Father, we do offer You triune praise this morning. We're reminded from Your Word last night of our inherent sinful condition. And so we're mindful, Father, that we stand this morning solely on the basis of Your grace. And as we look to Your Word, show us how sovereign that grace is. Show us how that grace can outrun all opposition and can overcome every defiance. And if we are in You, it is because You have worked savingly and sovereignly. So thank You for that truth. Open our eyes to see it through Your Word. In Jesus' name, Amen. You may be seated. So open up to Jonah, and I'd like to take another run at reading a section of Jonah to you. We didn't make a lot of progress last night, which hopefully won't prove fatal for us this weekend, but we did set up Jonah. And I hope you heard that this isn't a book about a fish. Though most of the children's books that I've seen have a fish on every single page, the fish is not that prominently featured. He doesn't get that much camera time. This isn't a book even mainly about a wayward prophet. This is a story, really an odyssey, a seafaring journey that takes its readers from the very depths of the sea to the edge of the desert to that chief city of ancient and infamously brutal characters, Nineveh, the chief city of the Assyrian Empire. Jonah isn't about a fish. It's not even about Assyrians. It's not about A Wayward Prophet, it's a story about God. It's about God's word of grace beyond the boundaries of Israel. It's a story of a confrontation between a defiant prophet and a God of incredible compassion, whose deliverance, salvation, and sovereignty cannot be thwarted. Jonah teaches us lessons that are timely for our lives, that God is a God who can be known, and when you know Him, this knowledge of God ought to have an impact on our defiance, on our understanding of Him. If the God of Jonah is a God whose compassion is beyond our understanding, then this is a theological book that shows us what our God is like. And so let's read again chapter one and let's read all the way through chapter two. That's Jonah's prayer, his lament. It's his song from the belly of the whale and we'll deal with that briefly at the end and we'll focus most of our attention on the section we left off on where Jonah finds transport, and then the storm hits. So I'd like to focus on God's action this morning, but I'd also like us to get a little taste of Jonah's prayer. So let me read it to you again, chapters 1 and 2. The word of Yahweh came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare, and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh. And Yahweh hurled a great wind on the sea, and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up. Then the sailors became afraid. And every man cried to his God, and they threw the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship, lain down and fallen sound asleep. So the captain approached him and said, How is it that you are sleeping? Get up, call on your God. Perhaps your God will be concerned about us so that we will not perish. And each man said to his mate, Come, let us cast lots, so we may learn on whose account this calamity has struck us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. And they said to him, Tell us now, on whose account has this calamity struck us? What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you? And he said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear Yahweh, God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. And then the men became extremely frightened and they said to him, how could you do this? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of Yahweh because he had told them. So they said to him, what should we do to you that the sea may become calm for us? For the sea was becoming increasingly stormy. And he said to them, pick me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will become calm for you. For I know that on account of me, this great storm has come upon you. However, the men rode desperately to return to land, but they could not, for the sea was becoming even stormier against them. Then they called on Yahweh and said, We earnestly pray, O Yahweh, do not let us perish on account of this man's life, and do not put innocent blood on us, for thou, O Yahweh, hast done as thou hast pleased. So they picked up Jonah, threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped its raging. And then the men feared Yahweh greatly, and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows. And Yahweh appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights. And then Jonah prayed to Yahweh his God from the stomach of the fish, and he said, I called out of my distress to Yahweh, and He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol. Thou didst hear my voice, for Thou hast cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me. All Thy breakers and billows passed over me. So I said, I've been expelled from thy sight. Nevertheless, I will look again toward thy holy temple. Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever. But thou hast brought up my life from the pit, O Yahweh my God. While I was fainting away, I remembered Yahweh. And my prayer came to thee into thy holy temple. Those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness, but I will sacrifice to thee with the voice of thanksgiving with which I have vowed I will pay." Salvation is from Yahweh. And then Yahweh commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land. This is the very word of the living God. I was born in South Dakota. It's not my fault, just what happened to me. And both my parents were from there. And so in the summer, we would drive from New Mexico, my real ancestral homeland, to South Dakota in a Buick LeSabre with velvet seats. I remember the temperature of those seats, the texture, the smell. More than 2,000 miles that drive, I think. Eventually, we would get back to where I was