We come today to consider a man and ourselves, people who also advocate high standards, but fail so miserably. In this paragraph in verses six to 11, Jonah is asked seven questions by these sailors who are at this time unbelievers. They have used this technique of the lot, a stone with a black face and a white face. They would throw the two stones, two black faces meant no, two white faces meant yes, a white face and a black face meant try again, I don't know. And God had overruled the throwing of this dice to identify Jonah as the cause and culprit of this outrageous act. life-threatening storm. You see, these sailors recognized that something was wrong, that someone in their midst must be the cause of this most unusual storm, because they only sailed in the quiet season across the Atlantic. The stormy season, their boat was tied up in the harbor. But come the quiet season, where there was light or few storms, They sailed easily and well, but here was an outrageous storm. Here was a sudden storm of deep ferocity. They knew a god had been offended and they had sought to blockade their gods by throwing out the cargo. They had done their bits. Someone else, some of the passengers, must be responsible for this life-threatening storm. And so they come to Jonah, they identify him, they ask him seven questions in this paragraph, verses six to 11. And as we think of these unbelievers questioning and peeling back the layers of hypocrisy on his life, we stand before the challenge of this paragraph. As we think of our failings, as professing Christian people. Firstly, they challenge our prayerlessness. In verse six, what do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your God. Challenging his prayerlessness. The Septuagint, as you know, is the Greek version of the Old Testament, and the version seems to indicate that the captain found Jonah because of his loud snoring. You see in verse number six how the verse begins, so. It's connecting to verse number five which ends that Jonah was fast asleep. It's a strong word meaning a very deep sleep. indicating that he was possibly snoring. So, because he was in a deep sleep, snoring, so there's a connection between his deep sleep and the captain finding him down there. Or perhaps it was the sailors who were taking out the cargo and they had removed everything else and a way down at the very base of the deck they found this passenger fast asleep. And they went and told the captain who came down and addressed this sleeping man. Or perhaps it was the captain himself in the extremity of the circumstances who was helping the sailors to unload the cargo and he was down in the very bowels of the ship and he found this passenger there. The word captain means the chief of the rope pullers. It indicates his proficiency in dealing with the sails and the lines of the ship. And he finds Jonah and says these words, arise, call out. Arise, call out. And the commentator, Alan, says, Jonah, probably thought he was having a nightmare, because these three words were used by God in verse number two, Jonah, arise, call out. God's word to Jonah was, you go to Nineveh, that big city, arise, call out against it. Now again, the captain is speaking more than he realizes by echoing the same very command of God. Arise, call out. Here's a man in the very bowels of this ship. The rest of the sailors are on their knees calling out to their God for mercy and deliverance. And the captain addresses this sleeper. He rebukes his prayerlessness by saying to him, arise, call out to your God. There are many instances in history, aren't there, of indifference in a time of crisis. There is the well-used and worn phrase of Nero fiddling while Rome burned in 64 BC. The purists question the phrase that fiddles weren't invented till a thousand years later, but the sentiment has remained. He was indifferent, it seems, from the historical accounts to his own city, Rome, warning he had other interests and plans to pursue. The band on the Titanic played Abide With Me as the ship went down. Now and again, politicians are pulled up in the press for going on holidays while there's a crisis in their home county or country. Sometimes there can be indifference in our life to crises all around. And for Christians, the challenge here is about prayer. Are we sleeping in important times? Are we praying enough as a congregation, as families, as individuals? Do we have enough times of prayer as a congregation? Are we involved in those? There is so much to pray for in our congregation. 