Sailors Saved

I remain standing for the word of God to be read. It's the book of Jonah. The word of Yahweh came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. Yet Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish and paid its fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh.

But Yahweh hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship gave thought to breaking apart. Then the sailors became fearful and every man cried to his God and they hurled the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down below into the innermost part of the vessel. laying down and falling deep asleep.

So the captain came near to him and said to him, How is it that you are deeply sleeping? Arise, call on your God. Perhaps your God will be concerned about us so that we will not perish. Then each man said to the other, Come, let us have the lots fall so we may know on whose account this calamitous evil has struck us. So they had the lots fall, and the lot fell on Jonah.

Then they said to him, So they said to him, What should we do to you that the sea may become quiet for us? For the sea was becoming increasingly stormy. So he said to them, Lift me up and hurl me into the sea. Then the sea will become quiet 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 dry land, but they could not, for the sea was becoming increasingly stormy against them.

Then they called on Yahweh and said, Yahweh and made vows. It's a reading of the word of the Lord. You may be seated. It's been a few weeks since we opened the book of Jonah. Last week we had a guest preacher and two weeks ago we went in Matthew 14, 15, I don't remember, Matthew 14 maybe. And so back to Jonah.

Jonah has been given a command from God to go to Nineveh and preach the words that God has given him to preach to the Ninevites. Jonah not wanting to do what God has asked has decided to go in what is ultimately the complete opposite direction from where he was supposed to go. His descent downward will continue until he goes into the sea. So we saw in one week he goes down into the boat and he's down there sleeping and he went down to Joppa.

And Jonah has now been on the boat. He's sleeping. And the captain of the boat has come to him to basically accuse him of wrongdoing for laying there asleep while the boat is being tossed about in a storm. So these men, whose job it was to effectively live on the sea all the time, probably, were so afraid of the storm that had come upon them. I think we can reasonably assume this wasn't their first storm.

They were so afraid of this particular storm that they had begun to hurl their cargo overboard to save their own lives. They were all calling out to their God, which is not the most uncommon thing, But there were some commentators that I read who noted that these men likely weren't the most religious type in the first place. So their sudden desire to pray and call to even their false god maybe was indicative of how horrible this storm was.

It is true that when calamity strikes, most people embody that phrase. There's no atheists and foxholes. Once the difficulty comes, even the most hardened anti-God person will start to call upon God, knowing that it is God who is bringing the storm and God who has power to stop the storm. One of the things we can gather from the sermon two weeks ago where Jesus was walking to the boat on water was that he was the one who was able to calm the storm.

The ability to control the weather as such is enough to cause everybody who observes it to be amazed by you. Well, the same thing is going on here. The weather is torrential. It's tempestuous. And the sailors have no hope of survival by ordinary means anymore. And they're calling out to their gods.

And at some point, somebody either remembers, hey, where's that other guy? Why isn't he helping? Or they just are looking around Who knows how they got to this point But the captain of the ship goes down and he yells at Jonah calls him a sleeper In some translations it says he was snoring It's the idea that he was so deeply sleeping that this storm that was ready to kill everyone didn't even arouse him.

And most of us, I don't know about you, But a bad thunderstorm at night will wake me up. You know, just the noise. So he's sleeping through this. And John Gill says this indicates a spiritual sleepiness rather than just a physical one. Jonah was asleep at the time he should have been awake. Interestingly enough, Proverbs 10 verse 5 says, He who gathers in summer is a son who acts insightfully, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who acts shamefully.

And there is a sense that Jonah, as with us, everywhere he went, being a messenger from God, had the choice to sleep or go into the Lord's harvest and preach. And Jonah's on this ship and he is not helping anybody out. But we talked about sleeping a few weeks ago. So let's look at the end of verse 6. The captain says to him, Arise, call on your God. Perhaps your God will be concerned about us so that we will not perish.

It's interesting that he says perhaps. There is this openness that the sailors have to the idea that there is a God. It is written on the heart of every single person who ever lives that there is a God, that he exists. He's a rewarder of those who diligently seek them. Everybody knows God created the world and God's in control of everything. In fact, it's why most people are mad at him.

