Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Jonah 1:7-17, emphasizing the themes of judgment and mercy. He highlights how the sailors, faced with a storm, realize their inability to save themselves and ultimately turn to God after attempting to solve their problems through their own efforts. The sermon illustrates that true repentance leads to rescue, as God's mercy is shown even in Jonah's disobedience, reminding the congregation to trust in God's sovereignty and seek Him in their struggles.
Welcome and Housekeeping
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Thank you, Terry, for playing.
If you have a child who wants to go to Children's Church, you can be dismissed at this time. We will be in Jonah, Jonah chapter 1.
We're going to pick up where we left off last week in studying through the book of Jonah, running from God. And we'll be in verses 7 through 17, the end of chapter 1.
I want to start by just recapping a little bit of last week. We looked at running from God and what that looks like. And there was one statement that several people came to me.
Apparently, you may have not got any of your notes. I want to put that back up on the board because it reminds us of really the encapsulation of the first message.
God was prepared to break up the ship that Jonah was in, drown Jonah, and let all the idol-worshiping sailors perish, all in the response to Jonah running from him. And so when we run from God, we understand.
You can leave that up there, guys, in case anybody needs it. We understand that God is a God of love and mercy and kindness, and we're going to see that today.
But it may look different than what we may expect of love, mercy, and kindness. And when we run from God, we need to expect God's punishment or God's judgment on our life.
As a child would disobey, even though we love them, we still care for them, and we still reprimand them and discipline them in those ways. And so we see here again, God was prepared to break the ship up,
drown Jonah, and let all the idol-worshiping sailors perish, all in the response of Jonah running from him.
And so we'll pick up today in verse 7, and we'll read through the end of the chapter 7 through 17. I know you've been up and down a little bit, but we'll stand out of honor of God's word, and we'll read verse 7 through 17. The sailors had just came to Jonah.
He was a sound asleep, and he said, Call unto your God, and maybe he'll consider us, and we won't perish. And verse 7 says, Come on,
the sailors said to each other, Let us cast lots, and then we will know who to blame for this trouble that we're in. So they cast lots, and the lots signaled out Jonah.
And they said unto him, Tell us who it is to blame for this trouble that we're in. What is your business, and where are you from? What is your country, and what people are you from?
And he answered them and said, I am a Hebrew. I worship the Lord,
the God of heavens, who made the sea and dry land. And then the man, seized by the great fear, they said unto him, What have you done?
The men knew that he was fleeing from the Lord's presence because he had told them. And so they said unto him, What should we do so that the sea will calm down for us? For the sea was getting worse and worse.
And he answered them, Pick me up and throw me into the sea so that it will calm down for you. For I know that I am to blame for this great storm that is against you.
And after they heard this, nevertheless, the men rode harder to get back to dry land so they couldn't because the sea was raging against them more and more.
So they called out to the Lord, Yahweh, Please, Lord, do not let us perish because of this man's life. And do not charge us with the innocent blood. For you, Lord, have done as you pleased.
And they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea. And the sea stopped raging, and the men were seized by the great fear of the Lord. And they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah.
And Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. Lord, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done for us. God, I thank you for your blessings. I pray that you would have your will and way in this service. Be with the scriptures. We've read it. Help me to preach it faithfully through the text.
The Sailors' Experience
In your name we pray. Amen. You can be seated.
The sailors in the story here today is what we'll look at for most of it is where they were at and what they were experiencing. These sailors had what we would call an idol in their life. They had other gods.
They had other gods they were praying to. And they even got to the point where they began to cast lots. They did a pagan ritual here to figure out what was going on.
And I believe for each of us, we have idols in our life that consume our time, talents, and treasures.
We have things that if we were to examine where we're at in our life, we would say, Well, maybe, Pastor, I don't really have an idol. You may be able to look and say, What is it that I am constantly thinking about?
What is it that is constantly consuming my thoughts and everything about me?
J.M. Boyce, in one of his commentaries, describes an event like this. But he starts out by saying, God often allows ungodly people to amass great wealth to their destruction. But if you are one of God's chosen children,
he deals with you and puts a pursuit of richness or anything else. If we put that before Christ, God will take away those riches and other things until you turn to him. It calls the story of a pastor named Donald Barnhouse.