40 young people from upper sixth down to babies. Are we praying enough for them that they will be kept and used and blessed? Are we praying as families regularly? There's always some big need within our family. Do we have a set time as individuals to pray to God? Unbelievers can challenge our prayerlessness. I regularly think of Muslims who pray five times a day for five minutes at each time. They're devoted to their God. Are we devoted in set times of prayer To our God, here's the unbelievers challenging the prayerlessness of a believer. Secondly, the second challenge is hypocrisy in verses seven to nine. The sailors are marked by common fairness. They want Jonah to have the opportunity to speak. Yes, this tool that they've used, the lot, has identified him. Is he guilty? Is he not? Well, let's hear what the man has to say. And so in verse number eight, they ask him four questions. Now these aren't questions that an immigration officer might use of an immigrant. What country do you come from? What is your people? What job do you do? But rather, these are theological questions. These sailors believe that every country and people have a God, so they're trying to narrow down which God this individual Jonah has offended that they might seek to placate the anger of this God who has caused the storm. In answer to their question, Jonah says in verse eight and nine, I fear the Lord. the God of the sea. It was a hypocritical answer, wasn't it? How much did he fear him? Come on, he's running away from him. He could have used a weaker verb, couldn't he? He could have said, I follow this God, I worship this God, I know this God. But Jonah uses this rich Old Testament phrase, fear, which means to love, to trust, to obey, It's a hypocritical assertion. I fear the Lord. Desi Alexander writes, in the light of his willful disobedience, Jonah's words have an extremely hollow ring to them. Baldwin writes, Jonah pays more lip service to the only God. The saying is right in his head. but it's not evident in his life. Here's another challenge that emerges from the questioning of these unbelievers. The challenge, the hypocrisy of Jonah. I fear the Lord, but look at your life, Jonah. There's some outrage in our nation at this time by the revelation that the royal family has cost the taxpayer 130 million pounds this past year. The poorest royal member is worth 20 million. They claim they care for their nation. Some are questioning their care. And sometimes our profession of following Christ, of being a Christian, is hollow. There's a difference between our words and our ways, between our lip and our life, between our profession and our practice. And sometimes the hypocrite is the most ardent condemner of sins in others. And that very same sin is found in her own life. Paul found it in Romans chapter two. You who say you shall not steal, Do you steal, and he goes on in this tone, condemning sins in others, easily with our lip and our mouth, but our life being very far short. We sing God's word in our church, those personal stanzas of faith, of calling down judgments on the wicked, but are the lines very different from our life. It's crucial for us to be open in our lives, to avoid skeletons in our cupboards, to daily come before the holy word of God and humble ourselves beneath his commandments, to be experts in the doctrine of the omniscience and the omnipresence of God, knowing all, seeing all. Here these unbelievers challenge the hypocrisy of Jonah. I fear the Lord, but his life wasn't evidencing that. Thirdly, they challenge his silence. Jonah doesn't answer the four questions in verse eight, does he? He doesn't answer the first one. What is your occupation? He can't answer you. Sinclair Ferguson, man overboard, keep recommending this to you, he says Jonah is no longer able to say, I am a prophet of the Lord. He turned his back on God, hadn't he? He was going in the very opposite direction to Tarshish in Spain as opposed to Nineveh in Assyria. even more than his claim to fear the Lord. If he had announced, well I'm a prophet of the Lord, this is what I do, they would have laughed at him. His insincerity would have seemed deeper. But if he was on a ship going to Nineveh, what a question, what an opening, what an opportunity to witness. Well, what's your job? Well, I'm a prophet of the Lord. I'm going to Nineveh to warn them about God's judgment that will come on all those who do not believe in the promised Messiah, Jesus Christ. What a moment to grasp, as Paul did in Acts 27, witnessing to the unbelieving Roman soldiers as he obeyed God in going to the city of Rome. But Jonah's different here. Tears of sin, he can't see it. He avoids that question. He can't announce who he really is. I am a prophet of the Lord. But I encourage you that one of the things that will really help you to live as a Christian in your school, your new school perhaps in September, in your new job, in your workplace, in your neighborhood, is immediately you go into that new situation, announce that I'm a Christian. And it will keep your heart and your life and your mind Yes, it might be a vehicle for others to ask you questions and to come to know the truth, but it will also be a tool to keep you living out the truth. Jonah just said, as he came down to this boat, even going to the city of Targis, well, I'm a prophet of the Lord. He would never have gone as deep or as dark as he did here, challenging or silence. We too are sometimes silent about who we really are. And it brings us into all kinds of difficult circumstances. The seven questions of the sailors has been raised by critics of the Book of Jonah as an unlikely scene. And so the historicity of this chapter has been questioned, and indeed the whole book. The argument is, would sailors in the middle of a storm really sit down and question this man, give these seven questions to him? Wouldn't they be holding on to the mass for dear