Once again, the help of God to
speak to you this evening. I'd like you to turn with me
to the chapter that we read together, Jonah chapter one, and the text
you'll find in verse five. And 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. but
Jonah was gone down into the side of the ship and he lay and
was fast asleep. The Book of Jonah is a very well-known
account, especially in Sunday school. All children know about
Jonah and the whale and the big fish, how that Jonah was disobedient
to God And as he was told to arise and go to Nineveh, that
great city, and preach against it, he rebelled against God and
he ran away, or he tried to run away. He tried to run away from
the all-present, the omnipresent God. which we know is a foolish
thing, an impossible thing to do. But there is nowhere we can
hide from God. There's nowhere we can go upon
the face of this earth to run away from God. And even if we
try to run away, as we see in the life of Jonah, he will always
catch us and he will always find us and he'll always bring us
back to do what he will have us to do. If he has called us
to a certain work or he's prompted us to do a certain thing and
we try and avoid those promptings, we try and skirt around that
prompting or we try and run away from that calling, he will have
us back. and he will do all manner of
things to hedge up our way, to stop us from avoiding that work
that he has given us to do. And so Jonah tried to run away
from God, an impossibility. His running away from God not
only caused himself problems, but it caused problems for other
people. As I was going to Kenya all those
years ago, someone said to me, why are you going? I said, well,
that I felt called, that the Lord had called me and that we
had seen in providentially his hand guiding us and even providing
means for us to go. And his response was Jonah found
a ticket to Tarshish. So in his understanding it was
that don't just look at providence because the Lord may enable you
to do something and it may be against his will. Jonah found
a ticket to run away from God. He had the money, he had the
resources, he had the health and strength to be able to buy
a ticket and to go and to run away from God. And so this man
was saying, don't just look at providential things for you might
have the means to go. but you may be running away.
But in our case we felt that the Lord had called us there
and in answer to prayer he had provided everything for us and
the means that were given enabled us to make those next steps. And looking at us, looking at
what we were doing I don't think we were running away from God
we were not willfully acting in disobedience to God like Jonah
was. Jonah has been commanded by God
you are going to go to Nineveh and he willfully rose up and
went to the other way and ran to Tarshish from the presence
of the Lord And he went down to Joppa and there he was willfully
disobedient, disobeying God. And we see that it was willful
disobedience because he knew the character of God. He was,
as he says, he is a Hebrew. He knew the character of God.
He knew that God was gracious. In chapter four he tells us as
he is angry with God He says, and he prayed unto the Lord and
said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was
yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto
Tarshish, for I knew that thou art gracious and merciful, slow
to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of evil. Therefore now I beseech thee,
take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than
to live. And so he knew that God was going
to forgive these wicked people of Nineveh. And yet Jonah himself
felt that they didn't deserve that forgiveness. And so he willfully
ran away and disobeyed God and tried to get as far away as possible
from doing what God wanted him to do. He ran away. But in his disobedience he brought
other people's lives in jeopardy. He ran to Joppa. There he found a ship. And when he got into the ship
they set sail and there was a great storm. 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 and the mariners were
afraid and cried every man unto his God. And so Jonah is the
one causing all of this, all of these troubles. He is fast
asleep in the bottom of the boat without a care in the world.
And everybody round about him is struggling. Everybody round
about him is fearful of their lives. They're crying unto their
gods for safety. And then they're casting all
of their material things into the ocean so that the boat does
not ride so deep into the water. and it's also quite likely to
sink. But all of these problems are because of Jonah. Jonah was
running away from God and in running away from God, in willful
disobedience to God, he was causing problems for all those around
about him. But what do we see? In the lives
of these mariners, these sailors, They began to cry unto their
God. And thinking about this, you
know, people, even worldly people in times of trouble cry out to
God. They said of that plane that
crashed in the Hudson River in America years ago that they all
prayed. And a newspaper reporter asked
them, what were you doing as the engines were struck by birds
and those engines cut out and that plane was going to crash
land? They were asked, what were you doing? And they said, we
were all praying. We were all praying. Even unbelievers pray in times
of trouble. Man has an inbuilt need to cry out to God especially
in times of trouble. May not be the true and living
God as these men here they cried out to their own God but they
were going to meet the true and living God. Those who deny that
God exists, the atheists, have a great measure of faith to suppress
that natural inbuilt belief in God. The scripture tells us, doesn't
it, the fool has said in his heart there is no God. There was a missionary who went
to the New Hebrides years ago. His name was John Patton. When
he arrived on those islands, I think there was something like
30 islands there. James Cook, Captain Cook, had
been there before and it's filled with savages, cannibals, He had
not been there long, his wife died and his child died. And
he had to guard their grave, or especially his wife's grave,
to stop the cannibals from digging her up and eating her. And as
he wrote back to England to explain the type of people that he had
witnessed on this island, they struggled to believe that they
were even people. They thought that no people could
behave in such a way. They thought these were animals.