And years ago, he was counseling a young woman on the front sidewalk of the 10th Presbyterian Church on an evening service.
And a young lady came to him and said, I want to follow Christ. I want to do what God has called me to do. But at the same time, she made this statement, I want to be famous.
Years ago, I asked our teenagers at my former church, I said, What do you want to be when you grow up? Your typical answer, I want to be an electrician. I want to be a plumber.
I want to be the president of the United States, you know, whatever it may be. I had one young kid over here to my right who said, I want to be an influencer on TikTok. I said, What does that even mean?
What does it mean to be? I said, What are you going to influence? And they looked at me and said, I don't know. I just want to be famous and I want people to watch all my videos on TikTok. And I began to think, How is that a dream, a goal in life?
But this woman, this young lady here in the story said that she wanted to be famous.
She wanted to pursue a stage career in New York on Broadway.
After made it to a theater, she said, I'll follow Christ completely, but I want to go to the theater first. Barnhouse took a key out of his pocket and walked over to a post stand that had been painted blue. And he took that key and he scratched the corner of it.
And he said, Young lady, this is what God will let you do.
He said, God will let you scratch the surface of success. But he will only allow you to get close enough to the top. But he'll never let you have it because he wants you as a child of God to want him rather than success.
Years later, he recounts a story that he came across this young lady again. And she confessed that she had indeed had her life story. She had dabbled on the stage and once even had her picture on a national magazine.
But she never quite made it to the top. She said to the pastor, I can't tell you how many times in my discouragement I closed my eyes and I saw the scratch on that post box with your key. God let me scratch the edge, but he never gave me anything in his place.
I think oftentimes we as Christians, as young people, we want to scratch the edge of success or fame or fortune as these sailors did in the story. And God says, I would rather you live for me. I want you to know me more than anything else, as the choir just sang.
As you may have seen in the recent stories of the Neelan family, how the Nelson family, who just recently had perished, I think it was in a plane accident or some type of accident that the family was in, their Southern Gospel Group.
And the Neelans, I believe it was. And the oldest daughter, one of the oldest daughters in her climb to success went to American Idol.
And she sang before the judges and she got up and I believe it was Christina Aguilera, one of the famous singers, went up to her afterwards. And I may be wrong on that one, but went up to her afterwards and said, Miss Neelan, you've got a gift. You've got something that's amazing.
If you would be willing to compromise a little bit of your values,
maybe wear a little more revealing clothes, maybe sing some songs that aren't always about Jesus. She said, I can guarantee you fame and fortune and you'll never have any other wants in your life ever. And she said, I'm sorry, I can't compromise on those issues.
She said that the judge shook her head at her and said, then you'll be nothing in this world.
And walked away from her. But it said that in the course of that day, three other times,
that judge came and found her and said, Are you sure you're not willing to compromise your values? Are you sure you're not willing to give up something else in order to have this fame and success in the world? And she said, I won't do it.
And that was her testimony that she would rather serve the Lord than anything else.
And so as we think of idols, I came across this video. I think it's about their guys. And I want you to think about it because oftentimes we don't recognize idols in our life the way we think they are. And so let's play this and watch this quick three minute video.
I was watching TV the other day. And this show comes on with these religious fanatics. They were crazy.
Idol Worship and Its Extremes
Well, you would think they were crazy if you didn't understand their culture and their religion. See, that's just the thing. They were worshippers of idols. And they took things to extremes. They painted their bodies. They wore these ridiculous costumes. They chanted. They danced. They made sacrifices to their idols.
But they had built these enormous temples to worship their idols. It seemed like their entire existence climaxed into this one scenario. This one over-the-top act of worship. You don't really relate, do you? Let's try it again.
I was watching TV the other day. And this show comes on with these religious fanatics. They were crazy. See, that's just the thing. They were worshippers of idols. And they took things to extremes. They painted their bodies. They wore these ridiculous costumes. They chanted. They danced. They made sacrifices to their idols.
