We begin the book of Jonah today. You know, this is kind of at the heart of why we practice expository preaching here. We've all, hopefully most of us, have read the book of Jonah. It really is an incredible story just for the reading of it on the surface, but when you start digging into it and going through it verse by verse, a richness and a texture begins rising up, and I hope you get a chance to see that today. So, I'm going to ask you to turn to the book of Jonah. Don't be embarrassed if you have to find the table of contents in front of your Bible to do it. I did. So, while you're turning there, and before we get to our text, I want to lay some groundwork as to who Jonah is and how he fit into the world around him, around the date this book was written. So, here's our setting for the book of Jonah. Jonah is a prophet's son. Jonah himself is a prophet. His father was Amittai. They're from Gath Hefer, which is just to the northern part of Israel, right between the Sea of Galilee and the the Mediterranean Ocean. Matter of fact, it's in the area that will come to be known as Galilee. Jeroboam is king of Israel. If you've been following along on our daily Bible reading, we're in 2 Kings right now, and we're looking at a succession of kings coming in very rapid order, some for the northern kingdom of Israel, some for the southern kingdom of Judah. But they're a dizzying mix of good and bad. Jeroboam is one of the bad ones. Jonah actually prophesied to Jeroboam and Israel, and God actually used Jeroboam to preserve Israel. We'll get into that in just a minute or so. Even though Jeroboam was not a godly king, God used him for His purposes. There's some encouragement in that. The time period that all this happens in is crucial to our story, to understanding everything that's going on. It's between 790 BC and 750 BC. That's about as narrow as they can get it. And it's a time when Assyria, a very large, very powerful, very ferocious nation to the north around the area of Turkey right now and around in Iraq, was on the wane. They were running into some hard times. They were being attacked on all sides. They were under siege. So let me give you a picture of what this is. That's Israel right there, the little red dot. That's Assyria. You can see it's massive. And that's where they're situated. Now, Assyria, even though they're on the wane, will rise again to cause trouble. But during Jonah's time, they were struggling. And in particular, they were struggling with a number of nations to the north of them, tribes that came down out of the mountains and began to attack Syria's northern border. And matter of fact, they had been so successful at that, they were within 100 miles of the capital city of Nineveh. So that might give us some perspective as to how Nineveh reacts to Jonah's message a little bit later on in the book. They can see these tribes coming after them and they're about to be overrun by them. So our sermon for today is called The Angry Prophet. This is part one. We'll probably have three, maybe five sermons. I haven't worked out the details on the outlines yet. And we're not gonna see a whole lot of anger in Jonah today, but we'll see the roots of anger appearing in Jonah's life, and they'll develop as we go on. So today's passage is Jonah 1, 1 through 16. Let me read this before we begin to parse it out. 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 the 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 that 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 had lain down and was fast asleep. So the captain came out and said to him, What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise! Call out to your God. Perhaps God will give us 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's your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And what people are you? And he said to them, I'm a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord of 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've done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Then he said to them, 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. And he said to them, pick me up and hurl me into the sea. Then the sea will be quiet down for you. And 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. And the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. Word of the Lord, brothers and sisters. Here's a truth we're going to explore today. Brother Ernest mentioned a little bit earlier, it showed up in his reading. You can't hide from God. You can't hide from God. We're gonna see that in our passage. Our passage has three sections to it today. Three steps that Jonah takes in his tumble into problems, in his tumble into oblivion. Here are the steps. Verses one and two are gonna show us Jonah's order. Verse 3 is going to show us Jonah's objection. And verses 4 through 16 will show us Jonah's ordeal. So we're going to see our three steps, but we're not just going to see them. We're going to see an incredible measure of God's grace. spread throughout this passage. So let's look at our first step, Jonah's order. Verses 1 and 2 are packed with a lot of contextual information pertinent to our understanding the passage. The Jewish readers of Jonah's time are acutely aware of a serious history. They have a new king, Jeroboam. He's not a great king. He's rapidly leading the nation astray. Most of them probably know of Jonah, probably have heard of his prophecies that these things spread throughout the land pretty quickly. If you look back in 2 Kings verses 14, you'll see that Jonah prophesied to Jeroboam and to Israel. So, he's one of the minor prophets sent to Israel. But he prophesied to Jeroboam that Israel would re-expand its borders. That they would start taking back land that had been taken from them when the kingdoms divided and they became a little weaker. 