But he was able to say to them that they worshipped a God. It
wasn't a true and living God but even in their pagan culture
and their cannibalism they still acknowledged the spiritual realm. And that is what makes the human
race distinct from the animal kingdom. Animals do not worship
God. They have no religion. They live
and die. But human beings worship. Human beings have that inbuilt
recognition of God and although they may suppress it and deny
it yet there will still be those things in their lives in which
they worship. And so these pagan men they cried
out to their God in their fear as they saw this tempest that
was around about them although they were blinded to the fact
of the true and living God Jonah's God Yet they still acknowledged
that there is a God in kings. In fact, in the New Testament,
in Corinthians, the apostle there tells us that they sacrifice
to their idols, they sacrifice to their gods. And he says that
they are no gods at all. Although they acknowledge them
as gods, they are not gods because they are dumb. They cannot speak,
they cannot see, and they cannot hear. And so these men they cried
out to their gods but their gods couldn't answer them because
they were non-existent. They didn't have eyes, they didn't
have ears, they didn't have minds, they didn't have the ability
to speak or do anything against this storm that had been brought
on by the Almighty God, the creator of heaven and earth. And in 1
Kings We have Elijah as he is depressed. He believes himself
to be the only prophet, only I am left, he says. But God encourages him. In chapter
18 and verse 21, Elijah came unto all the people and said,
how long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God,
follow him. But if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him,
not a word. And Elijah said unto the people,
I only remain a prophet of the Lord, but Baal's prophets are
450 men. Verse 24. And call ye upon the
name of your gods. And I will call on the name of
the Lord. Then we see the Lord, capital letters, Jehovah, I am. And the God that answers by fire,
let him be God. And all the people answered and
said, it is well spoken. We know the story as they dance
around the altar and they climb on the altar, they cut themselves,
they cry out to their God, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice. They leapt on the altar which
they had made and Elijah mocked them. Maybe your God has gone
on holiday. Maybe he's fallen asleep. Maybe he's gone on a
journey. Cry louder. And the blood gushes
out of them, but they are just wasting their time. because their
God does not exist. Their God is just the God of
this world, Satan, who has no power or authority over the true
and living God. But Elijah cries unto the Lord. He says, And it came to pass, verse 36,
at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah
the prophet came near and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and
of Israel, let it be known this a day that thou, the God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and
that I have done all these things at thy word. Hear me, O Lord,
hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God,
and that thou hast turned their heart back again. And the fire
of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the
wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water
that was in the trench. And all the people saw it. They
fell on their faces and said, the Lord, he is God, the Lord,
he is God. And this is the God that we come
and worship today, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. And we come and worship him through
his beloved son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the true and living
God. He has the power and authority
to do all he can, all he can all he wants to do no man can
stay his hand or say unto him what to do is thou the unbeliever
cries out to the unknown god he cries out to the deaf god
the blind god the dumb god who cannot do anything and just like
these men who are rowing and struggling against a storm that
the true and living God has brought about is of no avail. Nothing they can do can stop this storm. Even they throw everything into
the sea. So their God failed them. their
God failed them, as Baal failed the prophets of Baal. So every
religion upon the face of this earth will fail, ultimately will
fail all those who worship their God. On the day of judgment,
on the day of reckoning, when everything will be put to the
test, their religion will fail. There is only one God. Jehovah and the Lord Jesus Christ
and the Holy Spirit, the true and living God. Jonah says in verse 9, and he said, I am a
Hebrew, I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which has made
the sea and the dry land.' And the men were exceedingly afraid
and said unto him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that
he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told
them. No doubt these men had a knowledge
of the Jewish nation. They had a knowledge of Jehovah,
the true and living God. They had a knowledge of how he
had brought them out of Egypt. He had brought them through the
Red Sea. He had destroyed those nations
that stood in their way as they inherited the promised land. But even then, in the hardness
of their heart, it had had no effect upon them. They had heard
of this God, but they had their God. They had their gods that
they trusted in but now at the time that was vital their gods
failed them and they were about to witness what the true and
living God could do. Jonah was gone down into the
side of the ship and he lay there and was fast asleep. Jonah was blissfully unaware
of all that was going on. He was the problem. He was the reason why the storm
had come. He was the reason why these men
were filled with fear and were crying out to their God. He was
the one. He was the reason why they were
throwing all of their material possessions into the sea. He is blissfully unaware of all
that is going on. He's sleeping like a baby in
the bottom of the ship. He is content in his willful
disobedience. As I said, it is willful. He
willfully determined to go against God. And he was fast asleep in
the bottom of the boat. You remember in the New Testament,
we have that account when the Lord Jesus Christ is asleep in
the boat. the Lord Jesus Christ ever was
in the will of the Father. He was not walking in disobedience
one bit and though there was a storm around about him and
his disciples were full of fear, the Lord Jesus Christ was there
asleep in the ship. He was asleep partly as a test
to his disciples, partly we could say in his human nature. He was
wearied from a day's ministry, but he put his disciples to the
test. He was asleep in the boat. Carest
thou not that we perish? But Jonah is at the other end
of the scale. Jonah is in deep sin. He's running away from his master. He's running away from his God.