But they had built these enormous temples to worship their idols.
It seemed like their entire existence climaxed into this one scenario. This one over-the-top act of worship. Idol worship. It's not just about golden calves anymore.
I saw that video and it resonated with me. I'm a football fan. I'm a die-hard Dolphins fan. And I often wonder in my life, is that an idol?
Is sports an idol or things in my life that God hasn't really called us to see in our life? Is that an idol?
The sailors here in this story, they had gods they were praying to. They had little idols. They even cast lots as we talked about. And that was their gods and their life.
I want us to examine as we look through this, what are the idols in our life this morning? Because the sailors came to some really great moments here.
And the first we'll look at is Revelation. The understanding that we have a real problem.
You see, the sailors here had a massive problem. They were in a moment that they had something that they could not solve themselves. These were professional sailors who, in every way and aspect of life, the sea was their life.
They would have been able to experience any storm, any time, and it would not have fazed them because this is where they lived. It would be like a plumber walking into a house.
There had been a water break and him knowing exactly how to fix it. I'm going to go and turn the water off. I'm going to cut the pipe. I'm going to replace the pipe. It's going to be easy.
And this happening and him saying, I can't figure out how to fix it. This is what was going on with the sailors. The storm's happening.
They knew how to evade the storm. They knew how to get away from the storm.
And in everything they did, they couldn't get away from it. They were trying to solve their problems.
They were trying to pray to the gods that they knew. And they said that they cannot solve the problems that were in their life. And they got to this point where they said, we're going to have to do something drastic. And so we're going to cast what we call lots.
And we're going to see what the real problem is in our life and what happens when we turn there. And when they cast these lots, these lots traditionally, if you've never looked at this, they're colored rocks. And all the colors would fall onto one person.
And so they would sort of throw the rocks out. And in God's sovereignty and God's perfect plan, the colors of the rocks all lined up at Jonah's life.
And God in this moment was showing his sovereign power in action, even in a random course of action.
And oftentimes we see things in our life and we say, well, that was random. That was weird that I ran into you today. And God says, it's not a random course of action. I'm perfectly laying your life out and I'm perfectly laying things in your life.
And this is what is happening here. The problem that they experienced was this storm.
And they said, who are we going to turn to? What are we going to do? And they came to Jonah. And I want you to imagine this for a moment. I want us to put ourselves in this picture. The thunder, the lightning, the noise.
We had this storm come through this area this week on Thursday with rain of five to seven inches in some places.
And flooding that was going on, flash flooding. The winds were howling. Some of us may have lost power.
However, you can imagine going outside in this moment and trying to talk to someone. It would have been almost unbearable to even do that. And this is what's going on around them. A storm is around them. Problems are around them.
And they come to Jonah and they said this, will you please help us understand what's going on?
And Jonah, hearing this, they were hoping they would hear the answer that said, you know what? I'm going to give you a way that you can control this. But this is what Jonah says. And I want you to really understand the attitude that Jonah says this in verse nine. He says, Yahweh,
the maker of heaven and earth, the Lord that I worship,
he made the sea and the dry land. I mean, he just sort of throws us out there like, I'm a Hebrew. I worship this Yahweh, this God.
He made the sea. He made the dry land. And the sailors look at him.
They grab him. The Bible says they grab him. They said, what is this that you have done to us? Jonah's like, it's just God. He just created everything. And they're like, what? You've caused this to happen to us. What have you done?
And we begin to see the real problem in their life and the real problem in our life. And we ultimately ask ourselves, who are we turning to when problems happen?
Are we turning to the one that can truly help us, Jesus? Or are we trying to cast lots as the sailors did?
Are we trying to figure out how to fix it ourself? Or are we allowing Christ to come in in our lives and work in a way that only he can help? You see, there was a revelation here of these sailors where they said, we have a real problem.
Turning to God in Crisis
We have something that is greater than ourselves and we don't know how to fix it. And ultimately, when we begin to get to this point, it leads us to the next point of repentance, where we experience real conversations. Verses 11 through 16, they began to look for this huge solution.
