Jonah 1:7-17 Foxhole Faith

This week, our pastor Don Filsack brings us a message out of his series entitled Embracing the

Mission of God, a study through the book of Jonah. What I do generally speaking every week is

I introduce the topic so that as we come to worship and the intention behind this is kind of walking through, reading the text and that our worship might come out of hearts of recognizing, remembering, reflecting on who

God is so that as the team comes to lead us in worship we have those thoughts in our mind about who

God is because I recognize, how many of you would say you've had a busy week? A lot of different things going on in your week and it's almost kind of like we need some time to turn our focus and our attention over to God and I don't know a better way than to read

God's word and to focus our attention and our heart on who he is. But let me just kind of introduce this topic.

We're going to be talking about Foxhole Faith, Jonah 1, 7 through 17, so if you want to turn there you can.

But we're going to be continuing that series in the book of Jonah. The series is called Embracing the Mission of God and ultimately we're thinking about embracing the mission of God through a man who didn't embrace the mission of God so that's kind of where we're at.

But last week we had a chance to see Jonah on the run, so that was kind of the focus last week. God called him to go and call out against a wicked city, the city of Nineveh, soon to be the capital of the

Assyrian Empire at that time, but Jonah boarded a ship and he was trying to get away. You remember that from last week?

And we left him in the middle of a huge storm in the eastern Mediterranean and that's where he was when we left him.

The sailors, the people, the captain of the ship was terrified of this storm and the captain asked

Jonah to get up, he was actually asleep in the bottom of the ship, the captain came to him and told him to get up and call on his

God that maybe his God would provide deliverance from the storm. The sailor, captain at that point not even knowing who

Jonah's God was but saying, hey dude, maybe you should get up and pray. But there's one point

I want to focus our attention on before we come to worship this morning and that's the fact that ultimately as we enter into the text of Scripture, as we enter into this text this morning, it really is ultimately about God.

And a lot of times we tend to read Scripture for what it means to us and we try to see ourselves in the text, and sometimes we do, sometimes

God reveals things about us, right? But primarily the text of Scripture is here to show us who

God is, to show us something about his character and whenever you read an open Scripture, I'd encourage you to think that that is the primary question.

Who is God showing himself to be as we open this text and as we read it together?

So the fact is, Scripture really is about God. So we're going to see some things that could divert our attention from who

God is and they're still important in their aspects of the text. Things like, this morning we're going to see a radical conversion, a transformation of some lives.

These seasoned sailors have seen a lot of life, but they're going to have a foxhole kind of conversion.

I say foxhole, that kind of conversion that the bombs and the shells are going around and the bullets are flying and things and you're thinking you're in mortal danger and you're like,

God if you get me out of this one, I will worship you kind of thing. Do you know what I'm talking about? Some of you maybe have been there in life where it's like,

I mean things are just so dire and desperate and you're like, God are you there? If you're there, could you get me out of this please?

If some of you have been there before, you don't need to raise your hand if you don't want to. But I think probably some of us have.

Not necessarily a literal foxhole, some of you might have been there, but I'm talking about figuratively as well.

So we're going to see that happen here. And as cliche as this can sound, God is going to show us in this text that he can use anyone in ministry.

Now I don't say that to just try to pat you on the back and encourage you and say, oh he can use anybody, he can use you, this is great.

I think that it's important for us to understand how desperate the situation is. Jonah is not being reluctant.

He's not just merely kind of saying, well God, I'm not a very good speaker, I'm not very good at this.

Are you sure you want to call me to do this? He's being outright disobedient.

He's rebelling against God. He does not want to serve God. Do you see that?

It's not just mere reluctance, like, well man, if you did a little bit more of this for me, I'd be willing to serve you.

No, he's just outright defiant against God. I don't want to represent you. But God isn't done with him.

And we're going to see an irony by the end of this text that God is going to change lives through Jonah, despite the fact that Jonah doesn't even want to be in ministry.

God can use anyone, even somebody with an unwilling heart. I believe

God does this to highlight the fact that it is ultimately His mercy.

His mercy is what saves. You see, this is not a story primarily about Jonah or even about the sailors as we read it.

But we should walk away from reading this text with a sense of how mighty our God is to save, like we're going to sing here in a moment.

