From Fear to Fear

Luke

Prayer

Luke 8:22–25 ESV

22 One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” So they set out, 23 and as they sailed he fell asleep. And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water and were in danger. 24 And they went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm. 25 He said to them, “Where is your faith?” And they were afraid, and they marveled, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?”

Jonah 1:4–16 ESV

4 But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. 5 Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. 6 So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.” 7 And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” 9 And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. 11 Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. 12 He said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.” 13 Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. 14 Therefore they called out to the Lord, “O Lord, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.” 15 So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. 16 Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

Jonah

Introduction

Have you ever done anything stupid? Yeah, me neither. Have you ever done something or started to do something that you knew that you shouldn’t be doing, but then something stops you? Maybe it is another person, or some other type of intervention. That is kinda what is going on with Jonah today in our passage, just way more extreme and terrifying.

Scripture

Our passage this morning is . If you are able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word. We do this to show appreciation to God for His Word and in recognition that these words are the most important we can hear today. says,

Jonah 1:4–16 ESV

4 But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. 5 Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. 6 So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.” 7 And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” 9 And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. 11 Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. 12 He said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.” 13 Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. 14 Therefore they called out to the Lord, “O Lord, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.” 15 So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. 16 Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

“But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.” And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them. Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. He said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.” Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore they called out to the LORD, “O LORD, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O LORD, have done as it pleased you.” So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows.”

Thank you, you may be seated.

Jonah’s story picks up right where we left off last week. God spoke to Jonah and told him to go preach to the Ninevites Israel’s enemies, and Jonah decided he wasn’t going to do that. So, Jonah got on a boat going the opposite direction trying to get as far away from God and his calling as he possibly could.

Here is the fascinating thing. God could have let Jonah go. God could’ve sent another prophet or had someone else preach to the Ninevites. God could have turned Jonah over to his desires and let Jonah go to the far reaches of the known world. Away from Israel. Away from the priests and the festivals. Away from proper worship of God. Jonah certainly would have deserved it. Jonah was being foolish and rebellious. But God had other plans.

We should pause for a second and appreciate the fact that God has other plans for us than our own foolish hearts would lead us to. That is true in the grand scheme of salvation, and it is true for us as believers who wander off into occasional foolishness.

God’s plan for Jonah and Jonah’s plan for Jonah are different. Spoiler alert: God wins. Jonah is on the ship and goes down into it to sleep. And it is a deep, deep sleep. I don’t think this is the kind of sleep that comes with a clear conscience. Instead, I think it is likely that Jonah is in more of a depressed sleep. He has rebelled against God and gone as far away as he possibly can. Jonah just wants to sleep away his troubles. To pass into the oblivion of deep sleep.

Now, I want to take a side road here for just a second to explain how ancient near eastern people thought about the sea and gods – lowercase g. Let’s start with the Hebrew views of the sea. The Israelites were not a seafaring people. In their mind, there wasn’t usually much of a reason to go out to sea, after all, God had given them a land, so why go exploring or conquering outside of the Land of Promise? There was also a general distrust of the seas. The seas represented chaos and disorder. When God created land, He made dry land appear out of it. God brought order from the chaos. God said to the waters, “Thus far shall you come and no farther.” The Hebrews simply weren’t crazy about being out on the sea, in the chaos, yet Jonah chose that over Nineveh.

Ancient Near Eastern peoples also had what we would consider strange views of the gods. This doesn’t so much apply to Jonah as it does to his travelling companions. They generally would accumulate as many gods as they could, so as to avoid offending any of them. And each force of nature was its own god. The heavens are a god. The sea is a god. There is a god of storms. The sun. The moon. The stars. On and on it goes. This is why when God delivered Israel from bondage in slavery, those plagues were so important. When God strikes the Nile, he isn’t just striking the water, He is showing that He alone has the power over all things and that the so-called “gods” of Egypt are impotent and really nonexistent. The god of the Nile couldn’t even stop Yahweh – the God of the slaves – from doing as He willed.

With that in mind, we come back to our story. Verse 4, but the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea and there was a mighty tempest such that the ship was threatening to break up. So the sailors enter into a progression of problem solving steps. They are afraid, so they pray to their individual gods. Clearly in their minds the sea god was mad at them, but maybe if they prayed to their patron deity, their “hometown god”, he could do something. But that didn’t work, because the one, true, sovereign God had hurled this storm, and false gods have no power.

So they begin tossing the cargo off the ship to try to lighten the ship to better weather the storm. In that process, the captain finds Jonah asleep through all of this and wakes him up. “What do you mean, you sleeper?” pray to your god maybe he will listen since none of our prayers have worked.

Then the sailors decide to cast lots to figure out who this storm is on account of. Their thinking is basically, “If we can figure out who the gods are mad at, then we might be able to figure out which god or gods we should be praying to, then maybe we can better appease that specific god or gods.” Of course the lot falls on Jonah and they ask a series of questions all aimed at finding a way to stop the storm by appeasing the god.

Jonah comes clean. He admits that he is fleeing the presence of God. He tells them that he serves the God who created everything. The only God there is. The God who is Lord of Heaven, who is sovereign over the sea and over land because he created both. They are His to control.

The storm picks up even more, the sailors cry out, what can we do to quiet the storm? Jonah tells them to hurl him into the sea. He knows that it is his sin that has brought this storm upon everyone else.