And yet he is blissfully unaware of all that is going on. He's
content in his willful disobedience. He thinks, God can't see me here.
I'm hiding away in the bottom of this ship. And I'm OK. I've got my ticket. I'm on my
way to Tarshish. Nothing is going to stop me. and he was unaware of all of
the problems that he had caused and how his disobedience had
affected so many. You remember a man called Achan
in the book of Joshua. how Achan disobeyed the command
of God not to take anything from the city which they had destroyed. It was all to be given to the Lord. But his sin affected the whole
of the people of Israel. and God said because of that
one person had sinned in verses 10 and 11 and the Lord said unto
Joshua get thee up wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face
Israel hath sinned They have also transgressed my covenant
which I commanded them for they have taken of the accursed thing
and have also stolen and disemboweled also and they have put it among
their own stuff. His sin had affected the whole
of Israel. They had gone up to fight with
the men of Ai and they had fled before them. The Lord was not
with them. You could say they had grieved
the spirit because they had disobeyed God. This one man, his disobedience
had caused the spirit of God to frown upon the whole of Israel
and he would not go up with them to the battle as he had done
before. so they go through the process
of finding out who is the problem and he comes and he is found
out and they can answer Joshua and said indeed I have sinned
against the Lord God of Israel and thus and thus have I done
And when I saw amongst the spoils a goodly Babylonianish garment
and 200 shekels of silver and a wedge of gold and 50 shekels
of 50 shekels weight, and I coveted them, I took them and behold,
they are hidden in the earth in the midst of my tent and the
silver under it. And so it was willful disobedience.
He knew exactly what he should have done. And yet he was tempted
by what he saw. And he hid the things in his
tent. If he wasn't afraid, if he didn't
realize that it was wrong, he wouldn't have hid them. But he
hid it. He knew that he didn't want anybody
else to find out. He didn't want any person to
see what he was doing. So he did it all in secret. But
God sees in secret. God sees the intents of the heart. There is nothing that can be
hid from God. Jonah's there down in the bottom of the boat. God
sees him. Achan is there hiding this treasure
under his tent and God sees him and God troubles Israel because
of this sin. In verse 25. And Joshua says, Why hast thou
troubled us? The Lord shall trouble thee this
day. And Israel stoned him with stones
and burnt them with fire after they had stoned them with stones.
A solemn outcome. But it was willful disobedience. It was sin in the light, sin
in the knowledge of what God had commanded, just like Jonah.
