Dennis Tuuri

# Jonah 1: Advent and A Troubled Sea

I know that some of you will be distracted by this. I shall move it. Couple of comments. Chris opened the floodgates. We’ve installed a rail here. Don’t run into it. As Dan Prenis said, it’d be the height of irony for someone to trip over the safety railing. And if you haven’t noticed, there are railings on either side. So, as some of us get older or infirm or whatever it is, if as you’re coming up with your offering, if you wanted to use those rails on the side to come up, feel free to do that. We have room for you to do that.

And then if you need to use the rail to go down, please do that. I fell yesterday, missed a step at home. I couldn’t believe it. I will use the rail today. So, don’t feel bad about using it yourself.

This is Advent. This is the second Sunday of Advent. And I’ve decided to do a series of four sermons on the book of Jonah. Not your typical Advent topic, but that’s what I’m doing. And that’s what we’ll be looking at today. And I’m going to do a chapter a week. So, if you want to get ready for the next few sermons, not quite a chapter today—verse 17, I’m throwing over into chapter 2—but we’ll be reading today Jonah 1:1-16.

On your handouts today, there is a structure of the text that’s printed out, and so you could follow along by reading that or listening to that or your own Bibles or nothing. Just hear what the word of the Lord is from Jonah 1:1-16.

In any event, please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Jonah chapter 1: Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid his fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo and that which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and laid down and was fast asleep. 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.”

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. Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country and of what people are you?” 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.”

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. And then they said to him, “What shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us? For the sea grew more and more tempestuous.” He said to them, “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.”

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. 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.” So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

Let’s pray. Father, we love this story. We love your scriptures. We love this historical account that also gives us such an easy to remember story that’s so significant for our lives. Bless us, Father, as we seek to understand it, to apply it to our lives, to learn the lessons of it and the great imagery that you use here. We thank you and bless your holy name for the artistry of the tale. Help us now as we comprehend it and may it transform us by the power of the Spirit as we see Jesus in it. In his name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. I feel like I’m in the belly of the whale here. Very little room for my nose, but that’s okay. You know, this is Advent. I wanted to say just a quick couple of things about the song “O Emmanuel” and the seven O Antiphons. We had them on the front of the order of worship last week. I think we’re singing it this week. And you know, when you sing it, it’s good to know that what you’re singing is a progression of Old Testament history leading up to Jesus. Okay?

The particular version we use here at this church are all seven verses. The seven O Antiphons have been used historically by the church for, you know, millennia. And the version we’re using does it in the right order. It starts with Wisdom. Okay? And then it goes to Adonai, or the Lord. So what it’s doing is it’s starting with the wisdom that began at creation. And then it’s going to the giving of the law on Sinai. And then it’s getting into the period of the kings. And then it’s getting into the exile. And then it asks for Emmanuel to come and to save us. So it is a compendium of Old Testament history.

And it is that because Advent is a season to remember the coming of Jesus, the promise that God made to send him. And the promise is articulated and demonstrated in so many ways in the Old Testament, all of which speaks to Jesus. So when we come to a text such as Jonah 1, we look for with anticipation what it’s going to teach us about the coming of Jesus, what his advent meant in being interpreted by the book of Jonah, for instance, and by this first chapter.

The seven O Antiphons come “O Emmanuel.” And if you take—I know this is weird for us moderns, but if you take the first letter of the Latin (and of course it was a Latin setting) and if you take the first letter of each of the seven verses and read it backwards—because we’re talking about coming and going, right—and if you read them backwards it spells “Ero Cras,” which means “Tomorrow I will come.” So it has this note of anticipation even in the beginning letter of the seven O Antiphons. And that’s the kind of anticipation and joy we have at realizing what it meant when Jesus came.

And as we look for current advents of Jesus into our time, right? Jesus comes in some sense of the term to bring us salvation as well. We get in tight spots. We pray that the Father would deliver us and Jesus carries those prayers and comes through his Spirit to bring deliverance. And that’s what we see in today’s text as well.

So, this is a wonderful time of year to remember the historic church and what it’s done and how we’re not just sort of adrift here on our own without being tethered. And “O Emmanuel” tethers us to some of these things and specifically to the history of the Old Testament and helps us to see why it’s a good thing that Advent texts are frequently taken from the Old Testament.

I want to talk about Jonah chapter 1 today. On your handout there’s a place for younger people to fill in the blanks, and if you want to fill them in to older people, that’s fine. There’s a coloring page about that storm at sea, done graciously by Sharon W., and there’s the text, which we’ll talk about in a few minutes and some references there. But you know the basic story, right? But probably what you don’t necessarily know until you looked at your outlines this morning—I asked several people this morning. Nobody knew—is its relationship to this tale, this story, this historical account. And of course, you can sort of see that it fits because you’ve got a ship and you’ve got water and, you know, flood and all that stuff. But a very significant connection is the name of this character Jonah.

You know, in the Bible, Old Testament names almost always, or certainly preponderantly, have translations that help us remember and are significant to the story. In the providence of God, his parents named Jonah, and Jonah means dove. And when we read this story, when we read of Jonah being hurled out of the ship in the middle of a big flood, or big body of water, and we know that a dove is being thrown out—if we don’t think about this story and the dove being thrown out (all right, by Noah to see if dry land, if salvation had happened now, if he was able to get out of the ark)—if we don’t see that connection, we’re really missing a major point of this story.