born, the Black Hills of South Dakota. There's a famous monument there, you know it, Mount Rushmore. And I remember seeing it as a kid, but you don't really have that memory and consciousness of what a thing looks like until you see it when you're a bit older. So on one of those trips in my teenage years, we went to Mount Rushmore. And I remember being completely underwhelmed by it. when you walk up towards the visitor center, it looks pretty small. And I think the reason it looks small is because you've seen so many pictures of it up close. And it really is a mountain. And it is in the distance. So it is maybe initially hard to even process what you're seeing with these faces carved in the side of a mountain. But I remember thinking just how small they looked. I have a crazy uncle who doesn't, and he offered to take us up into one of those tourist helicopters. You know, they got the glass around them. And these helicopters fly right up to Mount Rushmore, and you can take a closer look. And it's there from up close that you see that those faces on Mount Rushmore of those presidents are actually very, very huge. They're six stories high, each of them, 60 feet or so. Washington's nose is 21 feet long. The rest of the faces have shorter noses, 20 feet. So I'm not sure what they were saying about George. The eyes of each president are 11 feet wide, and their mouths are 18 feet wide. This is a massive, massive statue, a carving that's very impressive. And going up in that little helicopter, coming closer to it really gave you the sense of how massive this monument is. I think that's the kind of perspective that we need when we look at the Book of Jonah. And often when we look at Scripture, the secret to seeing how tremendous this truth is, how potent this theology is, is to take a closer look. Sometimes a glance or a quick look at Scripture doesn't show us the treasures that are there. But we get real perspective when we look closely at the details of this text. This isn't a silly mythological story. This is really a beautifully constructed theological work in the Hebrew scriptures that is so impressive in the way it's built. The choice of language, the repetition of verbs and phrases, When you look at it up close, you can see that the picture of a defiant prophet isn't what it's about, but the hero of the story, the protagonist, is a very big God. A God large enough to shatter our empty idols and our meager conceptions of what he's like, and confront us if we ever dare to defy his word, or if, maybe more likely, we would dare to minimize his mercy. You see, human defiance, the focus of our time together last night, and really the subject of these opening verses, verses 1 through 3 of Jonah, human defiance succumbs to God's sovereign purpose of deliverance in the story we just read. This story is framed, the section we read, by a phrase. Look at chapter 1, verse 1. It says, the word of Yahweh came to Jonah. You see the identical phrase framing the story of our attention this morning in chapter 3, verse 1. Now, the word of Yahweh came to Jonah. These two bookends seek to show us what is happening as this story opens and closes, at least the first chapter, the first section opens and closes with the voice of Yahweh. Chapter one shows us a prophet's defiance and a sovereign God's pursuit. Chapter two shows us God's deliverance and a grateful prophet's prayer. So all framed in the word of God, Jonah's defiance unfolded last night. I want to concentrate most of our attention on verses four through 16, thinking about God's response, God's sovereign pursuit of a wayward prophet. But I also want to just take a glimpse at chapter two, and we won't study it in depth, Now, that's a pun because depth, it's down in the ocean. You're with me. So, two of you are with me. So, we will look at that deep prayer, but we won't look at it very long. I want to just make sure you're familiar with it. It is worthy of an entire sermon, but I'll leave that to you and your own Bible study. So, let's look at God's response closely here. Jonah defied God's clear commission. Chapter 1, verse 1 and 2, arise, go, cry against it. A hundred times in this book, or a hundred times in the Old Testament, the word of the Lord came. God's covenant name used about a dozen times. I think it's 13. But the references to God directly or indirectly are in the dozens. This is a book that speaks of God and he's featured at the very beginning. And Jonah is a prophet of some credentials. He's been used by God before, 2 Kings 14, we looked at last night. And if you were to look up Jonah's LinkedIn profile, you'd see he went to prophetic school and he had prophetic profile and was used of God in this way, but he made a mistake, and the mistake was confusing God's compassion for his condemnation, or his commendation. God's compassion for his commendation. In other words, you have to be careful not to confuse God's mercy with his favor. That was where Israel was at. Israel was defiant, Israel was sinful, Israel was rebellious, idolatrous. but God had blessed them anyway. And I think we have a tendency to think that way too, just because God isn't killing you right now, or because your life is full of relative ease and comfort, you don't have any big problems, you made the soccer team, you get cake on your birthday, or whatever. You may look at life and say, I've got it pretty good. We have to always be careful not to mistake God's kindness, His mercy, His compassion for His favor and approval. Remember, He causes the sun to rise and the just and the unjust. And so however Israel was thinking about God, that was an incorrect assumption that they were in a place of favor with God, where they were really under God's judgment. Jonah likewise was thinking wrongly about God and about what kind of ministry he should have. But that's not how ministry works. You can go to a lot of churches in big city like Dallas and find