He's a God who can use storms. He can use unwilling prophets. And He uses, as we're going to see by the end of the text, even a beast of the sea to accomplish

His desires. Do we serve a sovereign Lord? It's a real question.

Do we serve a sovereign Lord? I didn't sound too enthusiastic about that. Do we serve a sovereign

Lord? Okay, thank you. All right. Can His plans be thwarted?

No, He gets what He wants. And we're going to see that in the text. I want you to open your Bibles, please, to page 658 in the

Bible in the seat back in front of you. If you're in your own Bible, I'll give you a second to find the book of Jonah. It can be a little bit tricky to find.

So I'll give you that page number again, 658 in the Bible that's in the seat back in front of you. If you don't own a Bible, I'd encourage you to take that one with you.

That's a free gift. We want everybody to have a Bible. But I'm going to read Jonah chapter 1, verse 7 through the end.

And they, that is the sailors, 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? And where do you come from? And 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 you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the

Lord, because he had told them. 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 rode 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. 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. Let's pray.

You know what? I'm wearing shorts and a polo shirt right now, and it's kind of like, you know, we're a little bit of a laid -back environment here.

But I want to make sure that you understand that that doesn't mean that we don't take the Word of God seriously. That's not what that's about.

It's about shedding some of those traditions, shedding some of those trappings, but ultimately we take the Word of God seriously.

And so I want our focus and our attention to be on that as we come forward and move forward through this message.

And where we find ourselves in the text this morning is the storm is still raging. So the storm hasn't stopped from last week where it's not like we enter into, you know, a nice, cozy, calm discussion.

So as we read this text, you've got to have in your mind that there is a raging storm going on all the way through this text up till verse 16.

So it's raging. It's crazy. This is not some just calm discussion that we encounter here in our text.

This is life or death. And this conversation and these recorded events are the attempts of people in mortal danger trying to save themselves.

That's what's going on in our text this morning. It's not happening over the course of an evening. After studying this this past week,

I don't know the specific time frame of how long it takes from verse 7 all the way up to 17, but I cannot imagine it being more than an hour.

The majority of the text would be them trying to row to shore. These conversations would be short, fast, and loud on the deck of a ship that's about to capsize.

Okay, so you've got to have that in your mind. I mean, I encourage you when you read the text of Scripture, whether it's in the morning or whether it's in the evening before you go to bed or whether it's, you know, you're reading to your kids or whatever, put yourself in the shoes of those who are there.

I mean, just get a little creative in your mind of picturing the way that it was. And these are real people with real feelings and real emotion, and they think they're going to die in this ship.

Does that set the stage a little bit for what we're going to discuss? That should set, we should have that in our mind. And the storm is not getting better, by the way.

We're going to see the storm gets progressively worse through the text. So where it was an incredible storm to begin with, it's going to get crazy.

So we start off with this shouted discussion between the sailors, and they're shouting back and forth, and they determine to cast lots so they can find out why this evil, the text says the word evil, another translation for that, interestingly, in Hebrew, the word for evil can also be translated disaster, calamity, craziness, chaos.

That's what's going on here. And they want to know why is that happening. And there's two things we need to understand just about that question in general about their culture.

The first thing is that in many ancient cultures, it was assumed that disaster, calamity, evil, whatever was the result of specific sin.

That was across many cultures in ancient times. What God have you offended? Who is sinned that this calamity, you know, how many of you, when that storm rolled through on Monday last week, went,

I wonder who sinned? Who caused this storm? And you're going to go and you're going to cast lots and find out who caused the storm.

You see, I mean, there's a difference in our culture, isn't there? A little bit of a barrier there. They're immediately jumping to somebody has caused this storm.

Ironically, we know that's right. Right? They're presuming it, but they're actually correct in that.

We've already been behind the scenes. We've been given information that some of the characters in the story haven't heard yet.

So the author has clued us into what's going on, and they're right. But the second thing that we need to understand is this concept of this idea of casting of lots.

What do you have in your mind when we talk about casting lots? Dice, right?

A better picture in your mind would be the little Yahtzee cup holder. Okay? Not the dice themselves, but that little holder.