Jonah found mercy. Jonah willfully disobeyed. God
said, you will go to Nineveh. He says, I'm not going. And he
runs in the opposite direction. Think of Adam and the consequences
of Adam's sin. Adam and Eve willfully disobeyed
God. They knew of every tree of the
garden you can eat except this one. They believed that God was
holding something from them and so they disobeyed. They willfully
disobeyed God. They sinned in complete knowledge
of what God had said to them. Do not eat. They said I'm not
listening. And so they sinned against God
and that sin had far reaching consequences even today. Even
the thought comes of Abraham and Hagar. He knew what God had promised
him. Your wife Sarah will have a son. But in a moment of weakness,
in disbelief, He sinned against the revealed will of God and
took Hagar and had Ishmael. The ongoing consequences of that
sin troubles the world even today. The sin of Adam and Eve troubles
the world today. Every child that is born is contaminated
by sin and we see the effects of sin all around about us. And
it was willful sin, willful disobedience to the revealed counsel and command
of God. Sometimes we can sin unknowingly. We do things and we don't realise
that they are sinful. Sometimes we sin out of fear. We're afraid and we don't act
as we know we should act and because of fear we sin. You think of Peter when Peter
denied the Lord Jesus Christ. That was fear. He knew what he should do. Yet
he was afraid and he denied the Lord Jesus Christ. We can sin
out of panic. Sometimes things happen quickly
in our lives and we panic. We may say something, we may
do something and it is a quick response to a situation. And we can ask God for forgiveness. but there is a sin in the light,
there is willful sin. Sin that is in the light of knowledge. We know we shouldn't do something
yet we suppress that knowledge of that sin and we go and do
it anyway. be children you know that mum
and dad have said to you you don't do that you're not going
there or you're not watching that or you're not listening
to that or you don't hang around with that person and you know
it and you've heard it very clear but you suppress what they have
said and you choose to disobey And that will receive a greater
punishment because it is willful disobedience. Sometimes, as I
say, you can sin without realising. You do something wrong and you
didn't realise that it was wrong. But Jesus speaks about this sin
that is sinning in the light, a rejection of the truth in Matthew
11. from verse 21 of verse 20. And he began to unbraid the cities
wherein most of his mighty works were done because they repented
not. And so the Lord Jesus had been
to various cities, he had performed miracles and we know that those
miracles proved the reality of the message that he proved. They
were the stamping of the authority of God upon the message that
he was preaching. they didn't believe who he was. So he says to them, woe unto
thee Khorazan, woe unto thee Bethsaida, for if the mighty
works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon
they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But
I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon
at the day of judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which
art exalted unto heaven, thou shalt be brought down to hell.
For if the mighty works which have been done in thee had been
done in Sodom, it would have remained unto this a day. But
I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land
of Sodom and in the day of judgment than for thee. And so there is
a greater punishment for those who have had a greater light,
for those who have had greater revelation and yet through the
hardness of their heart they have willfully rejected what
has been presented to them. In chapter 12 Jesus uses the
example of Jonah. in chapter 12 verse 38, and certain
of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we
would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto
them, An evil and adulterous generation, seek it after a sign,
and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the prophet
Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and
three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three
days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of
Nineveh shall rise up in judgment with this generation and shall
condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And
behold, a greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the south
shall rise up in judgment with this generation and shall condemn
it, for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the
wisdom of Solomon. And behold, a greater than Solomon
is here. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
says, you have received greater revelation. The city of Nineveh
repented at the preaching of Jonah. Jonah was just a prophet,
a prophet of the Lord. And they all turned with sackcloth
and ashes at his ministry. They believed the ministry. And
yet greater than Jonah is here, the Lord Jesus Christ. And your
hearts are hardened. And he says that those will raise
up in judgment against this generation. Willful disobedience. Now it has been said that when
you go preaching, especially preaching in the streets, doing
evangelism, and the people reject what you are saying, you are
making it worse for them on the great day of judgment. they are
no longer now in ignorance. You have showed them the light
and they have rejected the light. You are actually adding greater
condemnation to them because they have heard the gospel. They
have had the Lord Jesus Christ revealed to them and yet they
willfully say I don't believe in God. They willfully say I
reject the Lord Jesus Christ. And as Jesus says, they are condemned
already because they have rejected the only way of salvation, the
Lord Jesus Christ. And it's so solemn that children
who grow up in the church, then they leave. They have had a greater
privilege of being raised under the sound of the truth than some
who have been raised under the sound of error. Yet they hear the truth. They
see the evidences of God and Christ at work in their family
lives and they reject it. And they go out into the world
and the scripture says they will incur a stricter judgment. A greater judgment because they
have rejected completely all that has been placed before them. They have willfully disobeyed. Just like Jonah. just like Adam,
just like Achan. Oh that the Lord would turn their
hearts that they may come back like Jonah did. Jonah was gone down into the sides
of the ship and he lay fast asleep. The solemn condition to be in
in disobedience to God and yet feel nothing. Disobedience to
God and being able to go fast asleep at night without a worry
in the world and yet everything else around about you is falling
apart. Everybody else is struggling
and feeling the consequences and effects of our disobedience. And the shipmaster comes to him
and says, what meanest thou, O sleeper, arise, called upon
thy God, if so be that God will think upon us that we perish
not. And we know that he tells him,
throw me into the sea. And he's thrown into the sea.
