Turn with me now to the Book
of Jonah. The Book of Jonah. The Lord willing, in our midweek
services, I hope to preach a series of messages on the Old Testament
types, and I might from time to time vary from that and go
here or go there. But I think this is what I'm
going to do, and we're going to begin with the book of Jonah.
Now, the easiest way to find Jonah is right in the middle
of the minor prophets. So if you go to Daniel, Jonah
will be the fifth prophet, the fifth book going toward the New
Testament. It's nestled right there between
Obadiah and Micah. Now, let's just read this first
chapter. of Jonah. And this is not going
to be a verse-by-verse commentary like I try to do in the Bible
studies on Sunday morning. I'm going to try to take something
out of these verses that the Lord gives me and bring it to
you in the form of a message. So let's just read this first
chapter of Jonah. Now the word of the Lord came
unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go into Nineveh,
that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness is come
up before me.' But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarsus from the
presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa, and he found a
ship going to Tarsus. So he paid the fare thereof,
and went down into it to go with them unto Tarsus from the presence
of the Lord." 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. Then the mariners were afraid,
and cried every man unto his God, and cast forth the wares
that were in the ship in the sea to lighten it. But Jonah was gone down into
the sides of the ship. And he lay and was fast asleep. 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. And they said every one to his
fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose
cause this evil is come upon us. So they cast lots. and the
lock fell upon Jonah. Then said they unto him, Tell
us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us. What is
thy occupation, and which camest thou? What is thy country, and
of what people art thou? And he said unto them, I am a
Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath
made the sea and the dry land. Then were the men 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
Jonah told them. Then said they unto him, What
shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? For
the sea wrought, and was tempestuous. And he said unto them, Take me
up, and cast me forth into the sea. so shall the sea be calm
unto you. For I know that for my sake this
great tempest is upon you.' Nevertheless the men rode hard to bring it
to land, but they could not, for the sea wrought and was tempestuous
against them. Wherefore they cried unto the
Lord, and said, We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let
us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent
blood. for thou, O Lord, hast done as
it pleased thee.' So they took up Jonah and cast him forth into
the sea, and the sea ceased from her raging. Then the men feared
the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and
made vows. Now the Lord prepared a great
fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the
fish three days." Now, this book is about a prophet whom God used
as a type of Christ to him give all the prophets witness. We
know that. It's recorded time and again. It's recorded in Luke chapter
24, and it's recorded over in Acts. And we could just go on
and on with the places where he said, and the scriptures were
fulfilled. The scriptures were fulfilled.
concerning him. It's about a prophet whom God
used as a type of Christ, and in whom he revealed the great
lesson of the gospel. Salvation is of the Lord. Every
saved man is going to learn this lesson. Salvation is of the Lord. He's going to learn it in the
way God reveals it to him. He's going to learn it in the
means and methods that God uses to call him. out of darkness.
He is going to learn it by the inability of his own nature and
of the One in whom all ability is, the living God. He is going
to learn this lesson. Salvation is of the Lord. Now, Brother Mahan pointed out
something to me, and I want to point that out to you before
I go any further. And that is that here in chapter
1, the Lord gave commandment to Jonah to go cry against Nineveh. And these were his comments.
I remember them like it was yesterday. He said, it doesn't take much
of anything to cry against something, does it? It doesn't take much
of an experience. It doesn't take many gifts. It doesn't take a lot of anything. It don't take a lot of ability
to go down here and stand and hold up a sign and be against
something, cry against it. But over in chapter 3, After
the Lord took his prophet and had him cast into the sea and
swallowed up by the fish that he prepared to swallow him up
and carried him down into the depths of the sea until he cried
out of the belly of hell. And then when God delivered him
on the bank, he said, Now go preach to Nineveh. He didn't
say cry against him. Go preach to Nineveh the preaching
that I bid thee. And it's by the experience of
grace that we learn to preach. It's by the experience of grace
in our own heart. You can't tell what you don't
know. You can't do it. I can stand up here and teach
it like a math class, but I can't preach it with conviction. I can't have the Lord just lay
something on my heart and then talk to your heart unless I've
experienced it. And this was in the case of Jonah. He took him down. He allowed
him to experience grace. He allowed him to learn in his
heart that salvation was altogether of the Lord. Now, he said, you
are ready. And he put him out there on the
bank, and he sent him down and he preached, and God converted
that whole city. And as we go through this book,
you are going to see that this man's experiences, I hope and
pray that by looking at his experiences and these things that God put
him through, and these things that God records and preserves
in this little book of the prophet Jonah, that we'll come to see
and experience the same things in our hearts, and learn something
about preaching. Let's just learn something here
about preaching. The teacher said this, John the
Baptist, he said, God could of these stones raise up children
unto Abraham. He don't need preachers. He spoke
to one man through an ass. He don't need preachers. He could
preach by the hills and the skies and the stars if he wanted to.
