A Disconnect Between Words and Works
Rev. Res Spears
Jonah: The Reluctant Prophet • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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I’d like to take a few minutes at the start today to rant about the state of the newspaper business.
Now, let me say right up front that I’ve never once regretted my decision to leave journalism when God called me into the ministry.
I firmly believe He’s got me right where He wants me to be, doing just what He wants me to do. But I still keep up with the news, and I pay pretty close attention to what’s going on in the newspaper industry.
And things are pretty bad in that industry right now. The 21st century hasn’t been kind to newspapers. Since 2005, the United States has lost nearly 2,900 newspapers, and they were closing at an average rate of 2.5 a week as of last year.
The Poynter Institute predicts that fully one-third of the newspapers that existed in the U.S. in 2005 will have closed up shop by next year.
Now, if we had a lot more time, perhaps I’d talk about why this is such a significant development, what it might mean for our society, and how we got here.
For today, though, suffice to say that I believe one of the biggest reasons newspapers are in the state they’re in today is that publishers and owners don’t really believe in the importance of a well-informed public.
Now, that’s not what all the publishers and newspaper owners SAY. In fact, they’ll wax poetic about how a stable democracy requires a well-informed public and about the newspaper’s “sacred duty” to keep the public informed.
But for most of my newspaper career, what I observed was publishers and owners cutting news budgets, gutting their newsrooms, and hiring leaders who were more committed to the bottom line than to solid reporting.
Meanwhile, the highest salaries and best perks went to advertising professionals, and the average reporter barely scraped by while devoting nights, weekends, and even vacation time to providing the news stories that would fill their paper.
From my perspective, one of the biggest reasons newspapers are in decline around the nation is that the words of so many publishers and owners have not been consistent with their actions.
They claim to be interested in a well-informed public, but their actions reveal that the most important thing to them is profits.
Now, I’ve spent a good bit of time thinking about this, and I could go on. But this isn’t a presentation on the state of American newspapers in 2024. Instead, this is the third in our series of messages on spiritual growth indicators in the Book of Jonah.
And so, allow me to transition to Jonah with a quick parallel. The second of the 12 spiritual growth indicators we find in this book is this: “A life that is growing spiritually shows a consistency between words and works.” [Mark Yarbrough, Jonah: Beyond the Tale of a Whale, (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2020), 67.]
Just as newspaper publishers and owners have a responsibility to protect and nurture the thing they claim to be important, we who claim to love Jesus Christ have a responsibility to ensure that our actions support the claim that WE make.
As James, the half-brother of Jesus, puts it:
14 What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?
15 If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food,
16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?
17 Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.
Now, let’s get something out of the way, right off the bat. Works can’t save you. There’s nothing you can do to earn God’s favor. We are saved BY grace alone, THROUGH faith alone, in CHRIST alone, and for the glory of God alone.
No amount of good works on your part could ever make up for even ONE of your sins against God. But Jesus took upon Himself our sins at the cross, bearing the guilt and punishment that were ours so WE could have life in HIM.
But if you’ve been saved by God’s grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, then your good WORKS will be the evidence of a living faith.
And if your life ISN’T characterized by the good that you do for others, then now would be a good time to examine the content of your faith to see if it’s really saving faith you’re professing at all.
So, what’s all this got to do with Jonah? I’m glad you asked.
As with so much else about this book, we see the lesson about consistency between one’s words and works in the negative example set by Jonah, the Reluctant Prophet.
Ostensibly, the Book of Jonah is about God, in His great compassion for people, relenting from bringing judgment upon the people of Nineveh for their great evils.
He sends Jonah to preach a message of coming judgment, and the people of Nineveh repent, and God delays bringing judgment against them.
But Nineveh is just the setting God uses to show Jonah his sinful attitudes and bring HIM to repentance.
God is certainly concerned for the welfare of the Ninevites. But He’s much more concerned that Jonah— and the people of Israel — understand that His compassion and grace weren’t limited only to the Jews.
He’ll use the visit to Nineveh to teach Jonah just how spiritually unresponsive he is. And he’ll use Jonah’s story to teach the rest of Israel the same lesson.
Last week, we saw the first of the 12 spiritual growth indicators in the introduction to this book: “A life that is growing spiritually is moving toward God’s commands, not away from them, regardless of the difficulty.” [Mark Yarbrough, Jonah: Beyond the Tale of a Whale, (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2020), 33.]
And today, as we pick up in verse 4 of chapter 1, we’ll see the second spiritual growth indicator: A life that’s growing spiritually shows a consistency between words and works.
Let’s read the passage together, and then we’ll dive in and look at some details.
4 The Lord 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.
5 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.
6 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.”
7 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.
8 Then they said to him, “Tell us, now! On whose account has this calamity struck us? What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”
9 He said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.”
10 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 the Lord, because he had told them.
Now, it’s important to note that the main character in this passage isn’t Jonah. And it isn’t the sailors aboard the ship he’d hired to take him to Tarshish, which was as far as Jonah could go in the opposite direction from Nineveh, where God had sent him.
