Introduction

The Prophet Jonah, fleeing the plan of God and trying his best to escape the presence of God, paid his fare and boarded a ship in the port town of Joppa.

That ship set sail for Tarshish, some 2,000 miles from where Jonah was supposed to be going. Thinking he had given God the slip, or perhaps just tired from all his running, the prophet climbed into a berth inside the belly of that boat, and went off to sleep.

The text says that he was “fast asleep” – sleeping pretty soundly – but the Lord intended to wake him up and shake him up. While it’s true that Jonah would go from the belly of that ship into the belly of a great fish, this is not a fish story.

Once again we see that this story is really about the relentless grace of God. The Lord loved Jonah too much to let him snooze on in his sin. The Lord was determined to wake Jonah up, not just from his sleep inside the boat, but from the sin inside his heart.

Perhaps like Jonah, the Lord is trying to get your attention right now? And maybe you are under the covers with the pillow over your head, hoping to wake up far away from God and His call on your life. You need to know that He knows how to wake you up. He will blow the boat of your life to pieces, and toss you helplessly into the stormy sea if that is what it takes to get you where you need to be.

Now, you might not appreciate that kind of wake-up call, but it is the grace of God nonetheless.

Look at this text and consider with me what it is the Lord roused Jonah to see, and what perhaps He wants to awaken you to as well. For one thing, maybe you need to:

  1. WAKE UP TO THE CAUSE OF YOUR STORM

While Jonah was snoring down in his cabin, the text tells us that up on deck, things had gotten sketchy. A perfect storm was pounding the ship.

Soon enough, though, Jonah would be dragged out of his warm bed and brought up into the midst of the typhoon. And as the stinging rain washed away his sleepiness, Jonah would realize who was behind the wind and waves.

Maybe there is a storm brewing or blowing in your life right now. And maybe, though you may not see it yet, the same Lord who can calm the storm is the very one who created the storm now crashing into your boat.

Perhaps you need to wake to the storm and the cause of it? In Jonah’s story, we find a couple of things about this storm. For one thing, we see:

  1. The sovereign hand in this storm- Look with me at verse 4. It says, “But the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.”

 

There is a graphic word picture in this verse. Literally, we are told that the Lord “hurled” a whirlwind into the sea where Jonah’s ship was sailing. One commentator describes the language here, saying, “…he hurl

[ed] [the wind] as if it were a weapon, a spear or a stone meant to smash the little human vessel to bits.”[i]

Another writer says, “[God] set His sights on the ship that bore the sleeping, disobedient prophet, and He fired this great wind directly at it. And He always hits His target.”[ii]

We are reminded in this text that God has power over His creation and that He uses that power for His sovereign purposes. When God needs to, He can stir up a storm, both the kind that blows on the Mediterranean, and the kind that blows on the sea of your life.

God can send a storm that blows away your job security. God can absolutely wreck the comfortable life you think you’re living. God can blow a black cloud over your plans and rain all over your parade. He moves in the affairs of men, He will not hesitate to mess up those affairs if they interfere with His.

You may think those dark skies are only a coincidence, that the problems you are facing are just unlucky, but there are no accidents or happenstances in the universe held together by Jesus Christ.

You need to wake up and see the sovereign hand in this storm. Furthermore, you need to wake up and see:

  1. The Saving Hope in this Storm– At this point in the story we are tempted to say, “Well, now Jonah’s done it! God is angry and Jonah’s going to feel His fury.” The truth is, however, as violent as this storm was, it wasn’t meant to kill Jonah; it was meant to save him.
  2. You may not recognize the name Tullian Tchividjian, but he is the grandson of Billy Graham. He pastors a church in Florida, and a couple of years ago he wrote a book about Jonah.

In it he talks about this storm, and says, “…the storm isn’t punishment; it’s an intervention, brought on by God’s affection rather than his anger.”

He goes on to add, “Would it have been better for Jonah if God had left him alone? No, it would have been far worse. It was an act of mercy for God to send the storm.”