guys who think that they know better than God does about how the church should run. They think they know better on the agenda for a Sunday morning than God does. That's not very far off from Jonah saying, that may be the word of the Lord to go to Nineveh, but I'm headed to Tarshish. Tarshish was probably around Gibraltar, the Iberian Peninsula, Nineveh the exact opposite way. And so his refusal to listen to the Word of God His refusal to obey the Word of God is what's featured so promisely. Rise, go, cry against it right now, do it immediately. And instead of going to that great city Nineveh with this very unusual assignment, prophets never sent to a foreign land with the Word of God, this precious commodity, he's worried that God is going to have compassion on Nineveh. And he knows God pretty well, doesn't he? Because that's exactly what God's going to do. And it's not going to be a Sodom and Gomorrah kind of warning. It's going to be a different warning to this city famous for brutality and beheading, torture and maiming and killing their enemies. Jonah wanted to hear God say, blow it up, burn it up, consume it, brimstone God. And there's an assumption there too, I don't think we talked about this, that all nations are under the judgment of God. That's true today as it was then. God is never confined just to his work among his covenant people in the church, in mercy or in judgment. That's one of the lessons and messages of Jonah. He is the Lord of all the earth. So Jonah knew the Word of the Lord. He knew about preaching. He knew about hope of repentance. And so he didn't want to go to that great city on the eastern bank of the Tigris, the modern city of Mosul in Iraq, Nineveh, this ancient city mentioned in Genesis 10, verse 11, a city of prominence, a chief metropolitus of the Assyrian Empire. Eventually, it would become the capital. But this 500-mile journey, Jonah goes basically the opposite direction. Tarshish, Tarshish, Tarshish was where he was headed. It was the same as going to Timbuktu, just the furthest possible place away since he was called to Nineveh. But what we see in this text this morning is that God was not thwarted. You know, Jonah is given an answer in verse 4 to how God feels about this act of defiance. And it begins with a series of action words, and the first one is significant. Verse four, Yahweh becomes the focal point yet again in the story. And note, we haven't heard a single word from Jonah yet. Verse four, Yahweh hurled a great wind on the sea, and there was a great storm on the sea, so that the ship was about to break up. So the sailors become afraid, verse five, and every man cries to his God. These are likely Phoenician. They were the seafaring people that Israel was the neighbors with. Hebrews were not big boat people. They would have had to have Dramamine. not the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians were all about the water. They were conquerors by sea. That's the early ancestors of what we know as the Philistines. These people were seafaring people, and they picked up gods at every seaport. And so to say they were polytheistic, that they worshipped many different gods, would be obvious. All the archaeology that we found of Phoenician people, and by we I don't mean me, is lots of different stone gods, lots of different carved gods, lots of different precious metals made into gods, and the only thing more precious to a polytheist in the Phoenician world would have been money. and you can see how desperate they are in verse five because they cry out to all the gods they can think of to no avail, and then for someone involved in shipping commerce to decide to throw all the cargo out of the boat with a slender hope of saving their lives, I mean, cargo has a purpose, cargo has a profit, and they're now convinced that they would rather be alive than employed, rather be well and survive than make a profit, but Jonah is sleeping. And this is so fascinating, I already read it to you, I don't need to read it again, but in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it can be dodgy at times, it's not kind of a main source that we use, but it can be interesting. For some insight sometimes, it has Jonah, the captain going down into the hold of the ship, and he follows the sound of Jonah snoring. And so Jonah is knocked out. And that's led some people to ask questions. Jonah is defying God, and Yahweh's response is he starts throwing stuff. I mean, that's the word to hurl, to cast. It's a word to throw. It's the same word used in Samuel for Saul chucking a spear at David. And the intention there was not to surprise David with the gift of a spear. He was trying to pin him to the wall. And so God, when he throws, he doesn't miss ever. He's not like Kershaw. So that hurt me more than it hurt you. So what's so remarkable about this section is you see the wind obeying God. You see the sea obeying God. We'll see a fish obey God. Only the man of God is the one who doesn't obey. The entire crew of sailors is going to obey God and speak directly to the covenant God of Israel. And really, they're victims in this thing of Jonah's sin, aren't they? I mean, they were worshiping idols, but so is most of the earth. But because in God's providence Jonah gets in their boat, now their lives are at stake. And I think that's a reminder too, just briefly, that our sin never stays in its boundaries. It always has corporate impact. I mean, no sin lives in total isolation from Adam's obvious impact to Jonah, to Ananias and Sapphira, to the sins of the church in Corinth. Your sin does affect others. Yes, there is individual accountability, but there's also corporate sin all over the Bible. And Jonah's sin has an effect on other people because he's a prophet on the run trying to get the other end of the Mediterranean. And then this word great, it's the great city, Nineveh, a great storm, a great wind, and eventually a great fish. And