Anybody know what I'm talking about? You know, the cup that you, and you lose that and you still play Yahtzee, right? But you don't need the cup, but it kind of makes a cool sound when you jingle it.

You know what I'm talking about? Okay. So that thing, it would be like a clay one of those.

And if we were going to cast lots here at Recast, we'd have a big clay pot, and everybody would write their name on a tile, like a pottery, a piece of pottery.

Sometimes they would use bone to write their name on, or whatever. People would carry these kinds of things around with them, and they would put their name on it, and they would put it in the clay pot, and then the captain, presumably the captain or whoever's the leader, would swirl that thing around until somebody's name popped out.

That's how casting lots happened. And the picture was, the mindset was that the God has chosen, the one has pulled it out of that clay pot.

So is that different to anybody's thoughts about what casting lots would be like in ancient times? That's an ancient practice, by the way, that was carried on from ancient days in early scripture all the way up to Roman times, we see casting lots for Jesus' clothes at the foot of the cross, right?

We see casting lots happen a couple times in the early church. So a common practice, but something that we need to kind of just understand to figure out what they're doing.

So the captain swirls the clay bowl, and out jumps Jonah's name. Notice in this context that he had to get caught before he fesses up.

Do you think maybe he was sweating a little bit when he put his name in the jar? Do you think he kind of knew that maybe it was him, expected his name to come out, but was kind of like, well, we'll see, we'll see if God's going to catch me this time.

Are we that way sometimes? Our kids are like that, aren't they? Where do you think they learned it? You know what

I'm saying? So the sailors pepper Jonah with questions. Now it's interesting, the very first question that they ask is a little bit different.

Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. Well, didn't they just figure out it's Jonah? Well, they're just saying,

God has picked Jonah. He has some information about why this storm is here. He'll shed some light on it.

So do you understand the nature of the question? It seems like they already determined the answer to the first question they asked, but they're still kind of just saying, we don't know what you've done.

We don't know if it's you. If you have some information about somebody else that's on the ship that you know about, but your name's selected, so start talking.

Tell us. And they're peppering all these questions. They apparently didn't make a significant inquiry into, you know, have an application process for him to board their ship.

He was a paying customer. They took his money, said, welcome aboard. So he is there, and now all that's changed, and he is the center of their attention.

All of their questions are driving towards discerning what we already know, right? We're already in the know on this, but they're trying to figure it out.

And they start pretty generic. The first question they ask him is kind of ironic. What is your vocation?

The word for vocation comes from the Latin, and it means you're calling. What are they asking

Jonah? What are you supposed to be doing? What do you do? What does he do? Well, he's supposed to be a prophet of God.

He had a very specific calling, and he's running from that calling. It's just the very first question that they ask, if he answers it honestly and directly, gets to the bottom of everything.

They ask him, where are you from? And even the underlying questions of geography are really a desire to know what

God has been offended. Where are you from so we can figure out who your God is, so that we can get this, so that we might appease that God.

And finally, for the first time in the text of Jonah, have you noticed this? Have you heard anything from Jonah yet? Has Jonah said anything?

He hasn't said a thing. He's a prophet, but he hasn't said anything. And now he's going to speak, and the very first word that he says is, I'm a

Hebrew. He uses the generic term for a Jew that's often used when among foreigners. Not necessarily a particularly religious word.

There were religious words that Jews could call themselves by, but he chooses not to. And he says, I fear the

Lord Yahweh. Now we should not read too much into his use of the word fear there, because how much does he really fear

God? He's running from Him. He doesn't want to serve Him. Sometimes fear is synonymous with obedience, the idea of honoring, worshiping, obeying

God. Is he doing that? No. So we can't read too much into it, but what he's really doing is he's trying to get down to the bottom, or he's actually trying to answer the very bottom line of their question.

Which God do you serve? And he tells them outright which God has been offended. Now I want to point out that Jonah has not switched gods, has not denied the existence of God, but he is running from the true and living

God. Do you see that in the text? It's not like he switched allegiance and he's now worshiping Baal or something like that.

He still is acknowledging that, I fear that God, that's the God that I'm supposed to be serving, and it's not like there's another

God, I'm just running from Him. He does elaborate on the identity of his

God. He says, Yahweh is the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.