The main character is the Lord God. He is fully in control of everything that happens in this book. And so, we see Him, right at the beginning of this passage, hurling a great wind upon the ship and its passengers and crew.
And just in case we might think this storm to have been a coincidence, the word that’s translated as “hurled” there means to throw an object, like a spear, at a target.
God had hurled this storm like a spear, targeting Jonah and his ship. He was after Jonah here and throughout this book.
The Ninevites eventually receive God’s grace as a result of their repentance. But Jonah is the one for whom all of this has been set into motion. God wants to change JONAH and his wrong attitudes. And so, He sends a storm.
And the storm is so sudden and so violent that it threatened to sink the ship. In fact, in Hebrew the last clause of verse 4 reads something like this: The ship “thought it was to be dashed into pieces.” It was “determined to break up.”
And in personifying the ship, the author wants us to notice the contrast between the ship’s sensitivity to what God was doing and Jonah’s complete LACK of sensitivity to the same thing.
The ship was determined to break into pieces, but Jonah was determined to sleep below decks.
And note once again the description of Jonah going down into the ship. As I said last week, we’re intended to notice that Jonah is placing himself further and further outside of God’s will for his life. Instead of GROWING spiritually, he’s shrinking.
So, the storm is raging, and the sailors are terrified (which should give you an indication as to just how violent the storm was).
The pagan crew seems to be multi-national and from various religious backgrounds, and they all begin to pray to their own gods. And when that doesn’t help, they begin lightening the ship’s load by throwing overboard everything that wasn’t nailed to the deck.
But what’s Jonah doing? He’s asleep. Sound asleep. In fact, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it says he slept and he snored.
But he wasn’t just physically asleep. What we’re intended to see is a prophet of the Most High God who is spiritually asleep. He’s as dead to God as he is to the world.
And so, in a book that’s chock full of irony, we come in verse 6 to one of the greatest ironies: The pagan captain of a pagan ship has to wake up a prophet of God to ask him to pray.
“Get up!” he says. “Call on your God.” These are the same Hebrew words God had said to Jonah when He said, “Arise, go the Nineveh the great city and cry against it.”
Jonah had ignored the command the first time. Now, God would repeat it from the mouth of a pagan ship’s captain.
“Get up and cry out to your God,” the captain says. “Maybe He’ll spare us.”
For a prophet of the Most High God, this was a gift-wrapped opportunity to tell others about Him. But what we’ll see is that Jonah’s so spiritually asleep, he doesn’t recognize the opportunity in front of him.
So, the crew of the ship reverts to superstition to work out what’s happening. They cast lots to try to figure out what person aboard this ship has brought this calamity upon them all.
And the lot falls to Jonah. Why? Because God is in control.
In the Book of Jonah, we see that God’s in control of the wind, the sea, the fish, a plant, a worm, and even the lots cast by the ship’s crew.
As it’s put in the Book of Proverbs:
33 The lot is cast into the lap,
But its every decision is from the Lord.
Just so there’d be no question, God makes the lot fall to Jonah, and it becomes increasingly clear that Jonah is responsible for the calamity.
Now, the word that’s translated as “calamity” here is the same Hebrew word that’s translated as “wickedness” back in verse 2, where God says the wickedness of the Ninevites has come up before Him.
God wanted Jonah to go to Nineveh and expose their wickedness so they could repent and avoid the calamitous judgment God had planned for them. Instead, Jonah’s sin — his own wickedness — brought calamity upon himself and all who were aboard his ship.
So, when the lot falls on Jonah, the crew begins firing questions at him, wondering how he or his people have offended God so greatly that He’d send this terrible storm.
What’s your job? Where are you from? WHO ARE YOU?
Jonah, here’s your chance. Tell them about the God you serve. Tell them how they can be saved through faith in Him. Tell them about His compassion and grace. Tell them about forgiveness and mercy.
Or not.
“I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
The truth is, that’s a great message, especially in light of the calamity they’re all facing. If my God made the sea and the dry land, then He’s also able to CONTROL the sea, and that would have been very helpful to them all at this point.
But Jonah’s words don’t match his actions. If he’d really feared the Lord God — if he’d really held God in reverence — he would’ve obeyed God from the beginning.
“It may seem strange that Jonah claimed to worship this God when he did not obey Him, but this is often true of believers.” [John D. Hannah, “Jonah,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 1466.]
And the thing is, when our actions don’t correspond to our words, people notice. They certainly noticed on Jonah’s boat.
Remembering that Jonah had told them he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord — the same Lord he told them he feared — the crew is aghast.
“How could you do this?” they ask him. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?! The sailors were horrified that someone would disobey his God so cavalierly.
“That one who worshipped the Almighty Creator should disobey his command seemed to them outrageous and inexcusably criminal.” [H. D. M. Spence-Jones, ed., Jonah, The Pulpit Commentary (London; New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1909), 4.]
How could this prophet of the Most High God claim to love God and yet treat Him with such disdain?