then this word throw is used all over the chapter. The Lord throws a storm and he throws the wind causing the storm. And then the men respond by throwing all the goods off of the ship. And then Jonah tells them to throw me into the sea. It's a chapter that's really in the language of the original, full of violence and fear, casting and hurling and throwing. The word fear is used over and over again through the chapter, and God sends, He hurls, He throws this wind that causes this great storm, that causes this ship, which the description of the ship in verse 4 is very interesting in Hebrew because the ship is personified as desiring to break up. It's the ship responding properly to God. So the ship is obeying God. It's like the Hebrew says, the ship was determined to break himself up. What is happening here? Throughout this whole book we see so many things under God's control, responding as they ought to respond. Inanimate objects, forces as we call them of nature, the wind doing God's commands, the storm does God's commands, the sea does God's commands, the boat even responds to the sovereignty of God as groove and tongue start to separate in this wooden vessel, the sailors pagan polytheistic sailors are doing what they are called to do. And an enormous fish is obedient to Yahweh, but not God's prophet. He remains disobedient. There is no forces of nature at work here. There is no mere scientific expressions of a forecast or a weather front or something like this. This whole scene is portrayed as the relentless fury of Yahweh, the total and meticulous sovereignty of God over every breeze, over every mast, over the sail, the boat, the polytheistic sailors, the whole thing. Yahweh is relentless. As the boat thinks to break itself up, as Jonah snores away, why is he sleeping? Back to this thought, why is he sleeping? Well, I don't know that you can sleep when you're too tore up about something. We all know that experience. I mean, when you can't sleep, it's because you have so much on your mind. And here we have Jonah with apparently nothing on his mind. It reminds me of a song, not a surge of worry, not a shade of care. but not resting on Jehovah, not in this state upon Jehovah, that's not what he's doing. Somehow Jonah's conscience allows him to sleep. Maybe he's exhausted from fleeing God, but maybe more likely his rebellion is so set and he sees his circumstances thus far as favorable and likes his chances. He thinks perhaps God's accepted my resignation. I found a boat. I had money to pay the stowage fee. I'm on my way in the exact opposite direction. This isn't a short journey. I'm going to be so far away from Nineveh that God is going to have to work with Hosea or one of those jokers, because I'm out. And so he says, I'm going to get some Shaddai. And he does. He snores himself to sleep. perfect peace as he flees from Yahweh's call. That should be instructive to us about not trusting our feelings. Finding a boat with space, purchasing fare, so far smooth sailing, and also not trusting our circumstances. How sweet is providence? You think Jonah is saying that? I mean, look at this. This worked out so well for me. I bet you've talked to people like this. In Texas, everybody's a Christian. And you've talked to these people who are perfectly at peace, but completely in rebellion to God, right? And they talk about how the Lord has blessed them and taken care of them, but they haven't followed Jesus a day of their life. And so they say things like, well, my marriage isn't working out. Sorry, my accent. Sorry, my marriage isn't working out. But, you know, I met someone else and I've never felt closer to God. That's a very Jonah like sleep. That's a kind of slumber to the reality of what God is doing and to the very judgment of God and the discipline of God. That's a very dangerous place to be. And that's exactly where Jonah is. And that's where so many people are when they listen to their feelings and their circumstances instead of to the clear word of God. And in verse six, Jonah gets woken up. But note how he's woken up. It says in verse six, so the captain approached him and said, how is it that you're sleeping? Get up, call on your God. Perhaps your God will be concerned about us so that we will not perish. If you look at the verbs here, and it comes more clear in the Hebrew, it says, as the captain wakes him up, he wasn't having a nightmare. He wakes up and everything is a nightmare. And in God's sovereignty, the very same words that God used in his commissioning speech to Jonah are put on the lips of this pagan captain. He says, get up, or arise, and call out. The exact same thing God said that he should arise and go and call out to the great city Nineveh. Now he is sleeping in the hold of the ship, escaped and resigned to abandon his calling from God. And he hears, what are you doing sleeping? Arise, get up and call out. God's sovereignty is so meticulous that even the words coming out of a pagan captain's mouth are directed by God himself. And so God gets his attention. The sailors have tried everything. They're now at a total loss financially. Their lives are in danger. There are no nautical solutions for professional seafarers to junk their cargo and to be this afraid. This was not a normal storm. This was something supernatural. This was similar to what the disciples experienced in the lake that day on the way to Gennesaret when that storm came through. There was something that seemed unearthly about it. There's something supernatural about it. And so these pagans pray, and they exhort Jonah to pray, and he still will not yet pray. There's prayer in every chapter. The pagans pray. They beg Jonah to pray, but he doesn't pray, not yet. And in Yahweh's pursuit, He decides to show His control of all things, not just His servant, not just His prophet. The prophet thinks that he has free will in this moment. The prophet thinks he's doing exactly what