All right. Most people aren't actually atheists. Some people would argue there's no atheists, but I recognize just people at least call themselves one. Most people aren't really atheists. They're people who are very angry with God's decree. And because they don't like something that has happened that they have experienced or observed themselves. they hate God.

And they choose to then suppress the truth about God because it's too painful to think about a God that would allow this horrible evil to occur. I mean, how many evils do you have to observe or read about in a newspaper or on the news or on a news website? Everyone in this room probably who's read anything at this point has seen gross evil occurring even maybe in your city.

We can read history books and we see the evils that have been done, the atrocities that have been committed by men toward other men in the history of the world. It's very easy because you know that God is the one in control at all times to then blame God for these bad things. It's that simple. God's in control of every drop of rain that hits the ground.

So if a whole bunch of them pull together and destroy something, it was truly at the hand of God that these things happened. Our problem is rarely that we don't understand these things. Our problem is that we hate the God that would actually allow things to happen that are objectively evil. it's because we forget that it's god's allowing evil things to persist is the reason you're still alive today and breathing it's the reason why your kids weren't taken immediately by god and so we are very hopeful that god who is good will be concerned about the sailors so they will not perish.

The sailors have this perhaps about them. In chapter 3, we have another non-believer who questions if God might help him. Look at verse 9. This is the king of Nineveh. He says, who knows? God may turn and relent and turn away from his burning anger so that we will not perish.

There's a, who knows? It's a rhetorical, I don't know, he's saying. I don't know if God will return from his anger. God has promised to destroy Nineveh. I'm the king. I could do any number of things.

We're going to get to verse 9 of chapter 3 at some point. So I don't want to get too far into it. But the idea here is that the king of Nineveh says, who knows, maybe God will change his mind. Maybe God will save us from his own wrath by his own choice. It is that same concept here. This captain of the ship sees Jonah says, call on your God.

There could have been 70 sailors on the ship. There could have been 70 different gods represented. Let's say some of the sailors were polytheistic, poly meaning many, theistic meaning gods. Some of the sailors having many gods, they may have been calling out to hundreds or thousands of false gods at this time. But Jonah, the one who knew the one true God, is now being asked to call on his God.

Providential, to say the least. So Jonah apparently must have come up to the place where all the other people were. So if you read the first chapter of Jonah, I want you to remember that this is over the course of several hours more likely several days that some of it happened But over the course of a long time Jonah is there with all the people now And each man said to the other come let us have the lots fall so we may know on whose account this calamitous evil has struck us.

So they had the lots fall and the lot fell on Jonah. So now we don't cast lots now. We have other ways that we do. We flip coins. Anybody here ever see a coin and call heads or tails and then flip it? You ever do that?

You ever roll dice and see if it's a one or a two or a three or a four or five or a six? I guess that'd be rolling a die. And if you roll dice, you roll two of them. And you add them up and that's your number. So there's a lot of things that we do that we would say have some act of chance in them. Now, nothing is truly left to chance, as Proverbs 16.33 says. the lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from Yahweh.

And so we don't actually believe in random chance, but these sailors did. These sailors had a belief enough that this tempest or storm that had come upon them on the sea was of a divine nature. It was of divine wrath. They were so certain of it being of divine wrath and their own superstition that by casting a lot, they could figure out who it was that they did it.

So evidently, none of the sailors was standing there harboring and hiding such unconfessed sin in his own life that he thought, well, maybe I should let everybody know I did this thing. Maybe if I would confess, I'd get rid of the storm, right? And evidently, Jonah didn't offer that information quite yet. And so they cast the lots and there's you can read about how these things were done, but the idea might have been that all the guys wrote their name on a piece of paper and then they picked one of them out and the piece of paper said Jonah.

And so they decided that that would be the determining factor of who was the source of the divine judgment they were all under. God is a God who hates idolatry. And God is a God who also will use the idols and superstitions of our heart to his advantage. So, did God have to allow the lot to fall on Jonah correctly? No, he didn't. God was not constrained by the sailor superstition of how they were going to determine how to get out of the storm.