They found the problem. They figured out the problem. They said, now, let's try to figure out how to fix it. Now, it's almost to the moment where you would stop and you ask yourselves, why didn't they go to the Lord at this point? Why didn't they just turn and say, you know what?
Let's go to this God who created the heavens and the earth. This guy, this Hebrew here, he says he created the heavens and the earth. Let's just go to him. But what do the sailors do? They turn and they try to figure out how to fix it themselves.
And oftentimes, as we look at this story and we ask ourselves this same question, we think of the people, maybe in this room or maybe yourselves, where things are falling apart, our lives don't make sense, and we go to everyone and everything else for help,
and yet we don't go to God himself for answers. It's like the teacher standing up in the front of the class with the answer guide. Right?
This may have been you, and as school was starting back, the teacher's up there with the answers. She's been given how to figure out the answers, and the kids begin to ask themselves, hey, how did you figure out that answer? Well, I don't know.
I just added a bunch of numbers together. And all of a sudden, they, okay, that must be right, and they write it down. And it takes them hours and hours to finally go to the teacher and say,
teacher, how do we get this answer? And the teacher goes, oh, it's really simple. You just plug these numbers into the formula, and there's your answer. And this is what the sailors were doing. They were trying to figure out everything they could. They were trying to figure everything out themselves.
And Jonah tells them, just throw me overboard. You know what? If you throw me overboard, it's going to solve your problems. And it's going to solve my problems. Right?
The storm's going to stop. Your problems are going to be over. I'm going to drown.
My problems are going to be over. It's going to be a win-win. I don't have to go to Nineveh. I don't have to listen to what God wants me to do. And I'll just die. It's going to be a win-win. In this moment, he was still refusing to repent.
He was still refusing to stop and turn to the Lord.
I think it's often in our life where the Lord will allow us, to get to the end of ourselves. Well, we'll do everything we possibly can to try to figure it out ourselves. And when we get to our wit's end,
as we looked at when Jesus was on the cross, and we finally turn to God and we say, God, I need your help. This is what the Lord's allowing this to happen. You see, he could have stood up and turned to these men and he could have said, seek forgiveness. Repent.
Turn from your ways. Turn to the Lord and let's just go to Nineveh. And the Lord would have stopped the seas. He would have stopped all the problems that were going on. But instead, he dug in deeper and refused to turn to the Lord. And because he refused to turn to the Lord,
look at what happened to the sailors around him. Look at verse 13 and look at their response to the storm and their response to what Jonah's response was. Nevertheless, the men rode harder to get back to dry land so that they could because the sea was raging against them more and more.
They said, you know what? We can't figure this out.
This guy Jonah who says that the Lord is the maker of heaven and earth, who created the dry land, who created the sea, he's not even turning to God. Why should we? They began to dig in deeper to their own self-will.
I didn't put these in your notes. I thought of them later. But there's three things that happened here in verse 14. Verse 14, they realized that they couldn't save themselves. They realized that they couldn't save themselves in verse 14. Look at the verse part.
So now they call out to the Lord. Lord, please don't let us perish. You see, they turned to the God of the heavens and the earth, the creator of everything. And at this moment, they said, there's no point in us doing anything else than going to God. They realized they couldn't save themselves.
But then they also recognized that they would be held accountable. They recognized that they were about to do something that was a horrible, horrible act.
They realized that they were going to have a consequence. And they said, God, forgive us. We're about to throw this man overboard. And the way this storm is looking, he's going to die. There's no way a person would survive this storm. And they said, God,
don't hold us accountable for the actions of what we're about to do. And then at the end of verse 4, they released Jonah into the sea.
God's Sovereignty Revealed
They said, we're going to throw this man overboard. Don't charge us of his innocent blood. For you have done just as you pleased. You see, they saw the Lord work in this situation. They began to see God's sovereignty and work.
And they tried all they could in themselves. I can imagine that they tried to row for hours and hours and hours. Imagine our life when we can't figure out something. Right? We don't immediately go to help. We try to figure it out ourself.