he wants to do because he is. But he's forgot how powerful the sovereignty of God is. And so God's going to use some dice to show him just how in control he is. Archaeologists have found these kind of dice. They're not like our dice with the dots on them. They are still square, or they have different sides to them. And in the ancient world, when they cast lots, it was often with these stones that they rolled. Rolling stones, if you will. And one side is light and one side is dark, and they alternate light and dark. That's how they worked. You throw them, and if both sides come up dark, it's a no. If both sides come up light, it's a yes. If they come one dark, one light, it means roll again, something like that. And so they cast the lots at each sailor. Is it this guy? No. Clear, no. Is it this guy? Clear, no. Is this guy? Clear, no. Is it sleepyhead Hebrew prophet? Yes, absolutely. And so even in the rolling of the dice, God is sovereign. Now that shouldn't encourage you to go get some scratchers. That should deter you, if anything, because he has a lesson for you and it's not the one that you want. He exposes Jonah by lots, Proverbs 16, 33. The lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the Lord. You can flip the coin, but God's the one who calls heads or tails. And there's lots of miracles here, isn't there? The sailors' new storms is not an ordinary storm, sovereignty over storms. God doesn't ask permission to do anything that He does. He, verse 9, fled not to witness to Nineveh's pagans, but now, stuck in the boat, He has to do exactly that. He has to bear witness to pagans. Not Ninevites, not the mortal enemy of Israel, but still polytheistic sailors, Gentiles to a high degree, and God is here accomplishing all His good purposes. You see, God will not be trivialized. He is a very big God. And in this story, we see Him up close. And what's of interest here is as the sailors confront Jonah with this kind of staccato list, machine gun questions, tell us now, I think there's five questions, on whose account has this calamity struck us? What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What's your country? What people are you? So I'm just picturing these sailors peppering with questions because they don't have any kind of sail or steering or rowing kind of answers here. And so they're looking for some other solution. Who are you and why is this happening to us? And through it all, we get the summary statement of the conversation. There's more to it. We know that because we are told that in verse 11, he apparently told them he was fleeing from Yahweh. He says, I am a Hebrew and I fear Yahweh, God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. What a humiliating moment for the prophet, for him to stand so boldly and have to speak his job title to these guys and to tell them that, you know, the reason you're caught in the crossfire is because I've declared war on God. And so the going and the raging of verse 11, and the fear in verse 10, extremely frightened, how could you do this? Verse 11, so they said to him, what should we do so the sea may become calm for us? For the sea was increasingly stormy. Well, what's happening here is this congregation on the boat is very impressed. They have completely bought into the power of this God that they were introduced to, first through this supernatural manifestation in a storm, and then through the sovereign, meticulous details of Jonah being put on their boat. And then through the casting of the lots, and then through Jonah's little speech, his little sermon brings these men to be completely convinced that there is no God but Yahweh, and that He is in control of the situation. And so they don't know how Yahweh operates. They've never read the Torah. They've never heard of Moses. They don't know about Adam and Eve. They've got nothing except Phoenician sea gods. And so they are looking to the preacher for some directions here. Tell us what to do. How does this work in your deal? Because we got, you know, our own gods and you cut your hand and they sacrifice your field, your children, whatever. I mean, they got all these pagan rituals. Jonah, teach us how Yahweh works. And Jonah says, throw me off the boat. Now here's where interpreters differ in a pretty significant detail in Jonah. They say, is this a noble act of self-sacrifice? Jonah loves these pagan sailors so much that he's willing to give his life for theirs. Because getting thrown off the boat in Jonah's mind wasn't, you know, who's going to swallow Jonah and suck him up with the fish. I mean, that was definitely not in Jonah's plan. to be thrown off of a boat in the middle of the sea in a raging storm was to be dead. And so Jonah is definitely choosing to die, but is he choosing to die to save these sailors, or is he choosing to die to compound his defiance against God? I think the answer is to compound his defiance against God, and I think that's why he says in his prayer so much as that. in chapter 2. But Jonah's defiance is so outrageous that he says, I'd rather die than obey. This is not noble self-sacrifice. This is not accepting the consequences. Jonah still will not do what God commanded him to do. Not yet. Verse 14 through 16, they have some kind of scruples. They understand we don't want to kill the prophet of the God who can storm like this, who can chuck wind like he does. And so let's try to give him back to his God in some way that's not going to kill him. So they row ferociously trying to get back to land, but they are stuck because God has them stuck, because he's got an Uber fish ready to pick Jonah up. And in verse 12, on my account, they can't row to land. The height of his defiance, I'd rather die than obey. You know, the improvement in their fear is an obvious feature of this text. I just want to talk about the sailors for a second. They ascend from complete ignorance in verse 5, right? The sailors became