually are and I think we like to blame situations, other people and God for all our mistakes.

When Jonah says, “I know it is because of me…” Those are heavy words. Those are big words. To say it’s my fault. It’s me. I’m jacked up. To truly confess sin. To truly repent.

I got an email this week from one in our church talking about what God was doing in his heart and life through being a part of us. I think it captures what I’m talking about in a good way. Let me read part of it to you.

“I grew up in an environment where sin was to be avoided, hidden, and certainly not discussed. Whatever it was that you did, struggled with, or questioned was not something to be brought out in the open; almost as if it didn’t exist and the better you were and keeping it hidden, the better the chance that it would disappear or at least be forgotten. So in a strange way, I’ve found it mildly liberating to be a part of a community where sins, both past a current, are brought out into the open and shared without fear of being judged or found out. Being a sinner with nowhere to turn and without a cure is difficult and depressing. My depravity, the corruption of my heart, my inability to do anything that pleases God; all these truths have been evident to me for as long as I can remember…(but what is new for me is finding out) I’m not the only one in the church who needs a savior (and receiving) grace and acceptance.”

That’s so good. You see some of you think church, or this or that is the problem and if that just got fixed then things would be better. But none of those things are the issue…it’s you, you’re the issue. Some of you think you know all the right stuff, you’ve got the head knowledge…but the truth you know your heart doesn’t really believe it…and you can’t handle admitting it. Do you know how to repent? Not just admit when you did something bad, but recognize the sin in your heart? We’ve got to learn how to exegete our hearts and not just biblical text!

Now there’s something cool here in what happens with Jonah and the sailors and it’s similar to the thing that got mentioned in the portion of that email I read you. It’s that when you come to a place where you’re willing to admit your own jacked up-ness what it automatically does is give you compassion for others because you’re not looking down on them anymore. Everyone is literally in Jonah’s case…in the same boat.

Once Jonah admits his own sin, he wants to save the sailors. Once we all admit we’re sinners whom God is working in and saving then we get liberated to actually open up with one another and we’re able to actually extend grace and acceptance for one another. This the communal aspect of the gospel. You see the church isn’t supposed to be a country club of a bunch of people who have it all together. It’s meant to be much more like a hospital because we’re all sick and wounded and need help and healing.

Alright…so Jonah confesses then in verse 14 the sailors do. Their confession is like but unlike Jonah’s. It’s like Jonah’s because they openly and honestly admit their condition. It’s unlike Jonah’s because they do it before God.

Here’s what’s up. Look at it, verse 14, “Therefore they called out to the LORD, “O LORD, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O LORD, have done as it pleased you.” This is big. They call God by his self-given name, YHWH, which we read in all capitals as LORD. This is big because they are acknowledging God as the true God and calling on his name for the first time. Their confession here is a conversion.

They don’t want to be held guilty for Jonah’s death but they realize their rowing is doing nothing and God has announced the verdict by increasing the violence of the storm. Jonah is guilty and what God wants, what is going to “please” him is by hurling Jonah overboard.

I’ll say this and then we’ll move on to our next point. It very well may be that some of you have never really called on the name of the LORD or at least for a long time. You may use God’s name, sing about him, talk about him and even called yourself a Christian…but you never really…I mean really say from the depth of your soul, “You are my God and I trust in you!”

Acts 2:21 says, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Some of you need to call on the name of the Lord today. May God grant that grace.

Well, let’s move on and look at how God grants grace and mercy to both Jonah and the sailors and what that means for us.

II. God’s Grace

A. Calms the Storm: God Saves Godless Pagans (v15)

First we see God granting grace by saving these random pagan sailors who really knew nothing about God until this whole Jonah and the storm ordeal. The storm is really a blessing in disguise for them. Verse 15, what a moment this must have been, “they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.”

The text here gives the impression that the ceasing was almost immediate. The repeated and contrasting use of the word “hurl” is not unintentional. They hurl Jonah overboard and God quits hurling the storm and they’re saved.

