Jonah 1:4, 11-16
SUBJECT: God’s Chastisement
THEME: Jonah’s experience teaches us how God uses means
to chasten rebellious believers to turn our hearts back to Him. God in his
sovereignty will use natural disasters and great wind storms in an attempt to persuade
his people to repent and obey his will.
RELEVANCE: Chastening
is any instruction, correction, teaching, rebuke or circumstances God uses to
conform our hearts attitude and behavior to His will. In this account God sovereignly
uses the natural element of the wind, which is related to Jonah’s circumstances
to get this wayward prophet back on track. God still chastens His people today
to keep us on track or to persuade us to repent and return to His will (Heb. 12:5-13; Rev. 3:19). Clearly, one goal of chastening is to
bring about deep repentance—a change of mind and heart that results in a
change of action or direction. A person who repents turns from his old
ways to wholeheartedly commit himself to doing the will of God.
INTRODUCTION:
No matter how you
look at it, Jonah had rebelled against the Lord in a most flagrant manner. He
had utterly refused to accept the missionary ministry to Nineveh; instead he
elected a cruise in the opposite direction to Tarshish, a Pheonician colony on
the southwestern coast of Spain about two thousand miles west of Israel. The
last thing the wayward prophet wanted for the city of Nineveh was the mercy of
Jehovah, so he rebelled rejecting God’s directive.
Accordingly, the
Lord has a way of dealing with wayward believers who insist on their way thus
negating His will. God “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” (Jonah 1:4). No doubt someone will insist that the Lord only “allowed”
the great wind to come…in an attempt to vindicate or defend the notion that God
is a “good” God. However, the statement of this Scripture is transparently clear.
“But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea…!”
God is directly responsible for these developments in the light of His servant’s
rebellion and willfulness. Yes, God “sent out” the great wind, which means he
threw it down or hurled it far out there. Beloved, this was a deliberate and
calculated attempt to turn this rebel, Jonah, around and set him back on track
to reach a wicked people! God does not need to be defended on this point; His
character is good, His actions are good and His motives are good. Why do we
feel the need to defend Him concerning such passages?
MESSAGE:
God uses Great Winds to Chasten His Rebellious People (Jonah 1:11-16).
Beloved, it may not be an actual
wind storm at sea for you and me, but God in his sovereignty over all things uses
whatever means necessary to turn our hearts from rebellion back to Him. Obviously,
he can use great winds and great fish, but he can use anything else he deems
fitting to get our attention and redirect us in his will. So, God used a great
wind, but why?
A.
To show Jonah how his rebellion negatively impacted
innocent people (Vs. 11-13).
1.
I have heard people
say in defense of their substandard Christian living, “I am not hurting anybody
but myself” or “I am minding my own business, and what I do is no one else’s
concern.”
2.
But this is not at all
what God’s Word reveals; Jonah’s rebellion affected this captain and his entire
crew and literally put their lives in mortal danger (1:11-17).
3.
Often our sin does
negatively impact others.
i. The Apostle Paul says to the Corinthians, “Your glorying is
not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? 7 Purge
out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened.
For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: 8 Therefore
let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice
and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread
of sincerity and truth.”[1]
(1Cor. 5:6-8)
ii. Leaven here is a picture of moral sin. The apostle is
saying that if they tolerate a little moral sin in the church, it will soon
grow and expand until the whole fellowship is seriously affected. Righteous,
godly discipline is necessary in order to maintain the character of the church.[2]
iii. Our failures to confront our sinfulness will certainly
impact others in negative ways.
4.
Lot’s worldliness
compelled him to move to Sodom where he eventually lost his spiritual credibility
(Gen. 19:24-38), his two daughters were corrupted by that society, and he lost his
wife to worldliness well before she turned to look back on Sodom. The Lord
Jesus warned, “Remember Lot’s wife.”
i. Although Lot’s wife was taken almost by force out of Sodom,
her heart remained in the city. This was indicated by the fact that she turned
back. She was out of Sodom, but Sodom was not out of her. As a result, God
destroyed her by turning her into a pillar of salt.[3]
ii. We cannot afford to be so attached to possessions, luxuries
and earthly comforts when commitment to Christ demands prioritizing eternal and
spiritual realities over worldly things. Beloved, our worldliness will impact
others. Often what we parents practice in moderation, our children will
practice in excess!
5.
Acchan’s sinful greedy
heart compelled him to take the gold and silver, but his entire family died
with him as punishment for his sin (Josh 7:16-26). Clearly, our sins impact
others!
i. Romans 14: 7-8, For none of us liveth to himself, and no man
dieth to himself. 8 For whether we live, we live unto the Lord;
and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we
are the Lord’s.[4]
ii. The lordship of Christ enters into every aspect of a
believer’s life. We don’t live to ourselves but to the Lord. We don’t die to
ourselves but to the Lord. It is true that what we do and say affects others,
but that is not the thought here. Paul is emphasizing that the Lord should be
the goal and object of the lives of His people.[5]
B.
To show Jonah how God could still witness to His power, nature,
and character (vs. 14-15).
1.
God did not leave
Himself without a witness because the natural world responded to His will and
evidenced His awesome strength.
2.