2 Kings 14.25 speaks of Jeroboam. He restored the border of Israel from Lebahamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah according to the Word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gathhefer. Of course, the expansion was by the hand of God, not because of Jeroboam, but in spite of Jeroboam. God moved anyway. 2 Kings goes on to tell us why, beginning with 14, verse 26. and there was none left, bond or free, and there was none to help Israel. But the Lord had not said that He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, so He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joab. Now, knowing all this, most folks in Israel were anticipating bad news coming for nations like Assyria, the nations that oppressed them. They weren't expecting good news to come to those nations, but God had something different in mind. See, they all had the idea that God was going to afflict these nations, that God was going to come in and vindicate them and squash them like a bug. but God had something different in mind. So to accomplish his plan, God was going to use Jeroboam and Jonah as well. He's about to use Jonah. God tells Jonah to arise and go to Nineveh. Now, there's some urgency in this word arise. It means to go do it right away, to get up and get moving. What Jonah would have heard, and Jonah would have heard, get up and do it right now. And that's exactly what Jonah does. But you've got to look at where God wants Jonah to go. He wants to send him to Nineveh, that great city. Now, Nineveh was a big city, but it wasn't as big as we'll hear later on in the story. And that's not what's being described here. The Jews would have heard something like, go to greater Nineveh. or go to metropolitan Nineveh, or go to the region surrounding Nineveh. So Jonah's being sent to a very large area surrounding the capital city. His order is to call out, to speak out against Nineveh, to let them know that God is aware of the evil that they've done. Now, that all sounds good and fine for Jonah, but let me put this into perspective so that we can have an understanding of what Jonah's being asked to do. Given the brutal history of Assyria, it would be like you or me hearing a word from God who would say to us, look, I want you to get on a plane and go over to Iraq. And when you get to Iraq, I want you to get off the plane and go into the middle of Baghdad and start proclaiming God knows that you're an evil people and he's about to punish you for being evil. What do you think your chances of survival on that would be? That's what Jonah's being asked to do. Yet, that was God's order. That's the order that was given to Jonah. Walk into the heart of the enemy territory and tell them that they're evil. So, let's take a look at step two, Jonah's objection. This is where we begin to get a peek under the hood of Jonah, what drives him, what motivates his heart. He does react swiftly. He jumps up. But in verse 3 that we see that he jumps up so that he can begin to run pretty much in the opposite direction of where he's supposed to go. in the opposite direction of where God wants him to go. So let's take a look at what we're talking about here. Here's a map of the region again. That's Nineveh, where the blue arrow is. The other blue arrow is where Jonah is. Now, we're not sure where Tarshish is by the red circle there. We know it's somewhere to the west. It might be as far west as Spain. It might be somewhere between Rome and Athens or Macedonia or something like that. What we do know about Tarshish is it's not in the direction of Nineveh. It is far away from Nineveh. Now, that's startling enough that Jonah would not listen to God. What's even more surprising is that Jonah is a prophet. Jonah is accustomed to talking to God. He's used to delivering God's Word. He's somebody God has used in a powerful way. What's even more surprising is why Jonah is going in the opposite direction. Verse 3 tells us that it is to get away from the presence of the Lord. Wow. Now, we know that Jonah knows that he can't get away from God. And we know that because the Jews had a very robust theology about the omnipresence of God, that God being everywhere. In Psalm 139 that Ernest read a little bit earlier, we know the Jews had a full understanding of that passage, and that because of that, Jonah knew that he couldn't get away from God. So what does this phrase mean? Well, we see a similar phrase in Genesis 4, 16, where Cain has a broken relationship with the Lord because he's been disobedient. We see Elijah using something