But God chose providentially to work through this in such a way that they would truly know who it was. Chances are Jonah bought into it enough that he he would have offered up his confession pretty quickly. I don't think this is at all a prescription. I just want to clarify that for you. This isn't a prescription for making decisions in your life. if you have an important decision to make you're supposed to seek wisdom from God you're supposed to pray for wisdom from God you're supposed to ask God to give you wisdom if you don't think you have wisdom you ask for it but if you're not studying the Bible you are cutting off your own legs in a sense there is even a section of the Bible that they classify as the wisdom literature alright And so you need to study the Proverbs.

You need to study Ecclesiastes. You need to read the Psalms. There is in the Bible an abundance of wisdom and in the teachings even of Jesus Christ himself, an understanding of what wisdom is that goes beyond what any humans can attain on their own. And so you study and you become as wise as you can. And part of wisdom is experience. So if you know an old wise person...

Well, here, let me back up a step. There's a saying I've heard. Wait, what is it? Oh, yeah, when you try something and you make a mistake, you gain experience. When you do that over and over, and you have enough of those experiences, you now have wisdom. And so when you see an old wise guy, it's somebody who's made a lot of mistakes. other than Jesus who is the embodiment of wisdom.

And so the idea here is that God wants you to discern what his will is, Romans 12, by testing things, by just trying things. Once you've determined that an action is not sinful, if you still aren't sure which path to take, let's say you have some choices to make, you have a couple options to pick from, and you've determined through study of the scripture, through your own prayer time, through counsel with a multitude of counselors, through people at your own church that you counsel with before you make a decision, you've determined that there are multiple options that are still all non-sinful and viable and all could be equally wise in some sense. There's two things you can do at this point.

One is do the one you want to do the most, right? I'll just use an easy example. You're looking for a new job. And you've got two options. And these two options both have some pros and cons, and they're both going to be good for you. Neither one of them is sinful, and you really can't predict the future.

Well, you can flip a coin. Heads, you go to this job. Tails, you go to that job. And that wouldn't bother me, frankly. Or you can just pick the one that you really think you want the most. But this is what I'll say about it.

Don't say that God told you to pick one of them. Don flip a coin and when the coin lands on heads say well God wanted me to go to this company because it landed on heads That not the way God works with us Now if it makes you feel better to flip the coin because you don want to decide that fine And then you can blame the coin later if it doesn work out and all that kind of stuff But the lot falls on Jonah back to Jonah And they they think that they going to know whose account the calamitous evil has struck them because of the lot And God lets it fall on Jonah And then they said to Jonah, verse 8, tell us now on whose account has this calamitous evil struck us? Well, they already theoretically know on whose account, right?

They thought the lot told them that. These questions I don't think are to be taken quite so literally. This is Jonah's summarization of what happened in the middle of a storm on a boat. And he certainly wasn't transcribing it in the moment. All right. He didn't take the first chapter of Jonah with them into the whale and carry it around for a while.

This is written later. This is a summary. They're asking about whose account has this evil struck us? You know, what did you do? What is your occupation? What are you supposed to be doing?

Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you? So they're just inquiring of them. Tell us. Tell us your story.

They want to figure out what the problem is because they are sure it's divine judgment. And they are now so certain that the divine judgment has come upon them because of this other guy, rather than their own sin that they're asking him these questions, which is an interesting commentary in and of itself. So Jonah replies and he says, I am a Hebrew and I fear Yahweh, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.

And now it gets interesting because Jonah is from a country that is split now. So you have the two kingdoms in Israel. and Jonah calls himself a Hebrew instead of a Jew, which is interesting because he's identifying himself as from the one kingdom instead of the other. But also Jonah now comes from an idolatrous people. And so I think when I first read Jonah, I thought of Israel as God's people and they were, you know, like the Christian church, I guess.

And then Jonah was a prophet of them. And then he's there and he's just telling them where he's from. And they would have immediately identified Israel with righteousness and justice and godliness and things of that sort. what I'm now realizing is that when Jonah is telling them where he's from and he clarifies that he fears Yahweh the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land he is clarifying for these idolaters but I'm not an idolater like the rest of where I'm from you ever feel like you have to do that? you meet somebody and they say what kind of Christian are you?