That's kind of all of it, isn't it? Can you think of anything more? The heavens, that which is everything above the earth, the sea and the dry land, and it's kind of like, okay, what more is there?

And Jonah tacks on that he is running from the face of this God, running from His presence. Now we don't see that until verse 10, but that's going to reflect back and say that he has told them that.

So the author chooses to tell us that in a different way. Now back in verse 5, we saw the sailors had grown afraid of this storm, but after hearing which

God has been offended, they become exceedingly afraid, terrified.

And the response is to call out the folly of Jonah, almost in a sarcastic mocking kind of way.

What is this that you've done? You are foolish, you're crazy. Let me get this straight.

You're running from the God who made the sea in a boat.

Like for real? That's creative. Okay, good call. And thank you for catching us in the middle of it, right?

Do you hear that in their tone? I mean, shouting this, obviously, the storm is raging as this is going on.

And again, we might get in our minds that this is a long conversation. How long would it take to have this conversation? A minute?

You know, this doesn't need to be an extremely long drawn out, you know, and you're kind of going, why would they be having this long dialogue in the middle of a storm?

It's not a long dialogue. It doesn't take long to communicate these things. So he's running. Jonah keeps getting questions.

And like a parent asking their child, what do you think your punishment should be? Did you ever get that question when you were a kid?

Oh, brutal question. That's just horrible. But what I found with my kids is sometimes the punishment they ask, they think they deserve is actually worse than the one that I would give them.

Have any of you experienced that? Oh, some of you are going, no. Like, well, what do you think should happen to you?

I think you should take me out and buy me a video game. Buy me candy.

No, he's asked outright, what should we do to you that the storm might stop?

Because they want to get to the bottom of this. They want to get the storm off their backs and the storm is getting worse. I'm convinced that Jonah's answer took the sailors by surprise.

I don't think it's what they expected Jonah to say. I don't think they were like, I don't think kill me was going to be one of their first thoughts that he was going to suggest to them.

And I think sometimes we're familiar with the children's story and we don't really hear him say kill me like he does.

We just hear, oh, he gets thrown in and we know there's some beast of the oceans, whale of course, and it's going to eat him.

And so we just, we know how the story ends, right? And so because we know how the story ends, we don't hear how significant this is at this moment on the deck of this boat.

Just throw me in. Kill me. Take my life. That's his solution.

That's the answer. It should take us by surprise.

It's supposed to take us by surprise. Look at verse 12. He said to them, pick me up and hurl me into the sea.

Then the sea will quiet for you. How does he know that? Well, he's a prophet of God. He knows. The text tells us.

Jonah says, throw me to my death. That's your way out. Notice that he's not willing to jump. You hear that?

Suicide by sailor, that's what he's doing right now, and he's, throw me in.

Think about that comment. Think about what he's asking from the perspective of everything that we know about Jonah so far, and even just some of your

Sunday school stories and the things that you know about him in the past. Jonah would rather die than turn back and repent and follow through on what

God has called him to do. I'm pretty convinced in my mind, just knowing

God over the last 38 years, that if Jonah says, turn this ship around and head towards the closest port to Nineveh, I'm in,

I'm done, I repent, I am going to go to Nineveh, I will do what God says, I think the storm stops.

But instead he says, throw me in. I want to die. I'd rather die than go to Nineveh.

Put me in the water. His heart has become so callous and rebellious that he refuses to actually go to Nineveh as God has requested.

He's in a bitter, hard place in his life against God. Again, we can play these emotions down in our children's stories and things like that, but he's in a hard place, his heart is hard.

See the sailors, on the other hand, the sailors are these pagan, idolatrous sailors, worshipping pagan gods and statues, and they value human life.

And being caught in the middle, they don't like the thought of murdering a man. So apparently they weren't pirates.

So they try one of their own solutions and begin to attempt to row to shore. Now mariners in that time, and just an interesting tidbit for you, is that they would always regularly stay within sight of shore when going around the

Mediterranean Sea. So that was the way that they would sail, so they would always be fairly close to shore, just off of the shelf in deeper water, but always in sight of land.

But rowing towards shore shows significant distress on the part of these sailors. Because the last place you take a ship in a storm is up by shore.