This story is about de-creation, destruction of Jonah specifically, and then re-creation. And as a little picture of the particular times in which he wrote—the time of the coming exile—that’s what the imagery throughout the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, whatever book you look at. The imagery going on is that the world is being destroyed and then recreated. That’s the imagery. It’s another Exodus. And the Exodus was a picture of re-creation.

The Holy Spirit fluttered. That’s the word in Genesis 1. The Holy Spirit fluttered over the original darkness of the world—darkness, voidness, formlessness. The Spirit of God fluttered. When the people of God are brought out of Egypt after their de-creation has happened, there God says that he was like an eagle that fluttered over them and protected them. The only two places in the whole Old Testament where that particular word is used is the Spirit fluttering and God fluttering over his people at the Exodus. They knew—they knew that this was a picture of death and resurrection, re-creation.

And when we see Jonah here, a dove being hurled overboard and not going up and flying away to land, but going down, down, down, then we know we’ve got something going on here that is drawing comparison and contrast to the original creation. Now, it’s like that because what the prophets picture, the message of the canonical prophets in the Bible, in the canon of Scripture—their message is death. Israel must die. Judah must die. But they will be resurrected.

You know, Jonah’s in the belly of the beast, right? And then it spits him out. Well, Jonah is a little different. See, he’s like a—he’s not just speaking to Israel. He is Israel personified. And Israel and Judah will be taken into captivity. They’ll live in the belly of a beast for safety. And when the exile is done, they’ll be spit out back to the land. And the question will be what they do about all of that.

But ultimately, Israel will fail again when it gets back to the land. And that’s because of what really is going on with the prophets and with the Exodus—it’s a picture of what we said earlier, that the O Antiphons remind us of: that all of the Old Testament is talking to us about Jesus and what will happen when Messiah comes. Only when Messiah comes will the definitive death and resurrection, will the new creation come in its completion. And so the New Testament is filled with this imagery of Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension as a tearing apart, the destruction of the last days of the old creation and the beginning of the new creation of God. First Adam, second Adam.

So when we come to the book of Jonah, we have to understand that’s kind of the big story going on here. And if we miss his name—dove—and we miss some of those associations, I mean, it doesn’t represent a killing absence, but it certainly helps us.

Now, another thing it helps us to do—I was thinking about this the other day—that you know, what people want to do when they don’t want to live for God, I know this isn’t universally true, but I think generally the idea is life is just life. You’re making such a big deal out of it, you Christians, or whatever religion you’re involved with. There’s almost a denial of the significance of who we are and the story we’re part of.

Part of the blessing of the last few years in the New Calvinists and in the emergent churches is the idea of story and narrative and that we find our place in that story. We’re a character. And are we going to be a character who’s unfaithful and harms people’s lives and ultimately ends up with our own life destroyed? Or will we be a character that’s faithful and persevering, knowing the character of God?

So that’s the question. And I guess the point here is that we hear these stories and we think, Jonah, dove, wow, that’s really overboard, all this stuff that Pastor Tuuri’s going to say in the next three or four weeks. But I wish my life was like that. It is, brothers and sisters. Your lives have significance. That’s what the scriptures tell us. Every time we study one of these narratives, what we see is not some accommodation by God in only particular cases and everything else is irrelevant. What he’s reminding us of, just in the narrative structure he uses, just in the way he tells the story, is that our stories have significance. We each have significance.

Now, sometimes that results in paranoia. My brother Mike once said that paranoia is the cutting edge of the reality that all things are connected. See? Well, they are connected because there’s a sovereign God who writes stories and he’s speaking a story into existence. Our lives have relevance and significance that go beyond what we think of as the secular details and facts of them. All right.

So, this story is set up for us. Of course, the fulfillment of all the dove imagery is the dove coming, the Holy Spirit coming upon Jesus at his baptism. And now we know the rest of the story. Now we know what all those doves are imaging to us. And now we know that the completion of all things, the definitive destruction of the old world and creation of the new world has come in the person of Jesus and the dove lands upon him.

The dove, of course, is an image of the Holy Spirit. The dove had an olive branch in his mouth, right, when he comes back to Noah on the ark. The olive is also a picture of the Spirit. The Spirit is creating a new world. And that’s important news for us. That’s important that we understand that we can get—you know, just so you know, freaked out by the events that are going on in our lives personally or the events that are going on in our broader culture here in the state of Oregon or the events going on in the nation or the world. It can frighten us. And it should frighten you because God wants you to know that all this is part of the tearing down of the old world and the establishment of the new world.

We’re in this process when that began, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. And it’s completing. So, it gives us great hope in trial on the sea, in our particular trials and our particular ships that we’re afraid are going to break up. This tale, just from the beginning, just from knowing the name of this guy (that it means dove), shows it’s also a story of Noah and it’s also a story of creation. Tremendous blessings. So right in the opening verse, in the first words, we get hope from God for us when our seas are troubled for whatever reason.

