The Lord sent out a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was about to be broken up. Then the mariners were afraid, and every man cried out to his God, and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest part of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep. So the captain came to him and said to him, What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God. Perhaps your God will consider us so that we may not perish. I'm sure that you're aware today, congregation, that a great many people, even in the nominal Christian church today, do not believe that the events that I've just been reading to you ever happened in reality. In much of the liberal Protestant church in America today, the story of Jonah is little more than a parable or one of Aesop's fables. But I want to say to you that if you really believe that Jesus is the Christ of God, the only mediator between God and man, then you cannot take that view of the book of Jonah. You can see that in the first place because of the comparison he makes. No sign will be given to this generation but the sign of the prophet Jonah. For even as Jonah, even so shall the Son of Man. There is a parallel between what happened to Jonah and what will happen to Jesus. Jonah went down into the depths of the sea and yet was brought back to land. And so the Lord Jesus will actually die and rise again from the dead. And that's not all that Jesus said about this story either, for He said that on the Day of Judgment, and I can assure you that Christ was not talking about anything imaginary when He talked about the Day of Judgment. He said that those people who heard Jonah and repented when he preached to them, are going to stand up in the day of judgment and condemn the people that heard Jesus and would not listen, for he said, a greater than Jonah is here. And so there is a direct comparison between the Ninevites that listened to Jonah and repented and the Israelites who listened to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and refused to repent of their sin. Jesus said they will rise up in the day of judgment and condemn that generation. Well, obviously then, Jesus took this to be historical truth. And I mention this because it's very important if we are to derive the lesson from this part of God's Word that is intended. You know, the philosophers used to talk about the macrocosm and the microcosm. The macrocosm was the whole universe, everything in it and the system that operates in that universe. The microcosm was a little part of that universe in which you could examine the mechanism and see its operation on a smaller scale. Well, I'm not necessarily defending the philosophers, but I do believe that here in this story By divine will, we have a microcosm of the truth of God going on in this story. It has a universal application because what was happening here to Jonah out there on that ship in the midst of that storm with these pagan seamen was very much a representation of the true Church of God in its confrontation with the idolatrous nations. For what was the cause of this terrible storm at sea? Let me read again what it says. The Lord sent out a great wind on the sea and there was a mighty tempest on the sea so that the ship was about to be broken up. What was the cause of that terrible storm at sea? Well, even these pagan seamen came to realize what it was. It was the fact that this prophet of God, who had been told to go down and preach to the people of Nineveh, was not doing what God told him to do. God had commanded Jonah to preach repentance in one of the greatest of the ancient Gentile cities. But Jonah didn't want to do that. So he went the opposite direction. That's why he got on board that ship and paid his fare and had every intention of going to the very other end of the Mediterranean basin to a place called Tarshish. And I tell you that is a true picture of the wider situation. For what was Israel if it was not Jonah on a big scale in this pagan world of lost sinners. God had chosen the nation of Israel to be the light in the midst of the darkness of this world. God had told Israel to be a light unto the nations. It was His plan and purpose that they should hold up the light of God's truth and righteousness in the midst of a fallen and decadent world. But Israel didn't want to do that. Israel didn't want to uphold the light of the Lord. As a matter of fact, she often preferred to turn away from the light of God's word and revelation to go after the way of the Gentiles. If you have any acquaintance at all with the Old Testament history in the Kings and Chronicles of Judges and so on, and in the books of the prophets, you will know that many of the time that the people of Israel chose rather to be like the nation and so in effect they too rebelled against God's commandment and were not willing to hold up the light of God's truth in front of the Gentile nations of the world and so just as Jonah's disobedience brought that storm upon the sea. So Israel's rebellion brought God's judgment upon God's covenant people. And not only upon God's covenant people, but as we have seen over and over again in our study of the book of the prophet Isaiah, upon all the nations round about who were also included in the wrath and judgment of God. Now that's something we need to understand today as we look at the chaos and turmoil in the world. We've recently seen the collapse of the Soviet Union, but you and I both already see that in the midst of that collapse, there are perhaps even more problems than there were then. For the first time in the history of the world, it looks like the next great terror of the world will not be the atomic bomb, but the Islamic bomb, which is already in the possession of at least one Islamic nation. And if you have any idea of Islam, you will know that they have the will to use it in a most terrible fashion. And as you look at the world in its turmoil and trouble today, you wonder, why are all these things happening? What is the reason for the state in which the world is in? Well, friends, I can tell you, when the church turns away As Jonah did from the mission that God gave the church, then I tell you the storm is bound to come, just as surely as it had to come for Jonah, so it is bound to come upon the church that fails to do what God commanded it to do. Why have we had two great world wars and war after war since? Why is the world in such a state of turmoil and upheaval? A great civil war going on now over there in Europe, starvation, uncertainty about the future. Well, the simple fact is that most of the church in the 20th century has been terribly unfaithful to the Great Commission. Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all the nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, the great commission of Jesus. And that's not what the church has been doing. To the contrary, in most of the traditional bastion of the Christian faith in the world, the Western world, There has been a massive defection from and retreat away from the very gospel that was supposed to be taken and preached to all these nations. That's why the storm has come and may even be more severe in the days ahead. For thou hast made thy people see the hardness of distress and thou hast made them drink the wine of reeling drunkenness," says the psalmist. Now, the second thing I want you to notice in this account is the fact that all the sailors on board that ship were alarmed while Jonah was sound asleep. Now, friends, that shows you that sometimes the world is far more awake to the terrors that confront it than the unfaithful churches. I remember one time I was on the South Island in New Zealand to preach in one of our vacant churches, and I had been scheduled to go back the next day by plane to spend Monday with Doris. And we had such bad weather, all the planes were grounded, so I thought, well, I'll take a bus over there and I'll get on that ferry and I'll get home anyway this Monday." And I got on board that ferry and got out there into Cook Strait in one of the most violent storms you could ever imagine. The only thing that kept me from being afraid to the point of terror was one thing. None of the seamen seemed to be worried. And I said, well, I guess if they're not worried, I don't need to be worried. But when every sailor on board the ship is terrified and afraid, you wonder how in the world Jonah could be down there in the hold of the ship, sawing wood, sleeping, totally oblivious to the problems around him. I remember a friend of mine who was a chaplain in World War II talking about going across the North Atlantic in a troop ship. And he happened to be a bunkmate with an atheist. And they argued religion. They argued religion. And this atheist just ridiculed the Christian faith like mad until there was a siren went off telling them that they thought a torpedo was heading for the ship. And immediately the atheist got down on his knees and began to pray. Prayed to whatever God it was he could think of as an atheist. Well, it was a little like that on board the ship there where Jonah was fast asleep. As someone has said, there is no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole or for that matter, on board a ship in the midst of a storm that is about to tear the ship apart. But the amazing thing is that a disobedient and unfaithful church will remain asleep in the midst of the crisis. Folks, we've got sleeping churches all around us here in Carson. And the people in it are just like Jonah. They're totally unconcerned about the situation that we face. Now the ironic thing is that the one man who had a way of knowing what was wrong was asleep. And all these poor pagan sailors who didn't have a way of knowing what was wrong They were wide awake to the danger. Now friends, when Christ rose from the dead, he gave his church a great commission. Go and preach the gospel to every creature. A hundred years ago in North America, every Protestant church in the land had that as number one on its agenda. Did you know that? A hundred years ago, number one on the agenda of the Methodist church, the Presbyterian church, and a lot of other churches was to take the gospel and preach it throughout all the world. There was even a great missionary conference in which the young men of that day were challenged to win the world for Christ in that generation. And then 75 years ago, they began to hack away at the foundations and they began to doubt the biblical doctrine. In our own Presbyterian family, there was an attack on the miracles of Christ, the bodily resurrection, the inerrancy of Scripture. And within a lifetime as long as mine, the mission zeal just went out of the church like air out of a punctured tire. It's all gone today, folks. I can remember my grandparents used to have a great concern about preaching the gospel in Egypt. Well, that concern doesn't even exist today in the church they used to belong to. Is it any wonder that these same churches today can tolerate homosexual pastors, lesbians in the pulpit, and all the rest of it? That's where we are, folks. Wake up if you're like Jonah and you're asleep down in the hole. Wake up! A lot of people in the Protestant churches of America are sound asleep and don't realize that they themselves are the principal source of many of our great national problems. You don't think this nation would be in the shape it is, do you, if the church hadn't gone to sleep? No way. There is a relationship between unfaithfulness in the church and the mounting national problems. When you see it, you ought to be aware of the fact that the storm has come because of God's controversy with His people. Now, the third thing you see here is this amazing encounter. as the captain of the ship, a pagan himself, doesn't know the true God, not the way you and I know him. In the midst of that ship, in that terrible storm, he goes downstairs into the hold of that ship to find Jonah. He shakes him, and he wakes him up, and he says to him, what do you mean, sleeper? Rise, call on your God. And that's something that you frequently see in the Bible and in the world. Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, sinned and made Israel sin. But when his son got sick unto death, do you know what he did? He sent his wife to see a true prophet of God. He never wanted to have anything to do with the true prophets of God any other time, but when it got like that, He sent his wife to seek out a true prophet of God. There is in the heart of every man a latent, down-deep sense of the existence of the true and living God. It's what John Calvin called a sensus deatus. Down deep, every man does really know, after all, that the true God exists. He will suppress that as far as he can, as long as he can. But when the crisis gets severe enough, then he's going to do what that ship captain did. He's going to go down in the hole and he's going to wake up Jonah and say, please help us. Please help us. So here they were praying like mad to their own gods. That's the way the Bible puts it, the gods of their own creation. But when things got bad enough, the gods of their own creation weren't good enough, then they wanted the help of the true God. That day will come again in America. Even presidents will finally reach the place they'll be on their knees praying for help to find the true God again, the one that's being excluded from all of the public institutions of America. As a matter of fact, the Hebrew text here says, and I quote the original, perhaps the God will be concerned about us so that we will not perish. I believe that Kyle and Delitzsch, the great German commentators on the Old Testament, are right when they say that this was more than just a reference to Jonah's God, but it was an admission that Jonah's God was the God. The pagan somehow knew that. There was something in the whole situation that made him aware of the fact that the God that he'd always tried to suppress, the God, the living and true God, was really the one that he had need of. And so he cried out to Jonah to cry out to the God, the true God, in hopes that maybe he would have mercy upon them. You can tell yourself the true God doesn't exist. You can make your own idols right and left so that they're the kind of God that you like. and the kind of God that likes what you like. But when the moment of truth comes, as it did here in this great storm at sea, you're going to know and every other man that exists is going to know that nothing will help but the God of the Bible, the true and living God, Jehovah. So what you see here is a world in miniature at the end of its tether, crying out to the true church of God to return to its mission. Wake up, Jonah, and help us. Admitting, in other words, that it was really down deep afraid of this God after all, and that it wanted somebody to intercede with that God on its behalf. The sin of Jonah was that he didn't want to do what God told him to do. He wanted to keep the light for himself, and so it was with the Israelite people. And that's why God's judgment came upon them. And you know, the ironic thing about it is that when you do what Jonah did, you are acting as if the true God is just like the idols. God says, you go down to Nineveh and preach there. And the one who says that is the God of heaven and earth, the God of everything, the God who has a perfect right to tell you to go anywhere He wants to and to preach to every creature the message He wants you to. And you don't want to do it, and you don't do it. You're acting as if your God, the true God, is no different than the idols, just for you. You have your religion. I have mine. If any of you people talk that way, stop talking that way. It's not right. If God in His grace has opened your eyes to understand that Christ, the Christ of the Bible, the one born of the Virgin who rose bodily from the dead, if He is the Christ of God and no one has the Father who doesn't have the Son, then don't act as if your God is just another one that people might happen to choose. The Canaanites have their gods, the Egyptians have theirs, and we have ours. No! The Egyptians don't have gods. They have idols. They have false gods. The Canaanites, they don't have gods. They have creations of their own that they call gods. But we have the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the only living and true God, the God who said right from the beginning, in you, Abraham, and in your seed, I'm going to bless all the nations. That in itself was a promise. that God would never be content to have His church just keep what they had to themselves and act as if, well, this is my religion and that's yours and that's just fine. It's not just fine. Congregation today, by the grace of God, we are God's covenant people. And wherever we are as His servants, He calls upon us to preach His judgment and mercy to a lost and disobedient world. And I believe the world in the condition it is in today is really crying out saying, please, wake up and tell us. The new Secretary of Foreign Missions of our church is reporting unprecedented opportunities from the four corners of the earth for Christian missions. Why in the world are people in Manchuria coming to this little dinky outfit called the OPC, for missionary help. Only one reason. It's a Jonah. That's the reason. When that kind of call comes, you know that the world is desperate. Why is it that in the ruins of the former Soviet Union there has been a call for Reformed Christians to come and teach them? just because of the same reason that the captain went down in the hold of the ship and shook Jodah and said, what are you doing sleeping? Get up and call unto God, the true and living God, to have mercy upon us. Well, I can imagine that you're thinking this is a bit of a discouraging subject, but you know what's so encouraging to me? It is the fact that God woke Jonah up. Oh yes, he had to be thrown into the sea. There's more he had to learn. We'll see that yet. But God did not give up on his church even when it was on the way to Tarshish. Now that's absolutely astounding. But God didn't. He didn't give up on his church. He woke his church up and brought them back to obedience. That's what every reformation in the history of the church really is. It's waking the church up and bringing it back to do the will of God. A lot of things we can't be sure of in this world, but that's a wonderful one that we can be sure of. I look at the church in America today, it's enough to make you almost despair, but don't despair. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church. God will wake it up again. It may take a big storm to do it, but he will wake up his church again and they will go and preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. May God grant that we might be willing and ready to do it here in Carson in Bethel Church and as a denomination in the OPC. Amen. Father in heaven, we thank you for the message of the prophet Jonah. As we look at the church today, we see, oh, how it has turned away from what God told the church to do in his great commission. How sad, how tragic. But Lord, as we see the troubles in this world today, we still have hope because we know that you are able to do for the whole church today what you did for Jonah and the people of Nineveh long ago. We thank you for a greater than Jonah, even our Lord Jesus Christ, whose victory over sin and death has made certain the outcome in the victory of your church. In Christ's name we pray it. Amen.