He could raise up stones unto children. He don't need preachers. But it pleased God through the
foolishness of preaching. That's what I want you to see.
This thing of preaching is ordained of God. It's eternal. It's immutable. It's not going to change. I don't
care what kind of technology we've got. I don't care how modern
we get. I don't care what our school of thinking is. It's still
going to be the same because God doesn't change. He doesn't
change. And what God is going to do is
convert a man, convict a man, teach a man, and then send him
to men. That's exactly what's going to
happen. And that's what this whole book of Jonah is all about.
That's what it's all about. Now, what I want you to look
at tonight is this. I want to take a look at this
calming of the sea. There was a great calming of
the sea. And I want us to look at the
plight of these mariners and what they were forced by the
providence of God and the instruction of the prophet to do. and see
if we can apply that story of Jonah to our own experience of
grace. Now, let's begin here. It's a
folly. It's an absolute folly to think
that anyone can escape the will of God. I touched on that in
one of my messages here not too long ago. A person thinks they
can Refuse the will of God. It's my decision. It's mine to
do. I'll do this. I'll do that. But
in your indecision and in your negative decision, all you're
doing is carrying out the will of God. Isn't that right? That's exactly what happened
to those who nailed Christ to the cross. They had their little
cliques here, and the Roman clique over here, and the soldiers,
and they were all, couldn't none of them get along naturally in
this world. They weren't together on anything except the crucifixion
of Christ. They came together on that. And
they took Him down and they bore their false witnesses and they
went through all their procedures that they had all lined out.
You know, they paid old Judas and paid him. Thirty pieces of
silver. All these things they planned
to do went right according to schedule. But Peter said when
they did them, they did what God's hand and God's counsel
determined before to be done. It's folly, I'm telling you,
it's absolute folly to believe that you can resist the will
of God. You can't do it. He does His will in the armies
of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay
His hand. No. Every sinner imagines that he
can obtain happiness apart from the will of God. Jonah sought to find the satisfaction
in Tarsus, though he was instructed to go to Nineveh. What did he say? Well, he said
in his head, I don't want to go down there. This is a Gentile
people. I'm a Jew. God's not going to
save Gentiles. He's going to save Jews. There's
no reason. He's going to send me down there and embarrass me,
and I don't need to go down there. So he turned around and went
the other direction. He went the other direction. Every sinner
imagines he can attain happiness apart from the will of God. And
that's what Jonah was doing. He sought to find a satisfaction
in his ministry, in a place of his own choosing, and in opposition
to the plain instruction of God. It ain't going to happen. Ain't
going to happen. Now, John, we sit down and plan
it out. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. It's about
time for me to settle down. I'm getting to be about 26 or
27 now. I've had my little fling, and
it's time for me to settle down. And I've got a wife now, and
we've got a new son, a new daughter, and things have been going a
little rough here lately. And I tell you, what I need to
do is go down and join the church. So you go down, you go a few
Sundays, and before you know what happened, There's an altar
call, and down the aisle you come, and the deacons all gather
around you, and they begin to ask you some questions and counsel
you a little bit and take you down the Roman road. And the
first thing you know, you're a member of the church. The thing's
all fixed up. The only problem is, it's in
opposition to the plain instruction of God. And just like Jonah,
God tells you there's only one way of salvation. Salvation's
of the Lord. It ain't of you. It's of Him.
It's of Him. And here's the means. It pleased
God through the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
Oh, well, preacher, I know it says that, but you know, I had
my experience when I was 13 years old. Yeah, and that's what you
had. Your experience. That's exactly what you had.
Your experience. Jonah had his experience. Now,
I guarantee you, it was a real experience. But everything Jonah
did was in opposition to God. You see what I'm saying? God
said, go down here. The government said, I'm going
over there. Now, that's what the sinner does. And you can apply that a hundred
different ways. I just described for you the
typical Southern Baptist church. The same thing goes on in the
Methodist church, in the Catholic church, in the Presbyterian churches,
and you just go on and on, whatever church you want to talk about.