life? But here they are engaged in this discussion and interrogation of this passenger Jonah. We hold on to the historicity of this book and we draw, and I only raise this point, this criticism, for one important insight into the human heart, that it's often in a crisis that people seek God. And here are these men in the very depth and eye of an immense storm, but such within them as the longing to know God, to have peace with God, to have their circumstances sorted and delivered, that they take the time to get to the root of this matter, to inquire what's really happening here. And what encouragement for us and guidance in our praying that in the terrible circumstances of our life, we all hate suffering in ourselves and in others. But what a dimension to our praying that God, like he did here with these sailors, would cause people to seek him and to find him even in their suffering. Lastly, challenging Here in verse number 10, we have this sixth question. What is this that you have done? What a question this is. The strength of it is deep. The emotion of it is powerful. The phrase here, the men were exceedingly afraid. The Hebrews, they feared with fear. The intensity. They were trembling. They were terrified. They were asking, what is this that you have done? You are the servant of the God who made the sea and the dry land, but you've disobeyed him. What are you doing here, man? And they're more concerned about his sin than Jonah is. He never asks about himself with the strength of feeling that they ask, what is this that you have done? It takes an unbeliever to speak into his soul and to challenge him about the madness of his behavior. What is this that you have done? And here's the world rebuking the believer over his sinfulness. In Psalm 135 verse six, God's control of the sea is announced whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the deeps. And Jonah has disobeyed this God of the sea. Moses Stewart comments on their terrified emotion and says it was like being tied to a person who was calling on lightning to strike them dead. They were terrified that this person who was disobedient to God was on their ship and was the cause of this incredible storm. The chronology of verse number 10 is interesting, isn't it? because what comes at the end of verse number 10 comes earlier in the story. Here the writer is using a special grammatical tool to give us knowledge after the knowledge had been given. For the man knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. He's filling in gaps that were in the story, but he's leaving this gap to the very end intentionally to emphasize the enormity of Jonah's behavior, that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord. And Baldwin adds, it's as if the writer is saying to the readers then and to us now in our disobedience, you are doing the same thing. Sometimes we are rebuked by unbelievers for our sinfulness. It was one interesting dimension of the court case for the two men who cut down the sycamore tree in the sycamore gap next to Hadrian's wall that they did not appreciate the strength of public feeling about what they would do. They thought it would be a laugh, a joke. But there's been outcry and outrage by the public over what they have done. They got this wrong. And we often do, don't we? We minimize the impact of our sinning, the gravity of our sinning, the consequences of our sinning. And sometimes it takes an unbeliever to point this out to us. What is this that you have done? The world is sometimes more upset about sin, about injustice, about inhumanity, about cruelty, about poverty than a Christian can be. I think in the realm of charity that the world is far more enthusiastic. They'll walk a thousand miles for charity. They'll keep Lent and miss their lunch and give the money to charity. and we will spend the money on ourselves, and we will quieten our conscience by saying, well, you don't know where that money might be going. What a cringe moment, when an unbeliever says to us, and you claim to be a Christian? So in this sermon, we studied a bad witness. The world challenging our prayerlessness sometimes. The world challenging our hypocrisy and profession. The world challenging our silence. The world challenging our sinfulness. And we've been battered down, haven't we? And so we need to finish with that other storm where another person is sleeping, and he was awakened. That's the disciples who are like Jonah in their weak faith, but Jesus is different. He has all power. He's all grace for us. At the end of this wonderful miracle of quietening that storm, the disciples say, what sort of man is this. He's truly man. He was just sleeping there. He's got our humanities. He's right beside us. But he's more than man. He's God. Today he's pulling in our sins onto himself. Our prayerlessness. Our hypocrisy. Our silence. our sin, pulling it into himself and forgiving us and giving us his grace. I was interested in the short note about the founder of Quick Fit who died last week and John Swinnock, the leader of the Scottish government said one word to describe him. Outstanding. And here's our Savior. In every way, in His power, in His humanity, and in His love for us, He is outstanding.