afraid. Every man cries to his own God. To be very informed in verse 10, how could you do this? You know, how could you disobey a God like this? If there is one God who made heaven and earth and the seas, and if He's revealed Himself to you, you know, we're over here stumbling, bumbling, and fumbling with all these stone idols, and we had to chuck them out of the boat because they weren't helping. And you know the one true God. And so they've gone from complete ignorance to an informed kind of faith. And in verse 16, look what the sailors do. The men feared the Lord greatly. And here's that word great again. And they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows. Once Jonah's in the sea and gone, disappeared beneath the depths of the waves and the water, the sea stops raging and the sailors become Yahwehists? they become worshippers. The Mishnah is a rabbinical commentary on the Old Testament, and it's not inspired, and it's definitely not in Aaron, and it's full of all kinds of ghost stories and stuff. But again, kind of an interesting background document, really ancient. They comment on this. Tradition says that these sailors went to land and then they made their way to Jerusalem and asked to worship God and tried to find a way to connect with the people of God. So according to Jewish tradition, these guys were soundly converted. The text just tells us what the text tells us. They were ignorant, they were informed, and then ultimately they were submissive. They were persuaded by the power of God. And I think it's noteworthy that their vows to Yahweh were not before the storm stopped, but after. It wasn't like, I'll clean up my act if you save my life. Instead, the sailors are saying, God saved us, so we're going to worship Him. We're going to vow to Him. And I don't want to be handcuffed to anybody when they die, These sailors are a pretty good group. And I think that these guys were converted. I think these sailors became saints. I think the captain now leads a congregation. I think these sailors are saved, not just from the storm, but I think they had faith in Yahweh. And you say, well, I don't know if I see that there. And that's fine. I mean, I'll just introduce you to these gentlemen in heaven. That'll solve the debate. I just love, I think they have a beautiful expression of genuine faith when they say, listen to their prayer in verse 14. We earnestly pray, oh Yahweh. They're using the covenant name of God because that's all they know. They've just introduced to him. Let us not perish on account of this man's life. And do not put innocent blood on us. For thou, oh Yahweh, hast done as thou hast pleased. Even they understood the concept of innocent blood. God's going to talk about innocent blood at the end of this book when he talks about the children in Nineveh being worthy of the compassion of God. The livestock having innocent blood. Jonah should have at least had compassion on those ones in Nineveh. And these sailors have a concept of you don't kill innocent people. And Jonah hadn't done anything wrong to them. He'd done something wrong to God. But in their eyes and in their relationship, he was innocent. And if these sailors, I think I said soldiers a minute ago. They served in the military before. These sailors, if they really did have faith in Yahweh, little did they know that someday the reason all their sins could be forgiven was because of innocent blood. One of my favorite Old Testament commentators, Dale Ralph Davis, says, If there's such a thing as perseverance of the saints, as some of us think, maybe there is such a thing as perseverance of the sailors. So, I'll introduce you to them in heaven, it's fine. These guys are the seemingly coincidental recipients of a wayward prophet's evangelistic defiance that bears fruit along the way. It makes me say, what a God we have. What a savior we have. But why did all this happen? I mean, 10,000 reasons. How come Tree and Bible Church isn't meeting this Sunday in Dallas and instead they're at Tanglewood? Well, maybe it's that a maid gets saved this weekend. Who knows God's 10,000 purposes in any event? But He's using His people and He's gonna accomplish His purposes through the Word. What a God we have. What a Savior we have. Fearful, faithful, fervently, these sailors call out to God. Nothing's too hard for him. If God can hurl wind, he can hurl faith. And I think that's what's happening in this section. In Mark 4, that storm that the disciples were in, I referred to earlier, it uses that same Hebrew idiom, but in the Greek language, the same fear, and it's that they were, you see, I mean, it's such a parallel account, it's interesting. It had to be in Mark's mind as he told his, Jonah-like story, because verse 16, the storm has stopped in verse 15, but verse 16 says the men feared greatly. That's exactly the language of Mark 4. The disciples were very afraid. Jesus calms the storm, and they are so stunned by the supernatural power of Jesus over wind and waves that it says that they're exceedingly afraid. You see the sailors have encountered something far more powerful than this storm. They've met God himself. Yahweh who stills the storm to a whisper and the winds and waves still know his voice who ruled them while he dwelt below. The one who incarnate rebuked the sea had experienced doing that before because the sea responded to the rebuke of Yahweh. I remember having a conversation with a young man, a senior in high school, who was, in my estimation, a fake Christian. And he had given me plenty of reason to think that in my youth group back in New Mexico. And we'll call him Jeff. His name was Jeff. Jeff was listening to me. I talked to Jeff about some of the sin in his life, and he was not willing to put it down. And I was preaching on the absolute sovereignty of Christ. It's what all my sermons are about. I'm just sure that's what it was about. And he came up to me afterwards and said, I