That’s Jonah. Jonah, as I said a minute ago, number two, is also the prophet as Israel. You know, most of the prophets are the prophets to Israel, right? They’re being sent to Israel or Judah with a message. And Jonah is certainly that too. But the story of Jonah—the narrative, the true history that we read about in the book of Jonah—and that’s the way Jesus treated it. It’s the way we better treat it. That narrative, that history is also primarily a picture of the prophet as Israel.

Israel is going to have hard things happen to it and it’s going to go into captivity, and Judah particularly into the captivity in Babylon. But for those of us that have been around here much, we know that wasn’t all bad. In fact, that was the provision of God for the salvation of the Jews, the keeping them safe during the time of the exile so they could go back and hopefully serve God better.

So, there’s a series of empires, right? And that series of empires is really what’s going on with the Jews. So Jonah is a picture of Israel from one perspective because Israel will be saved. They’ll have transport on a ship during the stormy seas that’ll be going on during those empires. I mean the very picture of the conclusion—I mean you know the Babylonians, Nebuchadnezzar, converts—Daniel comes to the top of the kingdom. Before that, I mean, it’s not like they’re being tortured to death in exile. There’s significance. And then Persia sends them back, right? The Greeks and the Romans. Well, the Romans are protecting Paul in the book of Acts from the attacks by the Jews. The ship is protection.

And so Jonah is a picture of Israel, telling them that they’ll actually have protection in the ship. Secondly, he’s prophet as Israel because, like Israel, he doesn’t want to witness to the nations. One of the specific things that Israel is judged for—I use Israel, the north and the south together, Israel and Judah—is because they will not take their mission to the Gentiles seriously. And in fact, they put up all kinds of blocks to the Gentiles. They see themselves as a privileged people, yada yada.

Now, I’m not saying that about Jonah necessarily, but I am saying that Jonah’s refusal to go to Nineveh—and those that little prologue at the beginning of the tale—is a picture also of the prophet as Israel, because Israel is refusing to do what it’s going to do. And one of the reasons why God takes great guys like Daniel and throws them into the ship that is Babylon is so that those sailors on that ship of state will become saved.

I mean, think about it. The riffraff were kind of left behind in Jerusalem during the exile. The best of the best were the ones taken into captivity. Why would you take the worst guys? You’d always take the best people, the smartest. And that’s what Daniel and his buddies were. And God had sent them there to actually—now you’re going to have to witness. You’re going to live there.

So Jonah is a picture of Israel in both ways. Like the Jews, Jonah is being kept safe by a pagan ship, ship of state, whatever. And like the Jews also, he won’t witness to his Gentile readers. Now, why is that? Why won’t Jonah witness? And there’s lots of potential answers, and they’re all good pastoral answers. They’re all good application from the text. We never want to be so full of ourselves that we think the wicked people can’t be saved or shouldn’t be saved. We always want to have a desire to save very wicked people.

I mean, if you think of maybe the reason—one reason for Jonah could be, wow, they’re like the Nazis. I mean, they made lamps out of people. No desire to see them saved. Now, I don’t think that’s true in Jonah’s case, but that can be true in our case. We can so pervert the meaning of the gospel that we don’t understand that the gospel reaches even the worst of sinners, right? Paul, for instance, a killer of Christians.

So, that could be one reason. One reason could be, well, he just likes his own country. We don’t want the Chinese converted because we’re Americans. Yay, America. Another possible reason. But I think Jonah knew his Bible.

Turning your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 32. Deuteronomy 32, beginning at verse 15. You know, Job—we read these characters in the Old Testament. I had mentioned Job. I’m going to slip back and forth between Jonah and Job. We began teaching on Job in Sunday school today, so I’m studying both books at the same time, and their names sound a little similar. And in both cases, we tend to look at these guys as just sort of ordinary people. They’re not. Now, we can identify with them, but they’re not ordinary people.

And when we read about people like Jonah, he knew his Bible. He knew what was being said. And he would particularly know these prophecies of the future that were found in Deuteronomy 32, beginning at verse 15:

“But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked, grew fat, stout, and sleek. Then he forsook God who made him and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation. Okay. So this is a prediction that the Jews also will become filled with the blessings of God and think they did it with their own hand and they’ll turn away from God.

How will they turn away from God? They stirred him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations. They provoked him to anger. They sacrificed to demons that were no gods.” Side note, I think this is one of two occurrences of this word “demon” in the whole Old Testament. Not sure that really should be translated “demon.” Interesting word. Interesting theology based upon it. But we’ll move on.

“They were sacrificing to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods even that had come up recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded. You are unmindful of the Rock that bore you. You forgot the God who gave you birth. Okay. So they’re there provoking God to jealousy by their idolatries.

And so what’s going to happen is—and God is predicting what’s going to happen during the time in which Jonah is living, among other times—Israel has sinned. It’s forgotten God. It’s turned their back. Hosea is the beginning of the twelve. And that book pictures an idolatrous, adulterous wife. It’s very significant for the beginning of the book to picture that, because God is our husband, loves us, and when we sin, we’re unfaithful to him. We’re going and sleeping with some other guy. And that’s the picture of what’s happened. And that’s what God is saying here: you’re going to start sleeping around with other gods, with idols, and that’s going to make me very jealous, because God loves his bride, wants to protect his bride. And he’s going to burn out with fire, you know, if his bride forsakes him and refuses to return after his gentle judgments.