Why? Because you're going to get dashed against the rocks, you're going to get beached on the shore, you're going to capsize in the shallows, and the ship's going to break up.

So just the fact that they're trying to row closer into shore shows that they're between a rock and a hard place. They're faced with a tough decision.

Put yourself in their shoes. Stay out in the waves and capsize with Jonah on board.

Move in closer to shore and dump this guy into the shallows where he might have a fighting chance to make it to shore, and his blood is not on your hands, or throw him overboard as he's asked.

What would you do? They're willing to take their chances, coming in closer to shore and giving him a fighting chance of surviving.

That's what they're trying to do here. They're still trying to get rid of him. Do you realize that? They're still trying to get some distance between them and him so that God can take his fury out on Jonah alone on shore.

But could you let us step out of the middle? We don't want to be the middlemen here in this situation.

But after some time rowing, they're getting nowhere, and the storm is growing more ferocious. We move from what was called back in verse 4, a mighty tempest, to the phrase more and more tempestuous in verse 11, to more and more tempestuous in verse 13.

And we are running the risk of exhausting adjectives on the storm at this point.

Do you see that? I don't think we can, I can't think of adjectives that work. We're talking about ultimately a hurricane.

And I actually looked at this and I thought, you have hurricanes in the Mediterranean? See, I don't think so. So I actually looked it up and just did a little research.

And as recent as, probably just about every decade in the past 50 years, there's been a hurricane on the

Mediterranean Sea, as recent as 1995. There was a storm that formed in the eastern

Mediterranean, a well -defined eye, winds whipping around that eye at 85 miles per hour, pretty significant storm.

Meteorologists and weather dudes don't like to call it a hurricane because it doesn't match their technical definition.

But if you look at it from an aerial shot, it's a hurricane. And that's what's probably going on here. They're at the end of their ropes.

Their options are dwindling. So the sailors offer a prayer requesting preemptive forgiveness.

Have you ever prayed the preemptive forgiveness prayer? God forgive me for what I'm about to do.

Do you know that prayer? Okay. I was out for dessert with a pastor who's quite a bit more seasoned than me at one point.

And the waitress brought us out, we were out for dessert, and she brought us what amounted to like a quarter of a piece of pie each.

And then he offered the prayer, and his prayer was, God forgive us for what we're about to do. And we ate it.

Oh, that's good. But serious, the preemptive prayer thing is really not a joking matter.

For a believer, I don't think you can pray a more misguided prayer than God forgive me for the sin

I'm about to do. I don't think there's anything that demonstrates a more destructive and contemptible misunderstanding of the cross of Christ than that kind of prayer.

Then the assumption that a Christian can make room for sin, just ask forgiveness for it later.

With that mindset. Do you see what I'm saying? Are you understanding where I'm going with that? Let alone asking forgiveness before we do it, right?

Christ died so that we can be freed, set free from sin. Followers of Jesus do not put sin on their daily planner.

They don't plan for it and schedule it. God said one of the things that he hates is feet that run to sin.

Feet that are fast. Planning it, plotting it, moving towards it.

Do Christians fall into sin? Yeah, we do. And we repent, we confess it, we turn from it, we fight against it, we battle it in our lives first, right?

When I talk about battling sin, I'm talking about in here. That's our call. Primarily, start right here with yourself.

I'm pointing at myself. Please don't start just with me. Start right here. Start with ourselves.

Battle sin. Don't make room for it. It's a little bit different for these idolatrous sailors as they're talking about this and they're offering this prayer.

Notice that at least they're calling out to Yahweh. Do you see that? They're actually praying to God. They've been told to throw this prophet of God into the water.

He is a prophet. God has declared through him what they're supposed to do. They're fearful that maybe

Jonah is innocent and they're going to be held guilty for killing an innocent man. And not only that, but guilty for killing an innocent prophet of God.

Kind of a scary thing. But notice that in this event, they've learned something about Yahweh, about God.

Look at the end of verse 14. I'll read the whole thing. 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 you pleased. He's done what pleased

Him. He's brought all these events about. And they recognize that they are caught up in His story.

They're caught up in His calling, the shots, and His plans. So they pick up Jonah. They sling him into the sea.