very similar to this phrase throughout his story in describing being before the Lord and being submissive to Him. And we find out, if we look a little bit further, the phrase is a Jewish idiom that means being before the Lord, being submissive, being obedient to the Lord. And what we're hearing here is that Jonah is constantly, consciously rejecting the will of God. He's consciously rebelling against God. He refuses to submit to God's Word. Jonah's making an emphatic statement here. And the author wants us to know how strong a statement it is, because we know that when the Bible repeats itself, it's trying to tell us something important. That statement starts at the beginning of verse 3, and it's stated again at the end of verse 3, twice in one verse. So Jonah, Jonah, who saw firsthand the stubbornness of Israel as they repeatedly heard the word of God and just as frequently rebelled against it, this Jonah, who sometimes brought that word himself, now disobeys the Lord and refuses to do what he's told to do. What happened? Is it fear that motivates them? Is he afraid that if he walked into Nineveh, they would kill him? Well, you know, in just a couple more verses, we're going to find out that Jonah's really not afraid to die. But also, as we begin to read the narrative here, we see that fear is a factor. Matter of fact, if we jump ahead, I'll give you a hint of what's happening here. If you take a look ahead to chapter four, Jonah's afraid. that the Ninevites will repent. Let that sink in for just a second. He's afraid the Ninevites will repent. You know, the Ninevites are these fearsome, ferocious warriors. They've had Israel in their sights before. Could happen again. They've been the cause of a lot of pain and a lot of heartache and a lot of grief. Most Jews are waiting for the day when all the Assyrians would answer to God for everything that they've done. Jonah knows this, but you know what else Jonah knows? Because he's seen it himself. He knows that God is gracious. He knows that he's a God of grace. He has seen those who repent are spared. And even more than that, they repent, they're spared, and they frequently experience blessing. Mercy falls upon those who repent. Jonah runs, not trembling in fear of his life, but in fear that the Ninevites will hear and turn to God. And Jonah doesn't like the Ninevites. They're the enemy. So he runs. He doesn't want to see, Jonah doesn't want to see the enemy get saved. Huh. My, my, my, my. What a lesson for the fractured world that we live in, isn't it? Fractured world, where most of the people, for most folks, the common practice is to lay out your designated area, invite all the people that look like you and sound like you and think the same thing you do, and then consider everybody else the enemy. Asking only those who think similarly, believe similarly, to come into the inner circle and be part of the in crowd. Filled with folks who allow themselves to believe that anything, anyone of another faith, of another persuasion, or another way of thinking is the enemy. The world does it. That's how the world functions these days, isn't it? Sad part about it is, some areas of the church function the same way. There are a lot of folks in the church today, the church universal, that are like Jonah. They look at the Muslims. They look at the homosexuals. They look at the liberals. They look at people of a particular political persuasion. It doesn't really matter what political persuasion, because all sides are guilty of this. They look at the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses. They're offended by these people. They're offended by anyone not on their side. You name the small interest group, and they're offended by it. These are the folks that see the enemy everywhere. Well, right here in the first few verses of Jonah, we see that God sees the people that they perceive as the enemy as the mission field. They're the mission field. Who's the church supposed to witness to? The lost. They're the mission field. Jonah, there are a lot of people in the church universal today that are charged with proclaiming the Word of God, and still decide to pass judgment on those they're called to proclaim the Word of God to, preferring to espouse hate, self-righteousness, and anger rather than the gospel. We would do well to when we're following the fake news today, and I've got to tell you something. I think it's all fake. I don't see anything out there that's objective. I don't see anything out there that's not biased, that doesn't have a slant. I don't see anything out there that's not got such a narrow focus that they zero in on you. this person over here and this person over here here's what he wants to hear and this person over here here's what he wants to hear and you hear what they want you to hear as far as I'm concerned there's no news other than the good news none of its objective we would do well to examine our hearts and put them before the Lord and ask if the next thing we say or write is faithful to our call at being messengers of the gospel. I said it before, it's the only reason the church is here. Jonah doesn't do that. Jonah goes the opposite way. He doesn't want to do what God