You want to say like, I don't know how many times people have asked, what are you? And I'm like, what do you mean? What am I? And then they say, well, you know, like what denomination? And I always have to say Baptist, but I'm not like Westboro Baptist. And I'm not like, you know, I've got this list of Baptists that I'm not like, you know.

And, you know, it's kind of funny how that works out. But Jonah lets them know, I fear Yahweh. All right. This is, remember, written by the Holy Spirit, ultimately through Jonah for our edification. And he's letting us know that he told these idolaters who were all crying out to their God that he fears the one true God, Yahweh. Calls him by name, which is interesting because the sailors are going to call him by name in a little bit. he also identifies God as the one who made the sea and the dry land I don't want to get on a long hobby horse about it but the world was not created spontaneously by a big bang even if you say God said let there be light and bang people try to make a little quippy joke about that No, we just don't associate with the Big Bang concept.

We don't believe in abiogenesis, life from non-life. We don't think that there was primordial ooze and liquid mixing around on the earth and then lightning struck and then a single-celled organism suddenly had life and then everything came from that. We don't believe in evolution. We believe that God created the sea and the dry land. And in fact, everybody you know actually knows this. they know it in their heart God has made it clear to them through creation that he is the creator and only a fool says in his heart there is no God but Jonah identifies the God who made the sea and the dry land to these idolaters while they're in the middle of a storm where they need control of the one who creates the storm you can imagine the sailors with their multitude of different gods they worship, they may have even had a god of the sea or the god of the storm.

I don't know how many of you have Catholic friends. Catholics have a saint they pray to for nearly everything. There's the saint that helps you find lost things. There's a saint that helps you with traveling. it's a Christian-y version of being polytheistic is what it is but since Catholics want to call themselves Christians and monotheistic they instead pray to saints instead of false gods but Jonah lets them know I'm a Hebrew I fear Yahweh the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land He is a believer in the one true God. way almost always means a person that actually knows the Lord.

I think that's important because of what we'll see later with the men. So the men became greatly fearful at this point. It's an interesting comment, considering they had already basically decided they were going to lose their lives. They had been so sure of it they had thrown their cargo overboard now meaning that even if they lived through this they'd be in poverty.

And now they become greatly fearful. There's something about the one true God that is far more terrifying than all of our false notions of our false gods are combined. And although your friends and your relatives and your neighbors and your co-workers and all the people that you encounter who do not know the one true God will fancy themselves worshipers of their God.

They will think that they are somehow fearful of their God, but everybody who worships a false God deep down inside knows that they are the one in control of that false God. Even the earth people, the ones that think that we have tornadoes and hurricanes because we're drinking too many water bottles with plastic even those people think that they can appease their false god you know by recycling and some of these things right we all deep down inside desire a god that we're in control of all the time and we make up a god that is somehow external to us a God of our own imagination, but external to us so we can feel like we're worshiping something because we have a compulsion to do so inside. We have a compulsion to worship.

We all know there's something. But as soon as the thing we're going to worship is out of our control, it's very scary. as soon as that thing can do whatever he wants with us that's terrifying so we create our false gods of our own imagination not a huge c.s lewis fan for his theology but i like the narnia books okay and there was the thing where he used to say about aslan he's he can't be tamed and this was a reference to him being a picture of god god that we don't control he does what he wants so the men are fearful though and they look at him it's almost like what is this you have done like we're bad guys and we're sailors and we cuss and at every port we've got a different girlfriend and yada yada yada yada yada they've got all these things they probably know they're doing wrong and a part of them kind of knows yeah but my God's not even real Like everyone, I think everybody honestly knows this, okay? And they look at Jonah like, what's the matter with you?

You did this to Yahweh? Not only, I think, do they know that Yahweh is the real God, which I'm going to tell you something that you might not realize. All your friends and everyone you know, they know Jesus is God, okay? That's why they say his name when they stub their toe. Nobody says Allah or Ganesha, you understand? They say the name of the real God when they want to blaspheme.

But not only do they know that Yahweh is God, and so this is kind of scary, like, wait, he's got real power. But it's really a bad testimony. You know, we come to church and we say things like, hey, you're saved by grace through faith alone. You know what? You can't work for salvation. Guess what?