Their reaction is recorded in verse 16, “then the men feared the LORD exceedingly.” Back in verse 10 they were “exceedingly afraid” and now they “fear exceedingly.” But there’s a shift because earlier their fear is a fear of terror, they think they might die. Now it’s a fear of awe, reverence, respect and honor.

I think Herman Melville in Moby Dick captures the sense here well. He says “the profound calm (after the storm) …carries more true terror than any other aspect of the whole dangerous affair…All men live enveloped in whales lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.”

The men here, the sailors are simply stunned. The sea is now calm like a glassy lake. Can you imagine what it was like? What would you think? What would be your reaction? The sailors truly realize in that moment that it is God who grants life and death and they are forever changed into a life of fear and worship of God.

They don’t get upset at God at this point and tell God it wasn’t fair that they got caught up in the storm just because of Jonah. No, they fear. You see sometimes you end up in a sticky spot in life that in large had to do with someone else’s sin that effected you. I know, some of you have gone through some really gnarly stuff.

But here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter so much about the why of what happened but how you respond. Do you respond in the fear and worship of the LORD or do you respond in bitterness and anger against the LORD?

For the sailors, they came into this story without God, Godless and they leave the story now knowing God. Sometimes people who have just been through a lot will ask me why they had to go through what they went through and my response is always something like…I don’t fully know, but I do know this…God knew exactly what you needed and that there was probably no other way for you and who you uniquely are to learn what you need to learn. If you didn’t go through what you did, you would never truly have the same sense of God’s love and grace in you now have because you went through what you did.

B. Commands a Fish: God Saves Godless Prophets (v17)

How about Jonah? Where is he at in all of this in the story? Pretty much he’s lost his God. In verse 12, he the one who tells the men to throw him out. He figures he’s done and that’s the end…time to pay up. I imagine Jonah felt pretty useless, he’s of no more use to God. Figures he lost his status and position of favor being in God’s service as a prophet long ago. And he probably figures God doesn’t love or care about him anymore, he just wants him dead. I mean really. Jonah has lost his God and he becomes both a spiritual and literal cast away.

Have any of you ever felt like that? Like you’re just damaged goods? Like you’ve blown it so hard that there’s no way God could ever love you again. I’m pretty sure that’s Jonah at this point. When they threw him overboard I’m guessing he didn’t even try and fight it or swim…but just closed his eyes, let himself go limp and sink down, down and down…Then God commands a fish to save his Godless prophet!

Verse 17, “And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.”

Now this is the point when many start to dismiss this story as just being fantasy, a mere fairy tale. We’ve already talked about miracles when we first started the book, so I’m not going to go into all that. Basically if there is a God then he can do miracles because he’s the one who made the rules of nature and reserves the right to break ‘em.

Now some have speculated that maybe this was a sperm whale, a whale shark, or the white shark who all get big enough to house a full grown man, some of these fish are the size of a semi truck with a trailer. There are actually even reports of that very thing happening to a guy a couple hundred years ago. Or there’s the option it was some other unknown fish as marine biologist tell us there are waters so deep we don’t even know what lives down there or how big it is.

But the real miracle here isn’t the fish. It’s this little word at the beginning of verse 17, “appointed.” Do you see it? It’s “manah” in the Hebrew, which here in it’s form means to prepare, appoint, ordain, or determine. That’s the crazy thing here because what the Bible is alluding to here is that this was God’s plan all along to have Jonah thrown overboard and when he was God had his fish ready to snatch him up.

All of God’s creation is at his command and God commands the fish to be there by the boat ahead of time and at just the right moment…as Jonah is sinking, God says, “Okay, now! And has the fish swallow Jonah whole!”