God wanted to show
these mariners their need to fear the Lord (16), therefore He taught these
pagans something about the “fear of the Lord” (Ps. 111:10; Prov. 14:26, 27;
15:33; 16:6; 19:23; 22:4).
C.
To correct Jonah’s rebellious attitude…. (Vs. 11-17).
1.
Jonah’s resentment and
rebellion broke fellowship with the Lord. He brought these developments on
himself when he departed from God’s will for his life. While we cannot live
free of all troubles and challenges, some of the “winds” and storms we face are
self-inflicted. That is correct, we invite the Lord’s correction through our carelessness
and rebellion. In addition, the natural consequences of sin are a punishment in
and of themselves.
2.
Tragically, the great
winds did not produce the repentance God desired. Though the ship’s crew
suggested something had to be done concerning Jonah in order for them to
survive, Jonah’s response in verse 1:12 is absolutely shocking. He intimated
that the only means of the sailors surviving was to cast him into the sea…since
it was his fault they were in jeopardy. Though the sailors had suggested this,
they were not ready to act on this notion of sacrificing the prophet. So, they
worked even harder against the winds to bring the ship to safety, but they
failed utterly. The great winds prevailed! Finally, accepting the apparent inevitable,
they begged God to not hold them accountable for the death of Jonah, and they
cast him into the sea. Instantly, the storm ceased from her ragging! What’s so
tragic about that? Though Jonah had experienced all this trouble, fear and
anxiety at sea, he still was not willing to go to Nineveh and preach God’s
warning to them. He had not repented…he would rather have died first than to
obey God!
i. What frightful bitterness and resentment is this! How
stubborn can a human heart be to persist in such rebellion? What awful lying
intoxication sin holds? Will we dare God kill us because we refuse to get
right? Rational behavior is completely abandoned here.
ii. Beloved, this is jaw-dropping off the charts ridiculous! No
wonder God had to turn up the heat and prepare a “great fish to swallow up Jonah.”
There is zero repentance in this prophet’s heart at this time!
3.
But God initiated the
process of restoration. In chapter 1:17, God prepared the great fish to swallow Jonah. This was an
act of loving mercy on God’s part. He provided a means of Jonah’s safety, a
means that brought him to repentance, confession, and to prayer.
4.
God purpose for
chastening His people is to produce righteousness in our lives: “... but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his
holiness.” “...nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of
righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” (Hebrews 12:10-11)
5.
Many times we resent
what God places in our pathway, but we need to see and consider His mercy, for
He is working towards restoration. How
far would Jonah have gone had it not been for the storm and the great
fish? How far would you and I have gone
if it hadn’t been for the storms and the great fish (or whatever it was that
God sent) into our lives?
6.
All things God bring
to us, directly or indirectly, come for our good. What
kind of fruit did the chastisement of God produce in Jonah's life? It eventually
produced repentance, and from a heart of repentance, Jonah sought the Lord in
prayer.
CONCLUSION:
Clearly, Jonah’s experience teaches us how God uses means to
chasten rebellious believers to turn our hearts back to Him. God in his
sovereignty will use natural disasters like this great wind storm at sea in an
attempt to persuade us to repent and obey his will.
What does all this mean for you and me? Honestly, we need
God’s chastening—his instructions, corrections, teachings, rebukes or
circumstances as he seeks to conform our hearts attitude and behavior to His
will. We should appreciate His initiatives to convict us and bring about a
godly sorrow. To our shame, we tend to persist in sinful attitudes and
behaviors. We truly need the Spirit of God to deal with us fervently at times.
In our experiences, God will sovereignly use natural elements
like the wind, or some other natural element related to our circumstances to
get us back on track. He has used sickness, disease, financial straits, stock
market crashes and even the death of loved ones to help us reconsider the
course we have chosen. God still chastens His people today to keep us on track
or to persuade us to repent and return to His will (Heb. 12:5-13; Rev. 3:19). Please
do not miss this point: God’s corrective measures are acts of love towards his
children. It is not because he hates us that he corrects us, but because he
loves us. Clearly, chastening is designed to bring about deep repentance—a
change of mind and heart that results in a change of action or direction.
We have truly repented when we turn from our old ways to wholeheartedly commit
ourselves to doing the will of God.
A believer pursuing sin will experience God’s
chastening. Although not all pain and suffering are related to chastening,
certainly chastening can include pain, suffering, loss, and trouble. A believer
who refuses the prompting of the Holy Spirit to repent and be transformed in
character and behavior will experience a few semesters in “Whale University.”
Jonah provides us with a great case study of how God in his sovereign love will
use a number of means to steer us back to a lifestyle of obedience, submission,
and conformity to His plan for our lives.
[1] The Holy Bible:
King James Version. (2009). (Electronic Edition of the 1900
Authorized Version., 1 Co 5:6–8). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
[2]
MacDonald, W. (1995). Believer’s Bible
Commentary: Old and New Testaments. (A. Farstad, Ed.) (p. 1760).
Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[3] MacDonald,
W. (1995). Believer’s Bible
Commentary: Old and New Testaments. (A. Farstad, Ed.) (p. 1437).
Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[4] The Holy Bible:
King James Version. (2009). (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized
Version., Ro 14:7–8). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
[5]
MacDonald, W. (1995). Believer’s Bible
Commentary: Old and New Testaments. (A. Farstad, Ed.) (p. 1736).
Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