Here's the Ten Commandments. We just talked about them for 30 weeks. If you started today and somehow were able to perfectly keep every single one of them for the rest of your life, you still don't go to heaven because you can't work to get close to God. You can't make up for the sin you've already committed. And even if theoretically you could be perfect your whole life, which you couldn't, Adam's sin imputed to you already condemns you in the covenant of works.

So you can't work your way to God. It is only by grace through faith. And guess what? If you get saved and you become a Christian and you're born again and you sin again and you sin again and you sin again and you sin again and you sin yet again, you have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. And he's the propitiation for all your sins, not just the ones from before you were saved.

And so we have this idea that, oh, OK, I'm a Christian, but I'm still going to make mistakes. I'm still going to err. I'm still going to sin. I'm still going to have impure thoughts. I'm still going to have impure words come out of my mouth. I'm still going to think things that are envious.

I'm still going to have pride. I'm still going to have gossip sometimes. I'm still going to envy. I'm going to disrespect my parents if I'm a kid. I'm going to disrespect other people I should have respect for if I'm an adult. I'm not going to worship God perfectly.

And we have this idea that we're going to constantly be battling this difficulty and we're never going to be perfect in this life. And we teach that. And yet, at the same time, we're going to exhort you that when you go out in front of the pagans, when you are around people that do not believe in God, and when I say pagans, I just mean non-believers.

I don't mean it like rudely. When you're around people that don't believe in the same God as you and your life reflects that you don't care what He told you to do, they're just going to look at you like, Like, why have you done that? One of the things that disappoints me the most when I see Christians in public sometimes, and I know that people have situations they have to deal with, but it's the lack of joy sometimes.

I think Christians should have this amazing almost nonstop bubbly joy but instead you have to be like the weird TED Talk follower guy or Joel Osteen church goer to pretend you have it Christians testify to the world not only by our words, which are necessary, but by every action of your whole life. And your non-believing friends and family, your neighbors, the people you're evangelizing will look for any opportunity to accuse you of living a life that doesn't line up with the words you're telling them about Jesus Christ. And so you have an opportunity.

Rather than appear to be fleeing the presence of Yahweh. To actually, excuse me, to actually. live a life that shows people that you love his commands, that it's joyful for you to forsake the things God would have you forsake and do the things that God would have you do, the very things that many nonbelievers have a distaste for. So he had told them at some point he had fleed the presence of Yahweh, and they said to him, What should we do to you that the sea may become quiet for us?

Because the sea was getting worse. So now here's the crux of the matter. These guys are saying, well, what shall we do to be saved, basically, right? You made this all happen. What should we do to you? Now, it's interesting to me that they hadn't already thrown them overboard.

I find it kind of interesting. Because I'm thinking like, man, if I think I'm going to die already and I'm a nonbeliever and I find out like that's the guy, it's his fault. Like, don't they want to do something to him? You know, you'd think they'd be angry and do something. But somehow they were restrained and they understood in some sense the value of life, I guess.

And so Jonah says, lift me up. And hurl me into the sea. He says, then the sea will become quiet for you. He says, for I know that on account of me, this great storm has come upon you. Jonah, the prophet of God. And they knew he was from God.

Their superstitious lock casting had been confirmed for them. They had the right guy. He told them who he was, what he was there for, why the storm was there. There was no doubt in anyone's mind at this point that the whole reason that we're in the middle of the worst storm any of us had ever experienced or even imagined possible, You think they would have set sail if they thought it was possible?

Like, think about it. Like, if they had looked out and the sky had shown them, oh, there's a storm, you think they would have? And they look at Jonah and he tells them exactly what to do. A prophet of God says, this is what you need to do to appease God's wrath. A man has to die. You must make a sacrifice.

And I do think we'll see the sailors in heaven. And I bet you every one of them wishes that at this point, the next verse said, and they did exactly what they were commanded by the prophet of God. But instead, having heard from God's prophet exactly what they needed to do to be saved, they rode desperately to return to dry land. God's mode God's way of salvation was not tasteful to them these sailors had too much morality and scruples to throw a man overboard even though God had said this is the punishment this is how my wrath can be appeased there is only one way and it's the way I'm telling you men by nature when they're not born again, even facing the terrible judgment of God and actually being certain of it, will do all they can to appease God's wrath by the works of their own hands.