Surprisingly, the men do not do that. The book of Jonah goes to great lengths throughout to paint Jonah in a terrible light and pagans in as positive of a light as possible. This is one example. Here the sailors are fearing for their life. Terrified. Jonah tells them to hurl him into the sea, but instead they try even harder to row to land. It was all to no avail for the sea grew even angrier. Notice through all this time, Jonah has not done what the sailors did and asked him to do. He has not cried out to his God.

So, the sailors do. Not to their gods this time, but to Jonah’s God. The God who has brought this storm upon them. They recognize that God has done as it pleased Him, and they do not want to be accounted wicked for tossing Jonah overboard. So they throw Jonah into the sea and it immediately calms down.

There is a theme in this story that we should note, in fact, I think it might be the central theme to this episode. Fear. Notice how fear is repeated throughout this portion of the story of Jonah. It starts in verse 5 when the sailors were afraid and cried out to their own gods. We see it again in verse 9 when Jonah says that he is a Hebrew who fears the Lord. Then when they hear that, the sailors fear with great fear - they are exceedingly afraid. It culminates in verse 16 with the sailors expressing the same type of fear to Yahweh that Jonah claimed to have.

The sailors went from being afraid for their lives because of a storm to being afraid for their lives because of the God of the storm who had a claim on Jonah. But then, when they see the power of God displayed in the storm and in its immediate calming, they rightly fear God and worship Him. That’s what we see in verse 16. The pagan sailors are brought near to the God of Israel while the prophet of Israel is refusing to call out to Him and is being cast out. But God… God has interrupted Jonah’s rebellious flight, and in so doing has made His glory known to the nations as represented by these sailors.

There is one last thing I would like us to consider this morning. I mentioned last week that many episodes in the story of Jonah have a parallel in the life of Jesus, and since Jesus is the one greater than Jonah, we should take a minute to observe those parallels. For our Scripture reading earlier, we read . We know the story pretty well. Jesus and the disciples are on a boat. Jesus falls asleep and a mighty storm comes upon them. They are in danger and the disciples are afraid and wake up Jesus telling him that they are all going to die. Jesus rebukes the storm and the storm calms and the disciples fear and marvel. They are moved to worship Him who even the winds and water obey.

Obviously the parallel is not one to one. Jesus was not rebelliously fleeing the presence of God. He was in perfect relationship with the Father. But look at the result in both stories. The storm calms and men worship. And did you notice the question the disciples ask one another? Who is this that even the wind and water obeys him? The answer is the same as in Jonah. Who hurled the storm in the first place? Who calmed it once Jonah was thrown overboard. The wind and sea obey Jesus because He created them.

There is another parallel here that we should note. In the story of Jonah, it was Jonah who brought the trouble on the ship. He was sinning and he was hurled into the sea as a payment for his sin. Not so with Christ. He never sinned. He was perfect and pure, and yet He calms the storm. In this story, He does it with only a word, but in the bigger picture? The storm of God’s wrath? God hates sin and will not ignore it. God must be just or He is not good. So what Jesus does on the cross is figuratively hurls himself overboard. Jesus casts himself into the deep away from the presence of the Lord. Jesus is battered by the storm of God’s wrath. Just as Jonah bore the guilt of his sin, Jesus bears the guilt, not of His sin, but of the sin of His people. Jesus is the only one who can ultimately calm the storm of God’s wrath, and He does so by bearing the full measure of it. He does it through the words, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” Through the cross, the storm ceases its raging and our response should be the same as that of Jesus’ disciples and the same as the formerly pagan sailors. It should move us to fear and deep worship.

Conclusion

Maybe you are here this morning and you realize that the storm of God’s wrath is upon you. You know that you have sinned against God and rebelled against His word. You know that if you were to die right now, you would not see a smiling face when you stand before God. You would rightly deserve and receive the judgment and wrath of God. If that is you, I want you to know that you do not have to bear the guilt of your sin. In fact, you can not. You will be crushed by the waves of God’s wrath eternally, never able to make amends. But you don’t have to. Christ hurled himself into the sea of God’s wrath. Everyone who repents of their sin and trusts Christ alone will be saved. Do you see what God has done in Christ? Doesn’t that make you want to flee the wrath to come? Doesn’t that make you wat to flee to Jesus? Doesn’t that stir your heart to true fear and worship of God? I pray it does.

Or maybe you are here and you are a believer. You know that Christ bore the wrath of God for your sin, but like Jonah, you are doing something stupid. You are fleeing the presence of God through sin and rebellion. If that is the case, you should know that God will not let His people rebel endlessly. Either He will hurl a great storm to put you back on course, or He will leave you alone and give you over to yourself. Understand that the latter is not good. If God is giving you up to your sin, it means you are not really His. You are and always have been under the wrath of God. You are sailing away from a presence that you have never actually known. How do you know which one you are? The genuine believer, when confronted with sin, will leave it. They will repent and cling even harder to Christ. The unbeliever will cling to their sin and try to hold on to it. Brothers and sisters. Friends. Repent of your sin and trust in Christ.

We are about to transition into a time of worship through response. We believe that any time we hear the Word of God, we always respond either in rebellion or in worship. Let us take notes from the sailors who when they saw what God had done, they feared and worshipped. Let us look to what Christ has done and be moved to a deep and profound fear and awe. I will be on the front row worshipping with you if you need anything at all, please don’t hesitate to come talk to me. I’d be happy to talk or pray with you. Let’s pray.