says. That's his objection. He doesn't want to do what God wants him to do. That's his step two. Let's take a look and see how that works out for Jonah. Maybe we'll get a hint as to how it will work out for us if we allow ourselves to go down the same path. Let's look at step three, Jonah's ordeal. Jonah sailed out of Joppa, a pretty little place. Prominent port back then, it lies just about a mile south of where Tel Aviv is right now. Tel Aviv is a major port on the Mediterranean for Israel. You can walk the streets of Joppa today, take a look at right over there. I see a green sea and pink buildings. I'm not sure what the problem is there. But you look out over the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, and then there's Tel Aviv directly to the north. You can see it off in the distance, same algae-type water there, I guess. Soon after they embark, in verse 4, we see that God hurled a great wind upon the sea. Now, the word for hurled here is important. It means to violently, viciously, with a lot of fury, hurl this wind on the sea. The ship's not large, but it wasn't small either. It had a crew of about 35 to 40 men. It would have a few passengers and a lot of cargo. It was manned with seasoned sailors. All these guys had experience out on the sea. They had experience with storms. But this storm was a huge one, and it threatened to break the ship apart. And in verse 5, we hear that the sailors were so afraid that they were each calling out to their own God and asking for help. And they had begun jettisoning the cargo. Now that's an act of desperation. They're there to take the cargo. They begin throwing it overboard to lighten the ship. Maybe they'll survive the storm. So God hurls the storm, the sailors hurl the cargo, and we find out how desperate these men are. Meanwhile, where's Jonah? He's taking a nap down in the hold of the ship. The author says Jonah went down into the inner part of the ship. Now, the writer is trying to draw a picture here with a couple of different terms. Jonah goes down into the hold of the ship. We see God hurling this wind and the sailors hurling things. So, we see a picture of utter chaos. There's violence all over the place. People are hurling everything left and right. Jonah is going down. If you look in verse 3, Jonah went down to Joppa. Here he goes down into the ship. Jonah's on a downward spiral. He's not just going down physically, he's going down spiritually as well. The further he runs, the deeper and deeper he gets embroiled in the problem of his own making. He's manufactured the situation, and it keeps getting worse for him. The captain confronts Jonah in verse 6, and said, what do you mean, you sleeper? He said, what? Literally, are you sleeping? Are you out of your mind? Arise, call out to your God. Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not perish." Now, the irony of the captain's choice of words would not have escaped Jonah. He would have seen what was happening here. He tells Jonah to arise with the same urgency that God told him to arise in verse 1. Jonah also heard God tell him to call out to Nineveh, just as he heard the captain say, call out to your God, the God that Jonah was running from at the moment the captain spoke to him. So maybe Jonah's feeling some conviction, maybe not. What we do know is the crew cast lots in verse 7. A lot falls to Jonah. And right away they want to know who he is, where he came from, what's he doing there, all these questions they're peppering with. They're looking for some explanation as to why Jonah has brought all this trouble down upon them. And in another moment of sheer irony, Jonah tells them that he's a Hebrew that fears the Lord of heaven who made the earth and the sea. the very sea that Jonah was using to try and escape God from. See what had just happened there? Jonah acknowledged the sovereignty of God. Jonah knows, as we said earlier, that he can't get away from Him. God is everywhere. Jonah is fully aware that God is sovereign, but his problem is that he's not sure what God's sovereign plan is. And that causes him to be apprehensive, maybe even angry. It causes him to take matters into his own hands and try to affect the outcome. Can we relate to that? Is there anybody in this room or listening to this sermon that struggles with the same feelings? Knowing that God is sovereign, but not really trusting Him with the outcome. In many ways, you know, it's a natural fear. You know, we want to acknowledge the sovereignty of God. We're just afraid of what He might do with that sovereignty. We might not like His plan. We might not like the way things turn out. We might want them to turn out a different way. What we need to understand is that's not just an exception that we're afraid. The fact that we begin to take things in our own hands and we get involved just shows that we don't trust God at all. proclaim his sovereignty, but we practice our own. See, that's what's at the core of Jonah's struggle right now. He's not trusting God. He's second-guessing God. Jonah's just like that friend who tells you, you've got to do something. You can't just sit there and Nothing's happening. You've got to get there and make something