His actions — his deeds, his works — weren’t consistent with his words.
It’s easy for us to see the problem in Jonah’s spiritual life. But the fact is that we’re much less likely to notice it in our own lives.
You claim to love Jesus, but do your WORKS bear evidence of that love? Are you loving the people Jesus loves, even when that’s hard to do, even when those same people HATE you?
You claim to be a follower of Christ, but ARE you actually following Him? Are you doing the things He would do?
You claim to place your faith in Jesus. But have you allowed your worldview to be shaped by that faith?
I don’t really think I talk about this matter enough. Everyone has a worldview that shapes how they interact with the world and how they interpret what takes place here.
As followers of Jesus, our faith is to be in Him and Him alone. And when we truly trust in Him in all circumstances, it changes everything about how we interact with the world and how we interpret what’s taking place here.
Unfortunately, too many people who claim to have placed their faith in Jesus have simply added that faith to the faith they place in all sorts of other things.
Too many people who identify as Christians have simply added that identity to all the others they’ve allowed to define them. In other words, they’ve kept the worldview of the lost world and simply added a little Jesus to the mix.
That’s how we’ve wound up with the heretical theology of Christian Nationalism.
Jesus didn’t come to make America great. He came to draw sinners to humble repentance and faith in Him alone. Not in the government. Not in their own protection. Not in careers or finances or any of the other things we might hope can save us.
Indeed, as we’ll see next week, one of the themes of this first chapter of the Book of Jonah is the absolute powerlessness of idols and other false gods to save us. Only Jesus can do that.
And when Jonah is thrown into the sea, and the crew of his ship is saved, it’s a picture of the sacrificial death of Jesus, who gave His life so that we turn to Him in faith can live.
Listen, I want to encourage you this morning to take stock of your life and your faith. Do your works match your words? Has the faith you placed in Jesus changed the way you see the world, the way you interact with it, the way you understand it?
We who follow Jesus in faith serve the crucified and risen King of kings. Not only did He overturn tables in the temple, He also overturned all of our preconceived notions about love, about forgiveness, about righteousness, and about life itself.
How could our worldview NOT have changed if we’re following Him? How can we justify thinking about things and reacting to things the same way the lost world thinks about and reacts to them?
This may well be the hardest thing about following Jesus. But I’ll tell you that working to make sure your attitudes match your faith claims — and thinking through how that looks from a biblical standpoint — is one of the best ways to supercharge your spiritual growth.
And it’s one important way to ensure that your public profession of faith is never subject to question.
I hope you’ll go home this week and do some deep thinking about your worldview. Does it really reflect faith in Christ alone? Or have you just added a little Jesus to the worldly mix?
All those newspaper publishers who claimed a “sacred duty” as journalists revealed what was really important to them through all their decisions that destroyed newsrooms.
Yes, they thought journalism was important, but it wasn’t as important to them as profits.
So, what does YOUR worldview reveal is truly important to you? Do people hear your take on the world and see someone who’s fully trusting in Christ for everything? Or do they see someone who’s just as hopeless and lost as the rest of the world?
Let’s commit today to making our actions AND our worldview be consistent with our words. Let’s NOT be like Jonah.
Now, today is Lord’s Supper Sunday. This observance is important to the fellowship of the church. It brings us together in a unique way and reminds us that we belong to one another in Christ Jesus.
It reminds us of the love He has for us and the love we’re called to have for one another.
Jesus commanded us to observe the Lord’s Supper as an act of obedience to Him, as a way of proclaiming that we who follow Him in faith belong to Him, and as a way of reminding us what He did for us.
The Lord’s Supper reminds us that our hope for salvation rests entirely on the sacrifice He made for us and in our place at the cross. It reminds us that our life is in Him.
And the fact that we share bread from one loaf reminds us that we are, together, the one body of Christ. It reminds us that we’re called to unity of faith, unity of purpose, and unity of love.
It reminds us that, just as He gave up the glory He had in heaven, we who’ve followed Him in faith are called to give up any claims we might think we have to our own lives as we follow Him.
Finally, it reminds us that, as we’ve been given the testimony of the Holy Spirit within us, we are to share OUR testimony of salvation by grace through faith.
If you’re a baptized believer walking in obedience to Christ, I would like to invite you to join us today as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.
Now, this sacred meal dates all the way back to when Jesus shared it with His disciples at the Last Supper on the night before He was crucified.
The conditions during the Last Supper were different than the conditions we have here today, but the significance was the same as it is today.
Jesus told His disciples that the bread represented His body, which would be broken for our transgressions.
Let us pray.
26 While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”
As Jesus suffered and died on that cross, his blood poured out with His life. This was always God’s plan to reconcile mankind to Himself.
“In [Jesus] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us.”
Let us pray.
27 And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you;
28 for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.
Take and drink.
“Now, as often as we eat this bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”
Maranatha! Lord, come!
Here at Liberty Spring, we have a tradition following our commemoration of the Lord’s Supper.
Please gather around in a circle, and let us sing together “Blest Be the Tie that Binds.”