think that's great that you think that, Pastor. And this kid's like 17 years old. And he says, but here's how I think about God. My granddaddy had a painting above his bed of Jesus at a door, knocking to be let in. And on The other side of the door, opposite of Jesus, there was a door handle and a person kind of thinking and listening. And on Jesus' side of the door, there was no handle. You see, Jesus couldn't get in the door unless you let him in. And so that was Jeff's answer to the absolute sovereignty of Christ. How does that Mamby Pamby Jesus, who can't quite get the door open, line up to the God you see in the Bible? I mean, I didn't always believe in the absolute sovereignty of Jesus Christ. I was raised in a Christian tradition where the main offering was free will, that you can do whatever you want. And that's certainly true, you can do whatever you want. You can walk out of this room right now, you can engage in a knife fight, you can do whatever you want. but you don't have total freedom. You don't have total ability. That's what I wasn't taught. I wasn't taught that even my freedom and my lack of ability or my ability are all under the meticulous sovereignty of God. There's not one thing, one person, one atom, one soul either under the submitting to Christ or in rebellion to Christ that God is not in charge of. Jesus's gentlemanliness is not a biblical concept. Jesus's sovereignty is a biblical concept. Jesus is not weak and impotent and sad and a sorry version of Christ who's just hoping you eventually come around to Him. He's the God who hurls wind and hurls faith. Jesus is the one who is, by His supremacy, holding all things together. Jesus doesn't need a doorknob. That's the supremacy of Jesus Christ. It's not like He is like this because I think He's like this. This is how the Scripture presents Him. This is how the Scripture presents God. Psalm 115.3, God is in heaven and He does everything He pleases. Does He just do the things He's able to do? That's not what the Bible says. He does everything he pleases. How could he pull off a fish story like this if he wasn't totally sovereign? And so you see the supremacy of Christ and it ought to affect your life and it affected Jonah's life. You see, God could have chosen to leave Jonah in his sin and recalcitrance Or God might choose to smash Jonah's defiance, because Jonah at this point is not singing, I surrender all. If you don't tremble in the presence of Jesus, then you could be in for a storm, and maybe even a whale. And that's where this sovereignty turns to deliverance in chapter two. Let's just look at it really briefly. Verse 17 is really where this new section starts. The Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights. And then that prayer, that lament, that song that Jonah cries out of his distress to Yahweh and receives an answer. It's a psalm of thanksgiving and deliverance. Verse two has perfect past tense verb. He says, you answered me. You heard my voice. Apparently what happened is Jonas sinks down into the sea and he is dying and potentially even he's dead. I mean, God's able to resurrect that. And Jonah cries out to God in these last moments of his life, and God sends this fish to swallow him. And it doesn't say it's a whale. People always call it a whale. It's not a whale. It just says fish. Maybe it's some kind of custom whale. I mean, if Yasiel Puig, I sat in Yasiel Puig, if sat in his car, it was at this Ford dealership by my house, and it was custom. The thing was huge. It had his number stitched on the backs of the seats. It was lush and opulent. It looked like something Saddam Hussein would like. And so I sat in Puig's custom Escalade or whatever it was at the dealership. They only wanted $93,000 for it or something, so I was pretending like I was shopping. And I thought, you know, funny that they would make this for Puig, of all people. GM or whoever can make an escalade for Pui and customize it. I'm pretty sure God can customize a fish. I can swallow a guy and have a compartment where he can breathe. If the science of it is bothering you, there's a bunch more hard stuff in the Bible that I could show you. It's just going to come down to trusting God's power. In the breakers in the depths, this isn't a secular storm, this is God's involvement. Jonah says he was driven away, it's the same words from Genesis 3, when God drove man and woman out of the garden. Don't think that your sin puts you outside of the sovereignty of God, it doesn't. God is still in control, and you're still in rebellion. You can never use His sovereignty as an excuse for your sin, and He will never give you an excuse because of His sovereignty because you continue in disobedience. Jonah, in this song, is rehearsing every detail as a part of his song of lament, of sorrow, of contrition, and of thanksgiving. I mean, distress is such an essential part of Thanksgiving. This would be, you know what, Marilee, remind me, we're gonna read Jonah 2 at Thanksgiving this year. Usually we do Psalm 100, I'm switching it up this year. Because this is a Thanksgiving song, with your permission. I think that when you see that Jonas here lamenting, but yet itemizing God's goodness. It reminds you, you really can't praise God properly unless you describe God properly. The prayer remembers deliverance. He says, he brought up my life from the pit. I mean, he's using it, this is a Hebrew grammar, it's the vav consecutive, it's like a past tense, a strong past tense. He says, you have brought up my life from the pit. Where is he when he says that? He's in the pit, he's still in the sea, he's still in the belly of a fish, but he's so confident that God has heard his prayer and answered his prayer that he speaks of it as if it's already happened. I mean, this is a prayer that is full of gratitude and devotion. And that's verses 1 through 3, gratitude and devotion. This is a prayer that is full of petition and