Lessons from Jonah - The Storm (1:1-4)
I just finished a great book by Tim Keller called Rediscovering Jonah. I have never studied Jonah before but really enjoyed the behind the scenes look into this well-known story. As you might imagine, there is a lot more than meets this eye here. Most of us view the story of Jonah as one of simple disobedience. This is partly true but there are many more life lessons for us. I plan to spend the next few weeks covering some of my key takeaways.
While some may few Jonah as a fable, there are a lot more reasons to believe that the Book of Jonah is a historical account written by Jonah himself. There is an Old Testament reference to Jonah as a prophet in 2 Kings 14:25. Also, Jesus compared his 3 days between his death and resurrection to Jonah’s 3 days in the great fish in Matthew 12:38-41.
You know the story - God spoke to Jonah and asked him to go to Nineveh to try to get the people to repent. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria and a powerful force in the region. However, they were a very violent and cruel culture. God threatened to destroy them if they didn’t repent. He called upon Jonah to deliver the message.
Jonah clearly did not want to go to Nineveh. I’m sure that he feared for his life as a Hebrew going to preach to the wicked Gentiles, but we will learn that there were other reasons for his disobedience. Instead of going to Nineveh, he ventured out in the complete opposite direction to board a ship to Tarshish. This would be the equivalent of us heading for Seattle, Washington after being instructed to go to Atlanta.
You can’t run or hide from God. Soon after the the ship set sail, God sent a great storm that terrified everyone on board. When we violate the laws of God, we are violating our own design. God designed us to know, serve and love him.
Unrepentant sin hardens the conscience. It locks us in a prison of our own defensiveness and rationalizations. It eats us up slowly from the inside out. We cannot bribe or rationalize ourselves out of a storm. The storm is a product of our sin and cannot be tamed. Numbers 32:23 tells us that “our sin will find us out.”
Acts of disobedience invite storms into our lives. Sin often has storms attached to them. It leads us right into them. We see this theme in the Old Testament with the Israelites. Proverbs is full also of warnings on the consequences of disobedience. This is NOT saying that every difficult thing that comes into our live is the result of disobedience – a punishment for sin.
Every difficult circumstance is not the result of sin but sin often results in difficult circumstances. God uses circumstances in our lives for His purposes – to teach us many things. Romans 8:28 promises that God uses every circumstance for our good. Storms can develop things in us like nothing us can – faith, hope, love, patience, humility and self-control.
Genesis teaches us that God did not create the world for suffering and pain. Evil entered the world only when man turned away from Him. God’s salvation came into the world through suffering. His saving grace and power can work through our storms. Wouldn’t it be hopeless to imagine that our storms are random and meaningless? We can be assured that they have a purpose behind them
Pastor John Newton wrote – suffering now prevents greater ills later. The greatest danger of all is that we never become aware of our blindness, pride and self-sufficiency. God wants to wake us up to our condition so that we can do something about it. In some cases, he uses storms. There is love from Him deep in the heart of storms.
The root of Jonah’s disobedience was his mistrust of the goodness of God. He did not believe that God had his best interests at heart. All sin is grounded in a refusal to believe that God is more dedicated to our good, and more aware of what that is, than we are. We assume that if we give Him complete control, we will be miserable. If I obey God, I’ll miss out on things I need to be happy.
Adam and Eve was a good example of this. The serpent told the human race that disobedience was the only true path to happiness. We have bought into this theory ever since. One of the main reasons that we don’t trust God enough is because we trust our own wisdom too much.
Stay hungry,
Big E
Matt. 5:6