Verse 19: “The Lord saw it and spurned them because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters. And he said, I will hide my face from them. I will see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness. They have made me jealous with what is no God. They have provoked me to anger with their idols.”

“I will make them jealous with those who are no people. I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled by my anger and it burns to the depths of Sheol, devours the earth and its increase and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.”

So, how did Jonah interpret that text in light of what’s happening? “I will make them jealous with a foolish nation,” and then fire will burn out against them. That’s what’s going on. Jonah puts one and one together and gets two. I think this is his motivation. He realizes that the God of—they’re the only true God—is going to destroy Israel and Judah. They’re going to have to die, and they’re going to die in a bad way. Invading armies, rape, murder, plundering, fire, the whole thing. And he knows that the step that’s going to precede that is this conversion of a foolish nation.

He says at the end, “I knew you were going to save these folks.” And we think, see, he just didn’t want people saved. He wanted people saved. He was not a bad guy. But I think what’s going on is he knew the text. And he knew that if this was what God is up to, he’s going to send Jonah and he’s going to convert the foolish nation. That’s going to be followed by fire being kindled and his people dying.

In other words, one way to look at Jonah’s motivation: it’s not that he hated the Assyrians and the Ninevites. It’s that he loved his own people so much. He loved his own people so much, and he saw their coming horrific destruction. And you say, “Well, that shows a problem. What’s wrong with them? They were rebels.” Well, you know the Apostle Paul, and you have no doubts about his sanctification and commitment to God, right? He said the same thing. “I wish I would be cursed. I love my people so much I wish the judgment for them could come upon me.” He said—now we don’t have that kind of loyalty to a people much anymore, maybe in our families, but that’s what I think Jonah was doing. He knew his Bible. He knew that Deuteronomy said that God is going to provoke his people to jealousy the way they had provoked him. And he was going to do it and then follow that with destruction of his people.

And of course, this theme is picked up by Paul in the book of Romans, that God is provoking the Jews through the conversion of the Gentiles, through the ministry to the Gentiles, and he’s going to provoke the Jews to jealousy, and then comes the final fire. Okay.

So, what is the sign of Jonah? We read about the sign of Jonah a couple of places in the New Testament. And what is it then? Well, I think you have to keep this in mind. And then if we turn to a New Testament text, it tends to become a little bit clearer to us. So, turn to Luke. Luke 11:29.

And of course, one of the signs of Jonah is three days in the belly of the fish and resurrection. It’s picturing or signing the death and resurrection of Jesus. We know that, of course. So, we’re not saying anything against that. But there’s something else going on with the sign of Jonah as Jesus applies it in Luke 11.

“When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, ‘This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.’” And we stop there and we put it up on our walls and we say, “Well, the only sign they’re going to get is the death and resurrection of Jesus.” Yes, that’s partially true. But look what he goes on to say.

“For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

“No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a candle or under a basket, but on a lampstand.”

What’s he saying? He’s saying Deuteronomy 32, I think it matches up pretty well. He’s saying the sign you’re going to get is the sign of Jonah because all that’s coming to completion now. Deuteronomy 32, Jonah’s tale. And the pagan nations will be converted and they will rise up in judgment against you because they knew what was going on. They caught the moment. They came to Yahweh. And Nineveh, and the Queen of Sheba comes to Yahweh from afar. But you that have had the privilege of this, being the maintainers of the oracles of God, having him live amongst you as it were in the tabernacle and then the temple—you have forsaken him. You’ve become adulterous.

And God then is going to the Gentiles and he will destroy you. Why? Because your light has been hid. You’re like Jonah. You didn’t witness. You didn’t want to witness to the Ninevites. You ran away like Jonah. You’re going to be cast into exile. You’re going to be burned up. The judgment will come upon you.

So, I think that’s what the sign of Jonah is. Not just that Jesus will spend three days dying for our sins, which is certainly true. But I think what it is also is that God is going to the Gentiles and soon—very soon, in AD 70—God’s judgment of fire is coming upon the Jews.

So Jonah is an interesting book. And of course, what that reminds us of—and particularly the children of this church, the next generation or two—of course it has immediate application. You’ve been given a rich heritage. What are you doing with it? Are you speaking? Are you learning? Are you making use? The Queen of Sheba comes from afar for the wisdom. Do you go to Sunday school, just a couple steps up the stairs? Do you send your kids to Sunday school? You try to make use of all the blessings you have here? Or you just sort of assume some sort of natural privilege because you’re a member of that, you know, one of those big CRC churches, big for the CRC and significant in Oregon City and whatever else you might think? Is that what we cling to? Whoa. Remember the sign of Jonah, children. Remember the sign of Jonah.

God says, “Be very, very careful. This story is a story of judgment unto salvation. But it is a story of judgment for those who take their relationship with God for granted and who don’t see the necessity of becoming missional.”

Let me get this in now. I might forget it later. Skate or die. That was an old game in the early days of computers, and I didn’t really play it much, but I remembered the title ever since because I always thought about it in terms of my Christianity. Christian, God says: skate or die. You stay in the game. You be aggressive about the game of living out your life for Jesus. And part of that living your life out for Jesus is to go to other people, to let your lamp shine to the Gentiles or to people outside, whatever it is. You either skate or you’re going to die in judgment. Skate or die. And that’s the message here, right?