After the lot is cast, he's thrown into the sea. And the Lord raises
up that that great fish to come and to collect him and to take
him to where he was meant to be. He could not escape from
doing God's will. If God has commanded us to do
something, we will have to do it. No matter how hard that thing
is, no matter how hard you try and fight or resist or skirt
around the issue, God's will will be done. And you will go
where he will send you. Sometimes when we were in Kenya,
we used to say, well, maybe we'll just fly back. And then we would
think of Jonah. We think, well, even if we did
try and fly back, the aeroplane would be turned around and we'd
end up back at Mombasa again. You can't run away from doing
what God wants you to do until his timing is right, then he
will make a way. Jonah was willfully disobedient. Think of Judas Iscariot. Judas
Iscariot, he sought opportunity to betray the Lord Jesus Christ. It was a willful act that he
committed. Or maybe you were passing through something Satan is tempting you that way. This problem and or difficulty
that you are passing through this trial is as the result of
willful disobedience. Now God does punish sin And he
punishes sin in various ways. The scripture tells us it's through
much trouble, tribulation we must enter the kingdom of God.
And the Lord's people are constantly in pathways of difficulty as
part of their training and sanctifying process. And there are many reasons
why God brings trials into the lives of his people to discipline
them and to chasten them and to refine them. But sometimes we can be the cause
of the trial. Jonah was the cause of the trial. Maybe we're in willful disobedience. Maybe the Lord has told us to
do something. We're to obey it. And the more
we try and resist what he is telling us to do, the greater
the storm will be and it will never end. The only way Jonah
could get out of the storm, the only way Jonah could bring a
calm to those round about him was to obey what God wanted him
to do. That was to be thrown in the
sea. It was only when he was thrown in the sea, cast out of
the ship, that there was a calm and then he went to Nineveh. So he ran from God. And Satan may be tempting you.
I heard of a minister who was tempted that he was a Judas. But he was blessed by those words
that Judas sought opportunity. to betray the Lord Jesus Christ. Satan may be tempting you even
tonight, accusing you of being a Jonah, accusing you of being
an Achan, accusing you of being a Judas. Is your disobedience,
is it willful disobedience? Is the trial that you're in caused
by you acting in a disobedient way? If it is, then it won't stop
until you obey. If it is not, then the trial
is working for your good, for your blessing and for the glory
of God. And you cannot run from God. Jonah was gone down into the
side of the ship and he lay there and he was fast asleep. Oh may
the ship master, the Lord Jesus Christ come and wake us up. If we have stooped down into
a lukewarm condition, if we have stooped down into the belly of
the ship and we are fast asleep May the Lord Jesus Christ come
and wake us up and say, O sleeper, arise and call upon thy God.
He went from the belly of the ship to the belly of the whale
into the heart of Nineveh to preach the gospel. And even when
he was so used of God, he still didn't believe that the people
of Nineveh should be saved. believe they deserved God's judgment. He knew that God was merciful
and kind and slow to anger but he didn't believe that the wicked
people of Nineveh deserved that mercy. But if we have a right
view of ourselves then we will know that we also have not deserved
the mercy of God that we've been saved by grace and Jonah was
a man who received great grace and great mercy and the Lord
brought him into the pathway that he would have him to go.
And so if you are resisting the Lord tonight and you are experiencing
trials and difficulties because of your resistance and cast yourself
again at the Lord and obey him and you will find that there
will be a great calm. May the Lord add his blessing.
Amen. May the Lord help us as we close
this sermon service by singing hymn number 44 from Gadsby's.
Here, Lord, my soul convicted stands of breaking all thy ten
commands and on me justly might thou pour thy wrath in one eternal
shower. Hymn number 44 to the tune 348. And I'll be just in myself, all
I once was. It's thou that art, that moved
me on the approaching miles. And now I look like what I see,
lost and unknown, I can't see. ? Righteousness ? ? Can ne'er the
broken ? ? Go with death ? ? Yet if thy gospel ? ? Plan I see
? ? There's hope of pardoning ? ? Of Christ have mercy on me ? His splendor ebbles from afar. Heavenly Father we thank Thee
for Thy word, we thank Thee for Thy grace, we thank Thee that
Thou art kind and merciful, slow to anger, that Thou art willing
to pardon, we thank Thee that Thou art even willing to forgive
a Jonah are running away from thee and we pray Lord that if
there is one here this night running away we ask that thou
draw them back to thyself and save them from the consequences
of their sin. We pray Lord that thou dismiss
us with thy blessing and do return us here on Wednesday if it could
please thee. And now may the grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the Father, with the fellowship
and the communion of the Holy Spirit, rest and abide with us
each now and for evermore. Amen.