And we'll sit there and we'll spin and we'll toil and we'll try and try and try until finally we turn to the person that has the answer. And these sailors would have done the same thing.
They tried and they worked and they tried and they did everything themselves that they could in their own. Because they're showing us the difference between works and faith.
Works tries to make everything better. It tries in the end to do everything we can. And in the end it just gets worse and worse and worse. But what does faith do? Faith gives it all to God.
And it says, God, I'm going to give it to you and you just take it from here. You just take it from here, Lord.
And I'm going to, I don't know how it's going to work out. I don't know what's going to happen. But God, I'm just going to trust you in this moment.
This is the difference between works and faith in this situation. So we see ultimately there's a revelation,
there's a repentance, but then it leads to a rescue in verse 17. We see a real God.
Not only do we see the rescue of the sailors, but we see Jonah brought to salvation as well.
Church, if we don't understand anything from this story, I want us to understand this. God's mercy is greater than we can ever think or imagine. Think of Jonah here. He's running.
He's getting as far away from God as he can. He's got on this ship and he's going in the complete opposite direction of Nineveh. And yet in this moment, God says, I'm going to give you more mercy.
I'm going to send a fish to swallow you. See, we see the sovereignty of God over and over and over again. The Bible says the Lord appointed, which means he prepared this animal for this day.
Do you not think that the creator of the universe could have appointed the things in our lives for a specific reason? Do we not think that God has looked down on heaven and say, well, that surprised me. I didn't realize that was going to happen to the old safer kids down there.
Man, I wish I'd have known that. Well, I didn't realize the Baal family was going to go through that problem. No, the Lord looks down and he says, I've appointed this for a specific reason.
He doesn't sit in heaven and wonder what's going to happen, but he has a specific plan in your life. The Bible says a great fish swallowed Jonah.
This is one of the questions we're going to look at through Jonah is, Do we not think that the creator of the universe that spoke the world into existence could have created the fish on that specific day of creation for Jonah?
Or on the spot could have spoken to an animal into existence to swallow Jonah?
You see, having faith in God is having faith in miracles. It's having faith that the Lord can do things that we don't understand. Having faith in God is like saying,
how is it that three Hebrew boys would have been thrown into a fiery furnace? The people outside the furnace died because the heat was so high. And yet they came out without even the smell of smoke on them. Yesterday, me and Cole and Eddie, we cooked 100 burgers and 100 hot dogs.
And I came inside at one point and I was carried in the hamburgers. And my wife looked at me and she said, shoo wee, you stink. You smell like charcoal and burgers out there. Because I was around it.
And what I was around, I smelled like. And yet these men who were inside the fire came out. And the Bible says that they didn't have the smell of smoke on them. That's a miracle of God. All throughout the scripture, a million children of Israel walked through the Red Sea on dry ground.
And we believe these things happen.
Faith in God's Power
We believe that God did these things. And yet when we get to the story of Jonah, we say, I don't know if I have enough faith to believe that the Lord could do this. And oftentimes this is a story that people will begin to question our faith and say, could a fish really have swallowed a man?
And could he have lived three days? I will go on record by saying this.
I have so much faith in the story of Jonah that if it would have read that the Lord appointed an octopus to swallow up Jonah, I would believe it. Because God is the God of miracles.
And God is the God that can do things that we will never understand. And church, we must understand at this point that we will need to not get rid of the wrath of God in the discipline in our life.
As Jonah was trying to run, as Jonah was trying to run away from the wrath, if you just throw me overboard, if you just get me away from the storm, if you just get me away from my problems, then I'll just die. God says, I'm working in your life.
And if you rely on the work of the Lord, all you will do is die in the storms that are around you. But church, we have a hope.
And as the psalmist says, as the writer in one of the psalms, I'm going to read it here. It's called, it's a very, very common passage of a song.
I kept my songbook up here. But when sinners hurl themselves into the blood, we lose all of our guilty stains. It's only through the blood of the fountain that's filled with blood that froze from Emmanuel's veins that we will see Christ work in our lives.
There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins. And as sinners plunge beneath the flood, they lose all their guilty stains.