And these sailors are no different. Neither were any of us until we were born again. We either work hard to appease God or we work hard to suppress the truth of Him so that we don't feel the guilt of his divine wrath bearing upon us, abiding on us, waiting for that day of judgment. But they could not return to dry land. The sea was becoming increasingly stormy against them.

Praise the Lord for that. Praise the Lord that he will get his man. He will get his woman. He will do whatever it takes to bring his elect to himself and to teach people the lessons that they need to be taught. One of the most famous Christians of our day right now is Johnny Erickson Tada, who had something happen to her that nobody would wish upon anybody.

I think she dove in a pool, hit the bottom, and then she's paralyzed forever after that. Well, for life. This life. And it was that event that brought her to the point that she finally got saved. and she's been a faithful Christian for decades now. And yet at the time, nobody would have been hoping that this would happen to her, but there were certainly, I'm sure, people in her life praying for her.

Lord, save her soul. So the Lord will do what he chooses to do with each of his elect and he will bring them to the point of humility that he chooses and we're thankful for that. And there isn't a person in heaven that wishes any moment of their life is any different than it had been. All the pain all the difficulty all the failure all the humiliation if it brought them to the foot of the cross it causes a saint to be grateful But their efforts failed.

So, you know, give them some credit. Maybe it took some time. I don't know. But their efforts failed. Seeing the futility of the works of their own hands, the men cry out and they call on Yahweh now. what does the bible say in the new testament everyone who calls on the name of the lord will be saved there's arguments about whether what happens with the sailors here is a temporary form of religion where out of fear they call out to the right god temporarily they make a few changes and then we really don't know what happens after i i like to think the language here makes it clear that Jonah was providentially sent to Joppa toward Tarshish, even though he wasn't supposed to go there for the purpose even of this harvest that he wanted to sleep through.

But they called on Yahweh, and this is what they say. They say, Ah, O Yahweh, we earnestly pray, do not let us perish on account of this man's life. Do not put innocent blood on us, they said, for you, O Yahweh, as you have pleased, you have done. They express, I think, belief. They express faith. They call Jonah innocent, meaning what they're saying is don't.

Accuse us of murder because we're executing your justice on someone who has sinned against you. Right. David said against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight So that you may be blameless in your judgments, right? And so the sailors have an understanding by faith now that the sacrifice they're about to make is actually commanded by God to appease his divine wrath.

One man had to die for the sake of all the rest. For the divine judgment to be appeased, death had to occur. Jonah, of course, being a picture of Jesus Christ. Not in the sense that Jonah was truly innocent like Jesus. Jonah, of course, died for his own sin here. I do think Jonah died and came back to life, but that's arguable.

We'll talk about that more later. But Jonah was punished for his sin. Jesus was punished for the sins of others. But they were imputed to him as if they were his own. Now, you may remember what Jonah said earlier in verse 12. In my version, he says, lift me up and hurl me into the sea.

In verse 15 of my version, it says, so they lifted Jonah up and hurled him into the sea and the sea stood still from its raging. the confirmation for these sailors that this really was the divine judgment and Jonah really was the wrath satisfying sacrifice at this point was that the sea stopped from its raging there's no explanation that they could have for that but it's interesting language after I focused earlier on the fact that Jonah went down to Joppa and he went down into a ship and he had gone down into the side of the ship And he had lain down and fallen asleep. And now he says, lift me up. And then the sailors lifted him up and hurled him into the sea.

I'll remind you in John 12, 27. Jesus says, my soul has become dismayed. And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. He says, but for this purpose, I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name. then a voice came from heaven saying i have both glorified it and will glorify it again so the crowd of people who stood by and heard it listen they were saying that it had thundered it's interesting another storm language right others were saying an angel has spoken to him and jesus answered and said this voice has not come for my sake but for your sake now judgment is upon this world now the ruler of this world will be cast out so you have this imagery of a storm you have judgment coming upon the world and then jesus says in verse 32 and i if i am lifted up from the earth will draw all men to myself jesus says he has to be lifted up and that's how he's going to draw all men to himself Remember, Jonah is a picture of Jesus Christ for us.