God may blow a storm into your life that wrecks everything and leaves you sinking to the bottom, and yet, that storm is an act of grace from a loving God if it serves to stop you from rebellion.

If you have trusted Jesus Christ, then the God of heaven is your Heavenly Father. He knows what is best for you, even when you don’t see it that way. At times, what is best for you is for Him to step in and intervene in a way that is both dramatic and drastic.

And yet, behind the howling wind and crashing waves of your storm is a God who loves you more than you can imagine, and desires only to rescue you from the greater danger of your own sin.

Usually, we sing songs about God calming the storms in our lives, but at times He is also the one who creates some of those storms, and that too is part of His grace.

Looking at this text, consider not only that perhaps you need to wake up to the cause of your storm, but consider also that maybe you need to:

  1. WAKE UP TO THE CONSEQUENCE OF YOUR SIN

Just because this storm was not a punishment for Jonah doesn’t mean there were no consequences for his sin and rebellion against God. Even while Jonah was still asleep in his bunk, the price of his rebellion was rising.

Again, whenever you choose to run from God, in grace He will ultimately rescue you from yourself, but not from all the consequences of your disobedience.

Consider some of the consequences Jonah would awake to see on this storm-tossed ship. For one thing, we see here:

  1. The Lives that are Affected– This storm is meant for Jonah, but Jonah is by no means the only one who feels its force. Even while Jonah was still snoozing, the text says in verse 5, “Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god…”

The crew of this ship had no idea when they took on a passenger back in Joppa that it would change the entire course of their lives.

Ultimately, God would show them mercy as He would Jonah, and bring them to Himself, but initially, they were scared out of their minds, suffering as collateral damage of Jonah’s sin.

You can be sure that your sin will always affect more than just yourself. Like the first sin of Adam and Eve in the garden, there will be ripple effects from your rebellion that will turn into breakers in the lives of others.

Dear parent, right now you may oblivious to the damage you are doing, still sleeping in your rebellion, but your children may be crying out for fear in the storm your sin is causing.

  1. Church member, you may think that your resistance to God is just between you and Him, but if we as a church are all in the same boat together, then your storm is our storm too!

Perhaps you have heard the line, “No man is an island”? It is taken from a seventeenth century poem by John Donne. The poem begins:

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main,

In an age where people like to trumpet their own individuality and autonomy, we would all do well to remember that we are never completely independent of each other.

As with Jonah, we will always draw others into the drama of our sin, even if we do not intend to.

Could it be that you need to wake up to the lives that are affected by your sin? Furthermore, we are reminded in the fallout of Jonah’s flight of:

  1. The losses that are accrued– When we looked at verse 3, I pointed out that Jonah had to pay the fare and that there were costs associated with his running.

We find more of that in verse 5. Notice it says, “Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them…”

Apparently, this ship was not primarily a passenger ship, but a cargo ship. When the storm began to rage, the men tried to lighten the ship by tossing overboard the cargo they were carrying.

Unfortunately, what they really needed to toss overboard was the sorry preacher sleeping below deck.

Yet, all that cargo was just wasted in the wake of Jonah’s sin. The costs just kept piling up for Jonah and those affected by his running. God was trying to intervene, but Jonah didn’t wake up in time to prevent all the losses.

I’ve seen God rescue many of his running, rebellious children, but I’ve also seen them pay a heavy cost in the process.

Men have lost their families before they woke up. Parents have lost their children before they realized God was trying to get their attention. I wonder, what will have to be spent and lost in your life before you will wake up and see the consequences of your sin?

With that in mind, as we look further at this passage, consider not only that your wake-up call may be not only to wake up to the cause of your storm, and wake up to the consequence of your sin, but lastly, it could be that God is trying to get you to:

III. WAKE UP TO THE CONDITION OF YOUR SOUL

There is something ironic about this whole stormy scene in this text. Jonah had fled onto this ship to get away from the pagans in Nineveh.