Kind of ironic that their very first act of worship, their very first act of service to God, the first thing that they do for Him, is to throw one of His prophets into the ocean to His death.

It's the first thing that they do. It's implied that immediately the sea ceases from raging.

I don't know the duration or the time or how long it took for the sea to get calm, but it ceases from its raging.

The result of this miracle is that these sailors feared Yahweh, feared God, exceedingly.

In Hebrew, the word fear and the phrase reverent awe are basically synonymous when applied to God.

These soldiers have been moved. They've been changed by this experience. From a place of worshiping idols to a place of worshiping

Jehovah, Yahweh, however you want to pronounce it. They offer a sacrifice. And the word that's used for sacrifice implies an animal sacrifice.

Now, does anybody else scratch their head and go, where did they get animals? They're in a boat. It's very common, extremely common for long journeys for them to have animals on board for food.

It would be kind of unfortunate to be a small farm animal during this time, during that era. Sorry, but I'm just saying, your life expectancy was not too good.

They offer a sacrifice. The sacrifice is awesome, showing that they recognize that it is

God who has saved them from the storm. They want to express thankfulness, so they offer a sacrifice to him. But the presence of the vows, the word vows there are even more significant in this context.

The vows demonstrate that they want an ongoing relationship with God. These men have converted and they're pledging to follow

Yahweh as their God and they're saying, we make our vows to you. We will follow you, which takes us back to Jonah, who's not doing much following.

He's doing a lot of thinking. He's thinking like a prophet in the sea. Apparently, he didn't do well in swimming classes and we're going to see, why do

I say that? Why do I say that? He's not up at the surface. We'll see in his poem, his prayer that he prays next week from the belly of the whale, he sank like a rock, and he tells us that.

People want to debate about what kind of animal comes and swallows him. It says, the Lord appointed a beast of the sea to swallow

Jonah. Have you heard the debates roll back and forth? What kind of animal was it?

The Hebrew word is generic enough to let our imaginations run wild. But anyone who tells you they figured out what animal this is, is just not being honest with the text of Scripture.

If they tell you definitively that they know, then they're not paying attention to the Hebrew word here, because the Hebrew word is best translated, huge aquatic animal.

It's a very extremely generic term. But the fact of the matter is, there's only two things that matter about this animal.

There's only two things that we need to know about it, really. Number one, it was sent by the sovereign Lord over all.

It was appointed by God. If you believe God exists, then it does not seem to be a stretch to say that he is capable of sending an animal that's able to sustain

Jonah in the sea for three days. Whether he made a special creation and a unique animal for the circumstance, or whether he used a whale shark or a whale.

It doesn't really matter in the end. A lot of people find this just incredible, like unbelievable, that this could happen.

But if you believe God exists, you see what I'm saying? That's the biggest miracle. If there's a God who's created all of this and is over all of this, then it's just not a stretch for him to do something like this.

It's not that big of a deal. Am I right? Okay, great. The second thing that we need to know about the animal is that without this animal,

Jonah drowns. End of story. We move on to the book of Acts next week, and we're done. Unfortunately, we're not going to see

Jonah grow a whole lot between now and the end, so he could have just ended it here, but we're going to see some more about God's mercy and grace throughout the book.

Jonah's not going to move significantly from the place where he is right here, right now, in our text. He'll move a little bit, but not significantly.

But that's not what happens. The beast was sent by God to save Jonah, not to punish him.

Have you thought about that? Maybe as a kid, it was kind of taught to you that way or something? The whale was not even a picture of salvation, but was kind of like, well,

God caught him. God got him. Caught right up with him and swallowed him in a whale. You know what

I'm saying? This is salvation. This is a picture of being saved. He was going to drown and die, and God sent a huge animal to preserve him, bring him back to shore, and give him a second chance.

Now in our story, finally, Jonah's in the belly of something, so we're up to the part where we're familiar with the story, right?

But there's a couple of points for us to consider for our lives as we really think about this amazing account.

The first thing that I want to say, and I said it during the introduction, the main point is that God can use anyone, even an unwilling prophet.

I'm certainly not going to go and encourage you to live any way you want. Go run from God. Go do your own thing, because God can use you anyways.