happen. No one else is doing anything. Someone has to do something. It's up to you. What they're really saying is you can't just sit there and trust God. You've got to go in there and direct things. Things might turn out differently than you want them to turn out. If you don't influence them, you could go through some pain. If you don't influence them, things aren't going to turn out the way you want them to. Now, the sailors are practicing exactly what we're talking about. They hear all this, and they understand very clearly in verses 10 and 11 that the storm is there because of Jonah, and they want to know what they can do to make the sea calm. Now, regardless of his rebellious actions, Jonah remains a man of God. He shows that he's not in fear of losing his life. He shows some integrity. He shows some compassion for the sailors. And in verse 12, he tells the men to hurl him into the sea. The same word with the same connotation. To violently throw him into the fury of the sea. We saw that in verse 4, and we saw it again in verse 5. Jonah made sure that the men know that God is not taking this out on them, it's on him. But the men have integrity as well, and they have compassion. In verse 13, we see that they try to spare Jonah. They try to roll their way out of the storm. They try to roll their way back to land, even as the sea becomes increasingly violent. Do any of us ever do that? Do we ever try to row our way out of the storm instead of listening to God and doing what He says? Does God ever tell us to do something so hard that we'd rather just get out of the situation than obey Him? Jonah's a prophet. He's a prophet of God. The sailors know that there's truth to what he says, but they try anyway. And that should lead us to ask ourselves, do we ever try harder to get out of our situations than we try to obey God? Ultimately, the men cry out to Yahweh, to the one true God, asking forgiveness for what they're about to do. Acknowledging that everything that they're experiencing was coming from the Lord. And those are the sailors. Now, did you see what just happened to them? A transformation has taken place. These men who have heard the Word of God and are obeying Him have gone from each one of them calling out to his own God, to all of them collectively at one time calling out to the one true God, trusting Him, doing what He tells them to do, trusting that His will is involved in that thing that they've been called to do. The men gather together. And they do that hard thing, the thing that they've been told to do, to be saved. They do the hard thing to fall under God's grace. So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea. And the sea ceased from its raging, verse 15. There's that word again, hurled. Appears four times in the passage. The author wants us to feel the rage and the fury of the sea. He wants us to feel the fear of the men as they throw the cargo overboard. And he wants us to understand the violence of throwing a man to a sure death. Not only that, but he wants us to see the willingness of that man to experience a violent death in order to save others. Look at the result Jonah's sacrifice has on the sailors. Verse 16, then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. This disparate group of men, this group of Gentiles, people that were not like the Hebrews, have not only been spared from death, they've been changed. They've been transformed. Their experience in understanding the sacrifice that was made for them has drawn them into the family of God. Incredible story. That was Jonah's ordeal, but you know what? That was a sailor's ordeal as well. For the sailors, the ordeal's over. For Jonah, it's almost just begun. We'll see that in part two. So there we have our three steps of Jonah tumbling into problems. Jonah's order, Jonah's objection, and Jonah's ordeal. So far, it's a fascinating story. It's about to get a whole lot more fascinating. But here's some of the lessons we can take home, and here's some of the lessons that are pretty obvious. Jonah is a type of Christ. He's certainly a flawed type of Christ, but we see how God can save many people through the sacrifice of one obedient person. Number two, God's sovereignty can be a fearful thing, particularly if we don't trust in God for the outcome. Number three, the enemy we perceive, the enemy that we see, is actually our mission field. And I know some folks are going to struggle with this. I know it's going to be hard for a lot of folks. Because we have it so ingrained in us that we're the good guys, and everybody who's not like us are the bad guys. And we think our job is to eliminate, or at the very least, hate the bad guys. Things are amplified by the fact that The bad guys are enemies of God. And because we're one with God, that makes them our enemies. I mean, that's a biblical truth. But what's easy to forget in the middle of all that is that God tells us, the church, to pray for our enemies. He tells us, the church, that He'll seat us at a table with our enemies. He tells us, as a people, to be compassionate. He tells us, as a church, to lead gentle lives. We see a stunning example of this in the Garden of Gethsemane. When the guards come to