Now, he finds himself trapped on a boat with an assortment of pagans, all crying out to a host of false gods

  1. Jonah was called to go and preach to Nineveh, warning it of the danger it was in. Yet, in this text in verse 6, we find the pagan captain of the ship doing that very thing for Jonah.

 

  1. Verse 6 says, “So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.”

The captain said to Jonah, “What is the matter with you? How can you be sleeping at a time like this?” Even if the captain didn’t realize it, his words were a call for Jonah to look into his soul and see how bad things really were.

There are two questions that Jonah should have asked himself when confronted by this captain. The first one is:

  1. Where is your consciousness of God?– If you read Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick, back when you were in school, do you remember the character in the book called Father Mapple, and the sermon he preached on Jonah?

In the sermon, the old preacher describes Jonah going down into the depths of that ship, and sleep coming over him, describing it like a man who “bleeds to death”, saying “…for conscience is the wound…”

When the storm begins to break up the ship, Father Mapple then describes the captain going in to wake Jonah. He said, “But the frightened master comes to him, and shrieks in his dead ear, ‘What meanest thou, O, sleeper…!’

The truth is that everyone else on board is aware that something terrible is going on and they need to seek some kind of god, but Jonah, up until this point has been sound asleep, clueless to the fact that God was even after him. It wasn’t too long ago that Jonah had been able to hear the word of the Lord. Now he can’t even hear a storm from the Lord.

What about you – you who are running from God? Has it even occurred to you that it’s been a long time since you were awake spiritually and conscience of the presence of God?

It used to be that when God began to move in a service like this, you were one of the first ones to sense His presence. Now, the place could be on fire around you, and you wouldn’t feel a thing.

It used to be that your heart was so sensitive to sin, and that anytime you weren’t right with God, you couldn’t rest until things were made right.

Now, like Jonah, you have slept so long and hard in your rebellion that you hardly even think about God anymore.

Where is your consciousness of God? Furthermore, Jonah should have asked himself:

  1. Where is Your Communion with God?- While Jonah was down in the ship asleep, a prayer meeting had taken place on the deck. The sailors had each cried out to their different gods.

The one man on board who knew the only God who could answer never cried out to his, even though the captain chided him in verse 6, “…arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.”

Maybe that one word “arise” should have grabbed his attention. That was the first word God had spoken to him back in Israel, back when they were in communion with one another.

  1. If nothing else, Jonah should have been convicted by the fact that in all this time He has said nothing to His God.

 

  1. How long has it been since you cried out to your God? When is the last time you sensed the need to seek His face?

 

  1. Has it been a while? Is that because you’ve not needed Him? I doubt it! We need Him every minute of every hour.

Or, is it because your soul has been in a stupor, a sleepy, sin-induced sort of coma that has kept you from realizing how serious your situation really is?

Oh brother, Oh sister, the storm is blowing and God is trying to wake you up! What is the matter with your soul? Why are you asleep?

If we fast forward a few hundred years from this stormy sea in Jonah, we find another stormy sea in the gospels, with another group of panicked sailors, and another passenger sound asleep in the ship. Though this passenger would graciously identify Himself with Jonah, Jesus was in many ways his very opposite.

He was not sailing away from the will of God, but in pursuit of it. His sleep came not from a dull conscience, but from a heart confident in the care of His father.

Unlike Jonah, Jesus did not put those around Him in danger, but rather He would rescue them from it. He needed not to cry out to His God for He was God, and the sea would obey His voice and sit down quietly at His command.

Reluctantly, as we shall see, these sailors were forced to throw Jonah overboard in order to save themselves. But Jesus willingly laid down His life for those He came to save.

The good news is that if you belong to Jesus, He will not let you go, even if you think you want Him to. You can run, but He will pursue you. You can close your eyes and ears to Him, and doze off spiritually, but somewhere, somehow, He will wake you up.

Maybe today is your wake-up call. Don’t try to hit the snooze button. He’s not going away until you wake up.