Book ends with a question. What are you going to do? What’s going to be your response when you get spewed out onto the land? You’re safe in the ark here. You see the ribs? This is the ark. This is the great fish that’s keeping us safe for a season today, where we’re gathered together to learn lessons from God, where our prayers will go out toward God’s temple in heaven, the way that Jonah knew he was in exile and he prayed toward the temple like he was supposed to do in Jonah chapter 2.

We’re here. We’re in the belly of safety. We’re in Jesus’s mouth. That’s what Jesus says. Don’t laugh about it. We’re incorporated into him and he’s keeping us safe. And then in a little while here, we’re going to be spewed back out to the places you came from. It’s going to be closing time and you can’t stay here. You got to go back to the places that you came from. And when you go back there, you’ve got to skate or die, my friend.

You’ve got to be that lamp shining. You got to be Jonah finally, brave enough to talk to the sailors and confess that he’s a believer and the kind of God we serve—a sovereign, creating God. You either got to do that or you’re not. You’re going to go down for the third time—not just for two times down. Down, down, you’re going down for the third time. It’s skate or die time.

And I think that was Jonah’s motivation. I think that’s what we should remember. And it should be a strong, fearful reality in our lives, bringing a proper fear and reverence for God, who tells us at the end of every Lord’s day: now skate or die, Christians. Skate or die.

Peter and Paul—same message, right? What’s Peter’s name? What’s his name? Simon bar-Jonah. Jonah. Where does Peter go when God tells him to go? When God sends him on the mission to the Gentiles, where does he go? Do you remember? Goes to Joppa. Joppa. That’s where Jonah went. Joppa. That’s where he caught the ship, was down that way. And Peter, he’s got to go to the Gentiles. And he goes down to Joppa. His name is son of Jonah. And he’s at Joppa. Nothing else. Learn the names of the people in the Bible. They tie things together.

And then he’s got to go to the Gentiles. Little reluctant, but he’s not like Jonah. Things have changed, right? He gets on the ship and he’s going to gladly go now. I mean, it’s a little fearful what he’s going to end up doing with Cornelius. He’s got some problems, you know? Little reticent. But he knows it’s new creation time and he overcomes his reticence and he skates. He skates and he talks to Cornelius and the whole thing begins.

Paul, same thing. He gets in ships, Gentile ships, and he goes when the man from Macedonia appears to him. How much time does it take him to get on the ship or go to the travel agent and get his flight booked? Takes no time. Bible says immediately Paul went into action and he skated. He skated. And what happens at the end of the book of Acts, you know, Acts 27, right?

By the way, did I miss something here? I might not have told you one important deal. No, it’s not there, so don’t worry about it. Okay. So, Paul in Acts 27, he gets on that ship, right? That ship that’s going to have problems at sea, just like Jonah had problems at sea. But what’s the difference? It’s comparison contrast time. Paul isn’t like Jonah. He’s not asleep in the hull. He’s a new creation guy. He skates and he takes control of the whole ship.

He’s what—is he a prisoner or something? I don’t remember. But he’s not the head of the ship, but he takes control of the ship and he starts telling them what they got to do. And he tells them, “The Lord’s told me the ship will break up. We’re not going to need that anymore, but we’re all going to be safe. You just do what I tell you to do.” He takes control. He skates. Immediately he goes, and he tells the people what they need to do to be saved.

You see, and that’s what happens. And then they get on the land and then that snake bites him. But hey, he’s new creation time. That serpent can’t do anything to him. He’s living. And he lives because he’s skating. And now he skates right into the place of Caesar himself. And that’s where we’re ended. The end of the ship of state that were the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans—all that’s coming to an end in AD 70. All that’s put out of joint now. He’s off the ship. The ship has been destroyed. We’re in new creation time now.

And he’s talking to the head of the world here, trying to convert him and people in his household. So that’s the story. That’s the message. And the message is not just you got to do it or die, but when you do it, great things happen. Serpents bite you and they have no effect. Now, I’m not saying, you know, be like those snake handlers down south. It’s an image, of course. But the attacks by Satan upon your life, they won’t be successful because you’re working in new creation time.

And even if you go down in death, there’s a—you got to trust that God knows this story. And at the end of the story, he’s demonstrating his compassion and his mercy the way he did to Nineveh, the way he did to you individually, to bring you to this place in your life. And he’ll use your death and sufferings and trials for that same thing. That’s what he did with Jonah. That’s what he’s going to do with you.

Skate because there’s blessings in that route. So, you know, we have these wonderful relationships of the Bible, one to the other, and they have tremendous implications for how we apply these particular texts. By the way, in case you think I’m making it all up, the Greek word where it talks about Jonah, father of Peter—Peter, son of Jonah—it’s used what? Let’s see here. Thirteen times. Nine times to refer to Jonah the prophet and four times to refer to Peter. You’re supposed to hook him up. You’re supposed to link him up. And there’s blessings in that route.

Who else in the Bible like Jonah went to Joppa? Peter. Peter’s Hebrew name was Simon bar-Jonah. What apostle was on a Gentile ship in a bad storm? Paul. Unlike in the story of Jonah, the sailors and passengers were saved, but the ship was destroyed. The ship was destroyed. All right.