The fish is this huge surprise in the story. You don’t see it coming! It creates this automatic WOW factor. What! It’s this amazing statement of both God’s greatness AND God’s grace! God’s got a fish to save to Jonah. It doesn’t matter what Jonah has done, God was determined all along, not just to kill Jonah but to bring Jonah to a place where he experienced God’s saving power.

Earlier I think I said some of you need to hurl yourself into the sea. That’s because some of you need to get swallowed whole. Some of you need to experience God’s saving power. Some of you have never really seen what God can do. God is a redeemer and a restorer. He can take the most jacked up person, the most ugly situation, and turn it for good. When you surrender all of your life to God and allow yourself to sink into his mercy…oh the wonders of what God does!

If today, you feel like an undeserving cast away…then know the reason God put this book in the Bible is for you. So that you might know the extent of his mercy and grace. God appointed this great fish for Jonah and God has appointed you to be with him.

C. Causes Worship: God Saves All Kinds of People (v16 & 2:1)

Well, the result here for both the sailors and Jonah is worship. This is what happens when we experience God’s saving grace…it causes worship. This is our last point for this morning.

The sailors, what do they do after they come to truly fear the LORD? They have a worship service. They offer sacrifices and make vows. Basically they start praying and singing and giving of their stuff and money.

Jonah, what does he do after God gives him the fish? We’ll look at it in depth next week but even if you just read part of the first verse of chapter two you can see what’s coming…he prays.

Now here’s the thing. It’s easy to get caught up into either the story of the sailors and or of Jonah and identifying with one or both of them…but that’s really not where the story is meant to lead us. Really…the story is meant to lead us to see the true hero in it: God! The whole book of Jonah is about the greatness and goodness of God! He saves all kinds of people! Pagans and prophets alike. Christians and non-Christians. All people need saving and he is sufficient for every one.

And this my friends is the message of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.

Jesus himself talked about Jonah and what happened with him and the sailors. We’ll spend a whole week on what he said and how it relates when we come to the end of the book of Jonah.

For now, I’ll just read Jesus words in Matthew 12:40. “Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

Jesus, at the time, looks in on the story of Jonah, how Jonah gives up his life to save a few sailor men and says that’s like me and what I’m about to do. Jesus is the true and better Jonah.

Jonah was a prophet who was called to speak the Word of God. Jesus is the true prophet of heaven who is the Word of God.

Jonah deserved death and allowed himself to be hurled into the sea to save a few sailors. Jesus didn’t deserve death and allowed himself to be hurled up on a cross to save all who put their faith in him.

Jonah gets swallowed up by a fish and is spit out on dry land after three days. Jesus gets swallowed by death itself and then rises from the dead after three days.

Jonah’s sacrifice was temporary. Jesus’ sacrifice was once and for all time.

Jesus is the true and better Jonah.

Conclusion

The title of my message this morning was “The God Who Saves The Godless.” My conclusion today is Jesus is God’s savior for us. I think all of us tend to swing on the pendulum between either by acting as there is no God at all or by ignoring the God we know. Both places leave us Godless. We need a savior.

The good news of the gospel is God gives us His Son Jesus, who is LORD and God and promises to be with us always. In Jesus we have a savior who died the death we deserve and who rose to give us the new life we need if we will have him.

We’re going to receive the Lord’s supper in a moment. In the bread and the wine, we recognize Jesus’ death, his body and his blood. In his holy presence here, we recognize Jesus’ resurrection, the new life he gives us.

Some of you have been avoiding God. It’s helpless lost cause. Stop avoiding it and receive his welcome.

Some of you haven’t really been honest with God, perhaps ever or in a long time…and you need to admit your condition and confess your need for him.

This is a special time of God’s grace. A time for him to move and work in our hearts and lives as we respond to the teaching of his word. We all need saving and Jesus is the savior.

His grace in salvation is meant to cause us to worship. That’s why we sing and we sing with all our heart. So let’s do that…let’s come in need and come in thanks in the worshipful fear of the LORD.

Let’s pray.