prayer. It's a prayer prayer. It's an asking prayer. He says, my prayer came to you from your holy temple. Heaven itself, it sounds like Psalm 11, four, prayer arrived in God's presence. My prayer came to you in your holy temple. What's he celebrating here? He's celebrating that prayer works, that prayer is prayer, that prayer hits the ear of God. And he's telling, who's he telling? The ribcage of the fish? And he's telling God Himself, and he's celebrating prayer. So it's full of gratitude and devotion. It's full of requests, supplication, and a mindfulness that he's celebrating the existence of prayer. I mean, this is a very different Jonah suddenly. And in verse 8 and 9, it's a prayer that understands grace. Look at verse 8, it says, If there's a theme verse, if there's one verse to get the message of Jonah, it is Jonah 2.9. is from the Lord. Jonah feels the claim of grace. Those who are loyal to empty nothings, to vain idols. Plenty of that in northern Israel in Jonah's day. And he speaks of the hesed, the unfailing covenant love, the faithfulness of God. And he says, what I vow I will pay. Verse 9, he owes thanksgiving and obedience to his deliverer. Okay, this is his version of saying, I will go to Nineveh. Grace in Jonah's life brought about this response of obedience. God could have been done with Jonah. He could have said, fine, go. But in God's kindness, in God's forgiveness, in God's grace, He rescues Jonah from himself, and from the sea, and recommissions him again." And Jonah's prayer acknowledges that God's grace is free. It's sovereign. Salvation belongs to God. Salvation belongs to Yahweh. In other words, God is the source and giver. God is in charge. God's the one who... determines where His grace lands, to whom and how. Grace is God's authority. It's His dominion. He doesn't have to do anything. And Jonah sees that if I'm rescued, it's because He decided to do so. It's because He is pleased. It's His business to grant deliverance to a cantankerous prophet. Jonah recognizes He doesn't deserve it, and I hope we do too. Because grace is sovereign. And it's never your right, and it's never your privilege. It's always because of the kindness and mercy of God in Christ. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Salvation belongs to the Lord. It is God who saves. Salvation is His domain and His prerogative. Salvation belongs to the Lord in His sovereignty and in His exclusivity. A solemn sign condemns our unbelief. You go back to John chapter 10, one of the greatest examples of God's sovereign grace is the Pharisees complain that Jesus talks to them as if they are His disciples. They're so offended by Jesus because He's telling them with such authority how they should follow Him. And they say to Him, do you think we're your disciples? And Jesus tells them in John 6, it has not been granted to you to believe. They beg for a sign, they beg for an act, for Jesus to prove who He is and why He would claim authority on their lives. And He simultaneously is reminding them that God's grace is sovereign, that they are not His disciples, not because they are so rebellious and stubborn and pharisaical. They are not His disciples because God hasn't given it to them. The ultimate boast of unbelief is defeated by the sovereignty of God. But then they continue to demand a sign. They come in to ask for a sign, and you see this story again in Matthew 11 in another spot. They say, Jesus, give us a sign. And Jesus says to them, an adulterous and sinful generation seeks a sign. But no sign will be given to you except the sign of Jonah. That's what Jesus said. The sign of Jonah. three days and three nights, and the Son of Man will be raised again. Pharisees still said Jesus casts out Satan by Satan. It's an unmissable reminder that faith is necessary, and that Jesus says that the only sign that these hard-hearted Pharisees will be given is that He will be raised from the dead. And he points back to this sign, another prophet from the same part of the country who also spent three days in an enclosure of death. But in Jonah's case, his prayer was signaled by victory in verse 10. Then Yahweh commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land. This is victorious vomit. An incredible story, a cantankerous prophet, a God who delivers in unusual ways that give all glory to the one who provides that deliverance. He spews Jonah out onto the beach, because this isn't a story where your focus is on the whale, or even on the spectacular signs and wonders happening here, and not even on the wayward prophet. not to be obedient to God, or he'll send fish and worms in a scorching wind. It's not a little moral tale like that. Jonah is about God. A God whose compassion is beyond our comprehension. And understanding Jonah is understanding what God is like. The same God who sent His servant Jonah sent His Son, Jesus Christ. And that's the God we celebrate, and that's the God we worship. The God of sovereign grace in the face of all our defiance. Father, thank You for Your truth, for Your Word, to know that Christ would be gloriously revealed through this precursor event. That those three days in the belly of a whale in darkness and confinement for Jonah would just be a symbol of a much greater victory that you would give your son as he conquered death and hell and sin forever. Reminds us of how powerful a sovereign God truly is. Father, may we always be mindful that you are in control of every circumstance, whether it's a blessing or whether it's adversity. And I pray that we would be able to trust you no matter what. And Father, may our defiance, our sinfulness be washed away at the cross of Calvary. And may our ongoing folly, even as believers, as we refuse to submit to you at times, would you grant us, by your sovereign grace, repentance. A repentance that's real and lasting. A repentance that's evident. Show us what that looks like, God. In Jesus' name, amen.