Jonah responsible for judgment unto salvation. Now, let’s look at the actual text here and see what happened and see what’s going on and see the major lesson of this first chapter for us. I’ve kind of hinted at it. I’ve given you intimations of it. But look at the way the story is laid out. Now, this may not be the best outline. I don’t know. This is just one that seemed to appeal to me and it seems to put the hinge of the story—Jonah’s confession—in the middle.

So, the way I’ve laid it out, the way I’ve meditated upon the text is Jonah’s confession is the hinge point in the middle. And look what happens on either side of that hinge point. Right before the hinge point, and I tried to read it this way—in the B section, verse 5: “the mariners were afraid and each cried out to his God.” So they’re praying. Oh, they’re at least smarter than the people today. When Sandy comes, we don’t even cry out to any god, right?

So before you, you know, think about this, at least the pagans on the ship here that Jonah was in (and then throughout most of recorded history), at least they’re smart enough to know that there’s things going on in this world that are bigger than them and there’s entities involved in creating the events of our time. Do you see what I’m saying? We live in a terminally stupid era. I mean, people, they just respond to Sandy with, you know, forty billion in reconstruction money or whatever it is he’s looking for. I mean, it’s very odd. But, so they’re calling out to their god. That’s not good.

They’re going to be brought to a saving knowledge of Yahweh. And by the end of the text, the matching section is just that. Now they’re crying out to the Lord, to Yahweh, to the God of heaven and earth that they’ve heard testimony to, right? And at the very end of the text, the conclusion of it is they’re sacrificing to him now. They’ve changed allegiances from worshiping under gods, as it were, powers and authorities that may be real (you know, the god of their father or whatever that might be)—well, fathers are important in our lives, but the First Commandment is “no gods higher than me. No other gods. Don’t worship them in my place,” God is saying.

And so God says, “You got to worship him.” And by the end of the story, they’re converted. The sailors are converted. How are they converted? That’s what we want. We want to go out there to those people and convert them. Well, the conversion happens because Jonah—he’s not awake. He doesn’t wake up. He’s woken up by the captain from his deep sleep. He’s like Michael Jackson. He’s got that stuff in his veins. It just knocks him. He is out. That’s what that word “deep sleep” means. We’ll talk about that at Communion.

But, you know, he is out. He’s hiding in the hull. He’s not going to witness to nobody. He’s disobedient to God. That’s why he’s there. But then when he gets woken up and he finally then skates, right, he tells them who God is and who he is. He’s only known by his relationship to Yahweh, who is the creator God and not just creating it. He’s the providential God. He caused the storm to be there, right? That’s his testimony. That’s the testimony that converts people.

That’s the testimony. If the Jews are going to go into a new ship or into a new belly of a new beast, that’s what Daniel’s going to tell Nebuchadnezzar. That’s what they’re going to tell Cyrus the Persian. That’s what they’re going to tell Caesar. They’re going to witness to the character of God and his sovereignty and that we have to fear him. We got to understand he brings bad things along because he wants us to be saved.

So the story is a beautiful narrative with, at least from my perspective, this hinge at the middle of skating, of speaking the truth, and the conversion then of the pagan sailors. Now the setting is (and you see in the middle there) they try to save themselves, right? They try to jettison all this stuff and then they row real hard. At the matching section at the end, around the testimony, and that’s a picture of who we all are. We try to save ourselves. Secondary means are good if you’re obeying God. If you cry out to him, nothing wrong with trying to rebuild after Sandy. But the setting has to be one of looking to God and trying to learn the lessons.

We can’t tell people what the lessons are. Tragedy—there’s a danger in that. We’re not saying it always happens because of somebody’s sin. That’s what these pagan sailors think, by the way. “What did you do to bring this upon us? Who’s—you know, why are you blind? Your sins or your parents sins? What’s going on?” They look for a one-to-one correspondence. But Jonah, you know, broadens it out for them to the great purposes of God in history.

So, I’m not saying, you know, start interpreting every judgment as sin on the particular person that’s hurt, but I am saying that judgment comes so that we would get on our knees and pray and we would acknowledge the Lord of heaven. And then we would get up and try to do within the bounds of his Spirit and his Word what we can to fix our house. But we start with prayer on our knees, asking for God to reveal the problems, acknowledging his sovereignty, his providence, and then trying to learn the lessons. And that’s what these guys are kind of moved to. They, in the middle, are still trying to take care of themselves. They’re trying to fix it. And so they’re moved away from that by the end of the account.

But of course, the big arching stuff that’s going on is the storm. Why the storm? Why the storm? There’s a reason for the storm, right? God is angry. God throws these judgments. Jeremiah says he throws the storm, the wind, the tempest, and then, you know, the evil will be destroyed. Says that couple of times in Jeremiah. It says it throughout the Old Testament. All kinds of wind storms and stuff, storms, theophanies—appearances of God that are very real and that also are actual storms, right?

And so what’s he angry about? Those lousy pagans, man. They’re worshiping idols. Look at those guys. They’re trying to do works of salvation. They’re worshiping some weird bird god or whatever it is, whoever they’re worshiping. God hates those people, man. He threw that storm on them.