Look at John 8. John 8, 28. Jesus said, when you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and I do nothing from myself, but I speak these things as the Father taught me. He says, when you lift up the Son of Man. verse 14 of John chapter 3 speaking about the serpent in the wilderness Jesus says and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the son of man be lifted up and then he goes on to say so that whosoever believes in me should not perish but have everlasting life Jonah says lift me up and hurl me into the sea that you might be saved.

They lift him up and hurl him into the sea and the sea stands still from its raging. They obeyed the word of God from the prophet of God that had been given to them And it was Matthew Henry I think he said the sailors will rise up against this generation and judge us because again we are not believing a prophet even a better one than Jonah. So we have hope.

We have hope not only that there's salvation and obedience to God, the physical salvation from the storm, that Jonah, being a picture of our Lord, who would be lifted up and then thrown down. And he would go into the belly of the earth for three days. And then he would raise again, just like Jonah. But when Jesus Christ was raised again, he was raised because we are justified in God's sight.

And he showed that he has victory over death and that death could not hold him. So in verse 16, we have what I believe is a statement that the Bible intends for us to read as these men truly were born again. You are free to believe otherwise if you think you have reason to. But in verse 16, it says, then the men greatly feared Yahweh. I think that God is telling us that they observed God's prophet telling them what needed to happen.

They observed his demeanor as it all went down, as Jonah finally submitted himself to God's will at this point, as Jonah, I believe, probably quite calmly allowed them to hurl him over the board. they saw the sacrifice that God had provided so that they would be saved from this storm. They knew the truth already. Jonah had given them some more truth.

And at this point, these sailors, with the knowledge that had been given to them, called on the name of the Lord and they were saved. And it says they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows. I kind of wondered how if they'd thrown everything overboard they offered a sacrifice if you want to read all the commentators that are all the guys that are supposed to be the heroes of the faith they don't agree on it either one guy said well they probably after they stopped the ship they got a sacrifice and made it and another guy said anyone who says that is absurd I like both these guys Right.

So, you know, I think that we can reasonably understand that the Bible is not telling us to figure out exactly how they got the sacrifice made, whether it was a good sacrifice. Maybe it was a bad one. I don't know. Maybe they didn't follow the regulative principle of worship out on the sea at this time when the only information they had was that God created the world, was ready to kill them.

And then a prophet came and told them, throw me into the sea and you'll live. Maybe that was all the information they really had and they did all they could from the heart to worship God with the information they'd been given. But they offered a sacrifice to him, knowing that God is the one that gives them all things. That's basically one of the reasons you offer the sacrifice is you're showing God you can provide back to me more than I would give anyway.

And they made vows, it says. they were at this point ready to say God I'll give you my life now there's a lot of things they could have said we don't know but I think that the Bible is giving us sufficient warrant to believe that these men out in the middle of nowhere not seeking God on their own by what most people would call a chance encounter, but what I'll call a providential encounter, came into contact with a prophet of God who himself at the time was being as disobedient as possible to the Lord's command to him. And then as the result of their inquiring him of his sin before this holy God, he accidentally teaches them enough about God in that sense that they might be saved. So when people try to say tracks are ineffective or street preaching is ineffective or evangelism is ineffective, I question if they've ever read the book of Jonah.

If people try to say you need to be kinder or nicer or more smiley or whatever, all the criticisms people have of our gospel presentations. the word of God is what is sufficient to save souls if the Holy Spirit chooses at that time to regenerate a soul by his power and so you be encouraged to go out and if you're in a hurry give someone a track if you have time talk to them about the gospel if you have a chance to write somebody a card if you go to a wedding whatever it is give somebody just even snippets of scripture and trust that God will do with his word what he chooses. Father, we thank you that you are powerful to save even the lowliest of the low. And we can know from our own reading and experience that these men would have been far from God. and we thank you that you save those who are far from you by your sovereign election, by your free choice to save those whom you wish and we thank you for everybody who you have put in our lives to give the gospel to.

May we do it faithfully and we ask you to bring fruit that you would save people that we have sent the gospel to one way or another. In Christ's name I pray. Amen.