And oftentimes we hear that verse and we are so excited about these songs and we're so excited about what God's given us here. And we forget the third verse. Dear dying lamb,
thy precious blood shall never lose its power till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more. See church, oftentimes we rejoice in the forgiveness that we've been given.
But we forget to go out into the world and reach the world that needs to hear the gospel.
There's people all around us, all around Clingman that are dying and going to hell. If we don't go out and tell them we are no better than Jonah, who ran from Nineveh, who ran from a great work of the Lord.
And yet we read here that Jonah tried to run. And God said, I'm going to allow you to run. But don't worry, the day of judgment's coming.
And you're going to run right smack dab into the middle of an idol smashing God in your life.
As Terry comes to conclude the service, I want to conclude with one simple story and just a couple of questions to ask yourself.
The story is in 1891, two small whale boats were on the British vessel of the Star of the East where they were lowered into the frigid waters of the Falkland Islands. They were 500 kilometers east of Argentina.
And after sighting a huge sperm whale, the crew members, James Bartley, who was age 21,
watched as his harpoon met its mark into the creature. And the creature dived 250 meters below the sea before the line went slack once more.
Moments later, the whale burst from the water, smashing one of the boats. And all but two of its crew members were rescued. One of them that was missing was Bartley. As the whale resurfaced and began to winch on the ship where the sailors noticed there were movement in the stomach.
And so as they came to shore and as they made it to shore with this massive whale, they began to gut the whale. And out of the belly of this whale was the man James Bartley.
Still living after being inside the belly of this whale for 15 hours. His digestive juices permanently bleached the skin.
He was completely deathly white. He lost all of his hair and was nearly blind. It said for two weeks he was delirious and it was not a month before he could tell you that he had fallen into the whale's mouth.
He felt the huge teeth grate over him as he slid down his throat and eventually into the stomach of the whale. This was in 1891.
And if this could have happened then, surely this could have happened 4,000 years ago with Jonah. And surely God's providence could work in Jonah's life to reach a nation.
And as we begin to ask ourselves the questions in our life, I want you to ask yourself these three problems. These three questions. Do you have a real problem in your life? Do you have something that is going on in your life that you cannot solve? You've been trying.
You've been reeling as these sailors were reeling. You've been doing everything you can in and of yourself. But you haven't turned to God. God says, turn to me. Come all who are weary in heaven laid and I will give you rest.
Honest Conversations with God
When's the last time, number two, when's the last time you had an honest conversation with God? Where you said, God, I don't know what's going on.
I don't know what's in my life right now, why this is going on in my life. But God, I just need to have an honest conversation with you.
Maybe it's someone close to you that you've struggled with. Maybe it's someone in your life that you've struggled to have a relationship with. And you just need to say, God, I need to have this conversation with you. And third, do you see a real big God waiting for you?
And see, Jonah, he said, I'm in Hebrew. And my God is the God that created the heavens and the earth, who created the sea and the dry land. He knew who his God was. He knew there was a real big God.
And he knew that he wasn't that God. Oftentimes, we think that we're the real big God. And God looks at us and says, no, you're just a child. I'm the God. Let's just trust in God. God, this morning, church,
if you get nothing from this, I want you to understand that God loves you. God cares for you.
And he will go to the ends of the earth for you, as he did for Jonah and the mercy. But in that same time, there's judgment as well in Jonah's life.
And we'll see that as we continue on over the next couple of weeks. Lord, we thank you for what you've done for us. God, I pray that you would help us as we continue to examine our lives. Lord, help us not to be the sailors in this story who just rely on themselves.
Lord, help us not even to be Jonah in this story who doesn't even turn to trust in you, who knows the answer, who knows the solution to every problem, and yet still chooses to struggle.
And we'll see as we go through the story how he completely misrepresents his life.
God, I pray that you would help us to understand that you're a huge God. You're a great big God, and you love us so much that you sent your son to die for us, to be the solution for our problem. Help us this morning to trust in you today as we never have.
In your name we pray. Amen. Thank you again for taking your time to listen to the sermon audio of Pleasant Grove. Please subscribe to get our latest sermons each week.
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