No, he didn’t, did he? He threw it on us. He threw the storm on us. Well, if we could identify with Jonah, which I think we should be able to, he threw it upon people that wouldn’t skate—Christians who wouldn’t testify, faithful Yahweh followers, but who just didn’t. He loved his people so much. Praise God, Jonah loved his people if that’s what it was. But, you know, you can never love your people more than you love God in obeying him. He had to go and he didn’t. That’s what the storm is about.

Now, not every storm is that way. I’m not trying to make universals of this particular account, but I am saying that in our day and age, we would do well, brothers and sisters, to look at our ship of state, the storms that are broiling around it, getting worse and worse. This storm on our ship of state that we’re floating in, right? Maybe even the world, but at least our own ship of state here in this country—times are getting worse and worse and worse. They’re encroaching more and more upon Christian freedoms, proclamation of the gospel, and the standards by which to live.

The economy is being, you know, wrecked. Our kids can’t get work, you know, at least meaningful work. They got massive amounts of debt when they come out of college. I mean, you know, the storm waters are going up and down and the waves are there. And so, we have this—why we should be praying to God asking why. We should be trying to learn the lesson. And I would ask you to consider if our state is not very much like Jonah’s state.

We haven’t come out of the closet. The other side came out of the closet. Not us. Well, we sort of did. We sort of came out of the closet in terms of public policy matters when, you know, when that good Sunday school teacher from the South became president, Carter. People got a little involved. They came out. And then when he disappointed them, they really liked Reagan. But when we sort of came out of the closet, we came out as conservatives. Or other people came out as social justice, social gospel liberals. And we entered the existing political fray from particular political positions. And we would say we’re conservatives or we’re, you know, liberals or Democrats or Republicans. And what we want to do, I think, is to learn the lesson that what Jonah had to talk about was who he really was. And he had to talk plainly about the God that he was.

And some of us can be embarrassed to talk about and who you’re going to be mocked for talking about. Rubio, right, gets in trouble because he doesn’t necessarily affirm evolution. He didn’t really say what Jonah said, but we can. And I guess what I’m saying, folks, is that I think that the troubles we’re in is not because God is mad at the Democrats, mad at the people that are takers rather than makers. I think he’s mad at the church. I could be wrong. I think that’s what’s going on. We haven’t skated. We haven’t tried to understand what these cities are about. We’ve just either rejected them and said “to heck with them. We’re going to the suburbs.” Or on the other hand, some have just grabbed them up with both hands and embraced the “keep Portland weird” motto.

And I think the truth of the matter is the gospel works somewhere in between there. We’ll talk about this more when we get to Nineveh, but the gospel says we need to give the message of the gospel where we’re at now, whether it’s in politics, social setting, wherever it is. And we have to do that in a wise way that’s going to communicate to these particular people. Jonah was speaking the language of the sailors. You know, they were worried about destruction on the sea and who created all this. And he sort of addresses that stuff.

So I think that it’s our fault and what we got to do at the end of the day is skate so that we don’t die. And in fact, we don’t even skate for ourselves. We skate so that other people can have life in Jesus. So I think that’s the movement of the text and I think that’s the central message for us.

Remember Esther? We had that cool Christmas play several years ago that Rose put together and some other young ladies. Same thing with Esther. The problem in Esther’s time was not so much, you know, Haman. It was that Esther wasn’t declaring who she was because her counselor Mordecai was telling her to keep secret. Now, he eventually corrects that and she eventually says who she is and asks for the protection of her people. And that’s the hinge of that story. That’s how it allows the king then to create a situation where the evil people really do have the judgment on their heads and God’s people are saved.

They change from being evil to good people by their willingness to come out of the closet fully and to say “this is who we are. You know, we’re Christians and we serve Yahweh. He’s the creator of heaven and earth and he’s sustaining it. And he’s got the message of life. You can’t save yourself. Do all your Keynesian economics. Throw as much stuff off the boat as you want. Row as hard as you like. But you know, this isn’t about economics. It is about spirituality and religion. It’s about who we’re worshiping as a culture.”

So I think that’s the deal. I think in our present ship of state, that’s what it says to us as well. Hinge of the story is Jonah telling the men about God. He said that the Lord is the creator, and he said he feared the Lord, encouraging them to fear the Lord. As much as the sailors tried, they could not save themselves. The death of Jonah along with their praying to the Lord resulted in them being saved. What do I mean by that?

So, he’s got to get killed. He’s got to die. They got to cast him out. They got to throw that dove down, not up. And then eventually the dove will come back up and creation will start happening. But he’s got to die. Obviously, his picture of death is in the belly of the great fish.

And so, the death of Jesus, ultimately, as well as their prayers, is what brings them to safety. Jonah is a type of another sleeper—then another sleeping prophet, we could say, right? What’s that story? Oh, you know, pretty obvious, right? In Matthew 8, Jesus is in a boat. He’s asleep at the bottom of the boat, like Jonah was asleep in the hull of the ship. He’s got scared sailors with him because a big storm has come up, right? And he’s got to be woken up so he can save them.