take Jesus away, Peter pulls out his sword and he cuts off the ear of Malchus. And Jesus turns to him and says, wow, thanks, Peter. That guy had that coming. Boy, he should have known not to be an enemy of God. He's your enemy, too. And I'm glad to see you cut his ear off. Way to go, Peter. No. Jesus says to Peter, put away your sword. He kneels down to Malchus. and He heals them. He heals the man who came to escort Him to the cross. Brothers and sisters, we need to be healers, not cutters. We need to put away our swords. God does not say, vengeance is ours. He says, vengeance is mine. Jonah failed to see the mission field. I pray that the church today doesn't make the same mistake. Now perhaps the most obvious lesson of the most obvious are that you can't outrun God. Now those are the lessons that float right there on the surface. They're pretty easy to see. They attract your attention the way a bobber would on a fishing line when you see it moving, something you've got to pay close attention to. But there are a few hidden gems as well, hidden jewels. Here's the first one. Jonah received God's grace. Jonah, even up to this point, at the point they throw him in the ocean, he's a recipient of God's grace. Jonah earned condemnation and doom for his disobedience. That's the price for disobeying God. Yet God preserved him and blessed him with an incredible grace. Now, we're not quite sure if Jonah appreciates it yet. That'll come. Perhaps he will. But God made Jonah a prophet and had a job for him to do, and Jonah got angry and refused to do it. So he earned punishment. He received grace. Now, as we'll see, there are indeed worldly consequences for Jonah's rebellion, and they involve a very large fish and being inside of it for a while. But God will preserve Jonah. Because the job of the prophet is given by God, and God has called Jonah to do this job. And so, we see that God preserves Jonah for a specific purpose, and we take encouragement from that, because God will preserve us for a specific purpose of fulfilling His promises in us. So, we see God is faithful to Jonah, we know God is faithful to us. We see that God's grace falls on Jonah, it falls upon us as well. So Jonah's received God's grace, but the sailors have received God's grace as well. They watched it happen. This is kind of amazing. God used Jonah's rebellion and a horrific storm to bring those sailors into his presence and make them his children. I'm reasonably certain that during the storm, the sailors didn't see the danger they were in as a blessing. But it was part of God's sovereign plan to teach Jonah a valuable lesson and to save the crew of that boat at the same time. I wonder how many of them for years after that would sit on the docks of Joppa or whatever they were and kind of ponder everything that had to happen to get them to wind up on the same boat as Jonah at the same time that God is teaching Jonah this incredible lesson. I wonder if they'd look back and saw the hand of God working in their lives, working in every decision that they made to bring them all together to meet the living God in this little boat in the middle of a raging sea. It's an absolutely amazing miracle of God's grace fully functioning in the time of trouble. God says that everything in life will be used for His glory and for our good. Here it is right here. And we need to understand this when we're in trouble. God can and will use our trouble to bring us closer to Him. We just have to trust Him and not like the sailors try to row our way out. We just have to trust Him and not like Jonah run in the opposite direction. Here's the last hidden jewel. You can't outrun God, and you can't outrun God's grace. God is everywhere. God is gracious. God's grace is everywhere. This will permeate the entire rest of the narrative of Jonah, brothers and sisters. God just taught Jonah and is about to emphasize it in a uniquely stunning way, that his grace is as unending as his omnipresence is. His word says, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. It's not dependent on Jonah and his behavior. It's dependent on God's decision to be graceful. Paul was so struck by that truth that he repeated it in Romans 9. God is showing Jonah that he will shed his mercy on the flawed and imperfect prophet that now depends on him for everything as he falls into the sea. Jonah's learning the lesson that we heard right there at the beginning. You can't hide from God. You can't hide from God. This is true. So the question Jonah has to answer is the same question that we have to answer today. Are we going to run from God, or are we going to run to Him? He has salvation in his hands. He's a God full of grace. The sailors heard the truth, they repented, they believed, and they were saved. It's the gospel occurring somewhere off the shore of Joppa in the 8th century BC. They experienced an eternal blessing. by turning there a beautiful Savior. Father, we thank you, we praise you for your magnificent grace, for your beauty. Father, for your willingness to take us to the hard places and then giving us your Spirit to get us through them. Help us to keep our eyes on you. Help us keep our focus on you, Father. In Jesus' name.