That is not the point of this message. Please don't hear that. The point is that God is not dependent upon you, or me, or anyone.

He doesn't need my skill, and he doesn't need me to be perfect before he can work through me.

Can you praise God for that? Are you grateful that God doesn't only use perfect things?

How many of you would be ruled out if God only used perfect things? You'd be like, I'm useless. I'm useless.

I'm worried about the two or three of you that didn't raise your hand on that one. We'll talk later. None of us are perfect, but he doesn't need us to be perfect to work through us.

Glory to him for that. And the fact that God chooses to use us, he's not pursuing

Jonah because he can't get to Nineveh without him. Do you get that? Can God get to Nineveh some other way?

Absolutely. And it's not like God is saying, but I've invested so much in training, and Jonah, and I've brought him along, and I've nurtured him, and look, he's running from me, and I need him.

I can't afford to lose my Jonah. So the fact is, he does love

Jonah. He wants Jonah to be included in this amazing global mission of salvation. He wants him to grasp that, to embrace the mission of God, to be enthusiastic like God is about it.

And he even allows Jonah to be a part of the reason these idol worshippers convert to become followers of Yahweh.

What I would ask of you is to align yourself with the will of God. How do we align ourselves with the will of God right here?

He's revealed his will to us here. Study it. Read it. Know it. It is our connection point to God.

It's our access point. Align yourself with the will of God through his word.

Focus in on his mission. You'll see his mission as you come to know him through the word. You'll begin to see what he's doing.

This awesome building of this kingdom that is global, that stretches so far beyond what's happening here in Matawan.

It is a glorious thing. It's amazing to just be a part of that.

But focus on that then. So align yourself with the will of God. Focus in on his mission of a global kingdom under Jesus Christ.

And then watch him use you. He will use you if you will align yourself with his word.

Focus and pay attention to his mission. You'll see opportunities all over the place to be used by God.

The second thing is learning through fear. We see that in the lives of these sailors, don't we?

They learn something and they learn it in a tough way. They learn through fear. For me, even preaching, standing up here and talking about the fear of God can be a little bit scary because it isn't a very popular topic, would you agree with that?

Fearing God, we want to just have a God that is just loving and caring and compassionate and basically just a good

American, right? He's not like us. The sailors went from fear of the storm to exceeding fear of the cause of the storm to exceeding fear of Yahweh, of God.

And that led them to worship, to sacrifice, to dedication with their vows.

The book of Proverbs in the Old Testament calls the fear of the Lord the beginning of wisdom. Have you ever thought why?

Why is fear in God the beginning of wisdom? Wisdom, right living and applied knowledge and putting all of that into practice.

Wisdom is the picture of a good life and how does the fear of God tie in with that?

I'm convinced that it's because if you see God as He is, reverent awe will be the result.

If you really understand Him, if you were to meet Him, if He were to appear before us, we would know what reverent awe meant immediately.

Do you understand what I'm saying? You encounter Him. You look at people who encountered Him in the Bible and how did they respond?

They fell on their face, woe is me, I'm undone, I'm not worthy. I feel like I'm unraveling in your presence.

Reverent awe would be the response of an encounter with God. And the result of reverent awe is a transformed life.

So it sounds like maybe we need some reverent awe because if we encounter

God, our lives will never be the same. I'm convinced that a healthy dose of the fear of God is the medicine that many of us need to drive us deeper into Christ, deeper into understanding what a great and glorious salvation has been provided for us through Him.

Does the Christian need to fear God? No and yes, right?

So many times it's kind of both directions here. We need not fear His judgment.

Would you agree with that? We face no condemnation. Glory to God that that has been removed in Christ.

That He paid the penalty. That's what the cross is about. He paid the price so that we don't have to face condemnation.

Can anybody say amen to that? We don't have to face condemnation.

But reverent awe, that aspect of fear, that kind of two -sided coin, should we reflect that?

Yes. As believers, we should constantly, if anybody has a reverent awe of God, it should be us.

As we understand God's righteousness and His justified wrath and anger towards sin, that should press us deeper in gratitude into the shelter of Jesus Christ.

See what I'm saying? For those outside of Christ, the fear of God is a reasonable response.