So Jonah is a picture ultimately of Jesus. And Jesus’s sleep and waking up is obviously a fore-figuring, pretelling of his death and his resurrection and ascension. And his death and resurrection and ascension is what calms the waters of the sea. God rages. He rages with anger. Forget for a moment who he’s angry with, but he’s angry with the world. That anger is going on. And the only thing that’ll take care of that anger is not Jonah. It’s the Lord Jesus Christ being tossed into that anger, receiving the full force of God’s punishment against him, for you and me.

And then the anger is satisfied. Expiation of our sins. Expiation. God’s wrath is turned to love for his people as we are united to Jesus, who took the full cup of his wrath, that we might drink the cup of this blessing.

So ultimately, that’s the story: there’s a substitute for us. The greater Jonah has come along and he saves the ship. And it’s interesting what happens right after he saves the ship. He wakes up. He calms the sea. Says, “Why are you afraid?” And men then marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this that even winds and sea obey him?”

That’s verse 27 of Matthew. Verse 28: “And when he came to the other side to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him.”

Jonah’s going to get to the other side and he’s going to go to a demon-possessed city filled with people rebelling against God so bad he’s going to destroy it. And Jonah’s going to cast that demon out of Nineveh. Don’t be afraid of who you face when you leave the safety of this fish, of this ark. When you’re spewed out this evening and you go to your places tomorrow of work and home, you’re going to see demon-possessed people.

But Jesus Christ’s power goes through you in the power of the dove, the Holy Spirit. And he is about you saving people. He is about you casting demons out of our particular culture. So Jesus in the boat is the ultimate picture of all this. Jonah is a picture of Jesus who calmed the sea.

And as I said, Jonah ends with a question. Then at the very end of the book, God says, “What? You’re going to have compassion for this plant, but not compassion for these great people and all that cattle?” Weird ending. It’s sort of like it just sort of stops, a question, and the last thing in the question is cattle. Are you going to care for cattle or not? I don’t know. Do you care for cattle? We’ll get more on that when we get to chapter 4.

But for now, the point is his story ends with a question. And each chapter here implicitly then is capped off by a question for us, right? I’ve made this point. The question is: skate or die. Are we going to do what we’re supposed to do or not? What will we do? Will we serve God when we’re spewed back out into the land, or will we, like the unfaithful Jews, when they got back in the land, still do the same old stuff? That’s the thing. The book ends with the question. Every Lord’s Day ends with the question.

The gospel’s preached to you and proclaimed. Jesus has taken care of the wrath of the Father and brought you to safety. And he’s doing all this great stuff. But your response to it then is a question mark. I know the answer for me. I don’t know the answer for you. But I know that the answer gets better if we make some commitments. I know the answer gets better if we, when we come up to this offering box, say we’re going to skate—skating for Jesus this week. I know that’s what we should be doing.

One last thing as encouragement to you. It’s not up to you. The cool thing about this story in chapter 1 is that Jonah’s disobedience is part of God’s using sin sinlessly to affect the salvation of a whole bunch of guys on a ship, right? And again, it’s a metaphor for exile. Even our sinful disobedience, God uses. Finally, he becomes obedient and nine of us are saved. But at the beginning of the story, he’s disobedient and God uses that.

It doesn’t make any difference if you’re disobedient or obedient. Pastor, really say that—doesn’t make any difference if you obey this or not? From one perspective, that’s absolutely true. God is sovereign. You know, Esther—the question wasn’t whether God’s people were going to be saved. That’s not what Mordecai correctly told her. That’s not in dispute. God’s going to preserve his church. But what about you? Will you be alive or dead at the end of this thing? That was the thing he told her.

God uses even our disobedience or our poor obedience to serve his people and to save people. When we had our men’s breakfast, I told the young man a month or two ago: the most successful evangelism I have ever engaged in was when I first got serious about following Jesus as an adult. Went back to Minnesota, hung out with some band people, digs—well, not drugs. Marijuana. There is a difference. But in any event, I didn’t live right. I didn’t know what was what. But I knew that Jesus was Lord, that the Bible was his word. It’s all I knew. I had my Bible, encouraged people to get Bibles and read it.

And then I came back to Oregon and I found out via letter that a great revival had gone in that group of friends I had. Most of them have become Christians. Now, I don’t know what happened to them. God hasn’t given me that part of their story. But he taught me from day one in terms of evangelism that he’s sovereign. It’s just like this story. Even disobedience, he will use that when he wants to bring people to himself.

How much more obedience then with the great city of Nineveh? So skate, make a commitment to skate. Even if you skate and fall down every third time, you get up, that can’t be right, can it? No, it’s impossible. But in any event, even if you keep falling down, down, down, get up, up, up, and skate, skate, skate, knowing that it’s not up to your perfection and witness or testimony that the results are going to happen. God’s plan is to use your sins sinlessly and certainly your weak efforts and your falling short to bring people to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Your job is just to skate. That’s it.

Let’s pray. Father, we do pray. We thank you, Lord God. We praise your holy name for this wonderful account. We know we’re exhorted in the Psalms in like circumstances—people that have had their lives go through difficult times and then been brought to salvation by you. We’re supposed to praise your name for that. We praise you for the story of Jonah 1. And we praise you for what it teaches us about history, about Jesus, about new creation and our role in it.

Bless us, Lord God, as we prepare to get spewed out of this place of safety and nourishment today. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.