Fear of judgment is a reasonable motivation to running to the arms of Christ. Some of you, maybe your testimony is that there was fear involved in your conversion experience.

There was for these sailors, right? Was it legitimate? Were they coerced?

Were they forced? Was it unfair? No, it was their response to the circumstances around them.

They came to a logical, natural, reasonable awe and fear of God which led them to reverence and even to worship.

So ask yourself two questions as we come to communion this morning. Do you have a healthy respect and reverence for God?

If not, if it's something that you struggle with, you're likely not alone. Stocking the holy righteousness of God is at a low in our culture, pretty cheap to buy some.

It's in vogue to question things like the existence of hell. Kept up with some of that controversy with Rob Bell and things that are going on up in Grand Rapids and his book and stuff,

I don't know if you have. Even my spell check, my autocorrect rather, I'm typing on my iPad here and I'm typing my sermon and every time

I type the word hell, it autocorrects it to he will, the contraction he will.

Even my autocorrect doesn't believe in hell. I have to figure out how to train that thing so it'll let me write that word.

But to be serious, if you're here without Christ, please, please consider putting your trust in Him while there is still time.

I don't say that to preach hellfire and brimstone to anybody, but it is a serious matter, a very serious matter that is worth your consideration.

If you are unconvinced about the truth of salvation in Jesus Christ and you're here, please be intellectually honest with yourself.

Pursue the truth like your life depends on it. There is no room to be flippant about these kinds of questions.

Do you hear what I'm saying? No room to be flippant or passe about it. Oh, I'll put some time and thought into that in my 50s.

Do we know if we're going to make it there? We don't know. Well, some of you, because some of you are there, pass it.

If you're not 50, if you're not 60, you know what I'm saying. Consider putting your trust in Him.

Pursue the truth like your life depends on it. And I'd encourage you to come and talk with me.

Ask questions. Ask your real questions. Sometimes I talk with people and I know that there's a question that's back and it's just nagging on them and they're just not asking it because they think that it's...

There's nothing like it. There are no inappropriate questions. Some of you have some serious, logical, intellectual issues with the

New Testament or something or something that somebody told you once that you just wrestled through. Give it a try, but talk with somebody about it.

And then read the book. Read this. Take one of those Bibles with you and read it. And then the second question

I want you to ask as we come to communion, are you aligning yourself with God's mission? What are you doing in your life that is furthering the cause of the kingdom of Christ?

Recast church. We don't exist here in order to make a nice, comfortable place for Christians to hang out.

We are called to be a people on a mission. We're ambassadors of the kingdom of God to our neighborhoods, to our workplaces, to our families, to our friends.

If you're here and God has saved you, he has saved you to a mission. He has you here for a reason.

And if you're kind of wondering, what is my purpose? Why has God saved me? What has he brought me to? I would love to sit down with you and talk about your unique calling, to just get to know you a little bit better and then to also walk through that.

I can't tell you what you're called to do, but I can give you some clues and help point you in the right direction based on who you are and what skills and gifts and talents and abilities

God has given you. Every Sunday morning, we bring everything back to the center by taking communion together.

It's ultimately a chance for us to remember the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He stood in our place like a substitute teacher stands in place for another teacher.

He took the penalty, the punishment for our sins that we deserve to be punished for. He allowed his body to be crushed for our sins.

He poured out his own blood on a hillside outside of Jerusalem at a real time and a real place for us.

So that the Apostle Peter could write this in 1 Peter 1, 17 -18,

I want you to listen carefully for the word fear in this verse, in these two verses.

And if you call on him as father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, throughout your life here on earth.

Conduct yourself with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from your feudal ways, you were purchased, you were bought from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but you've been purchased with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

And that's what I want you to remember as we come to communion. Remember the awesome value of the blood of Christ paid for the forgiveness of our sins.

And remembering that should change our lives from the inside out. Some of you, maybe this is your first time here, we're going to have a song here,

Dave's going to come up and play, there's a line that's going to form back here, two lines up here. At any time during the song, as you get an opportunity to pray, just ask yourself these couple of questions.

Are you aligning yourself with the mission of God? Do you have a healthy respect and awe and fear and reverence of God?

As you ask yourself those questions at any time, you can feel free to get up and take communion. Let's pray. As Dave comes.