In general, these organized religious services, this is what they do.
They ignore the plain instruction of God. And they go about to
establish their own righteousness and will not submit to the righteousness
of God. He pictures that with the Jews
and all the religions that follow. They just step right in line.
They just fall right in line. We are going to do things our
way. We are not going to do things His way. God is going to have
His way. He is going to have His way.
And that's where the things start. Every son of Adam, he goes about
to establish his own righteousness, to seek some kind of spiritual
rest, to have what men call fellowship with God, to be a Christian.
There's all kinds of terminologies. Winston and I did a two-hour
trip the other day, and I guess we discussed every one of them.
There's all kinds of different names that people put on it.
Some people even put two or three names on it and call it born-again
Christian. Well, there is no other kind.
Believing Christians, there are no other kinds. But it is without controversy
the absolute will of God and plain declaration of the Scripture
that salvation is of the Lord. It is of the Lord. It is of the
Lord in its eternal design and purpose. God has from the beginning
chosen us unto salvation. That's what he said. Not unto the possibilities. That's
not what he said. He didn't say he was just going
to make it possible, but he said from the beginning, God has chosen
you unto salvation. It's of God in its eternal design
and purpose. They are the called. I preached
on that last Sunday morning. They are the called according
to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, foreordain. He also did predestinate. Whom He did predestinate, them
He also called. Whom He called, He justified.
Whom He justified, He glorified. That's what it means for God
to be for you. That's exactly what that means.
And God is the author of these things. James said this, he said, The
Father of Lights, from whom all these good and perfect gifts
come down from heaven, from whom all these gifts have their beginning
and their purpose, is an immutable God. He is unchangeable. There
is not even a shadow of turning with Him, and of His own will
begat He us through the word of truth. Of His own will. his immutable, omnipotent, eternal
will. And then over in Acts chapter
13, verse 48, Paul announced that God had chosen
him as an ambassador of God to go to the Gentile people and
preach the gospel. That God had declared throughout
the Old Testament that he was going And this was a great mystery. It was hidden. The Jews didn't
see it. The world didn't see it. Nobody
saw it until God decided to unveil it. And He unveiled it through
the Apostle Paul and sent him to the Gentiles with the message
of grace that He was going to save a people out of these heathen
nations. And it said, when the Gentiles heard this, they were
glad, and they rejoiced. And as many as were ordained
unto eternal life believed. And that's always who's going
to believe, because salvation is of the Lord. And it's of the
Lord in its eternal design and purpose. And then we talked about the
crucifixion of Christ. It's by God's hand and God's
counsel that they did those things. And then, secondly, it's of the
Lord in its means of accomplishment. Salvation is accomplished through
substitution and representation. As in Adam, all die. Everybody
that's in Adam dies. Everybody that's in Christ will
be made alive. That's representation in it.
And substitution. He died for our sins according
to the Scriptures. Repentance from sin. Faith. All
these things. These are the means. Salvations
of the Lord and its means. And then it's of God in its ultimate
completion and its application. It's of God in its application.
It pleased Him through the foolishness of preaching. He sent His Spirit
to convict and convince men of sin, of righteousness, and of
judgment. And He's going to do those things. God's going to
accomplish those things. Here's the thing. See, as long
as it's religious, we won't make it okay. This is what God is
demonstrating here in this book of Jonah. It's not okay. It's
not okay. We're going to line up with Him.
We're going to line up with His means and His message and His
way, His design and for His glory. And if we don't, God isn't in
it. He just isn't in it. I'm telling you, you can be just
as religious as you want to and not know God. The sinner always seeks another
direction. He seeks to find acceptance and
fellowship with God contrary to the plain instruction of God. He seeks to find it in the world.
He seeks to find it in himself. He seeks to find it in religion.
And he seeks to find it in his own ideas and concepts. And so
away he goes. Away he goes. But God has a people. And he's determined before the
foundation of the world to save that people. And when he sees
his child running away from the plain declaration of the Word
of God in his time, he sends the trouble. He sends the storm. And that's what I want you to
see, what this storm was all about. Here's a storm. God sent a storm. He sent it
on purpose. It wasn't just a storm. They was out there at sea. They
knew it wasn't just a storm. They were mariners. They were
sailors. They knew all about sailing. They knew all about
that climate and all about that sea. And they knew something
was wrong. Something was bad wrong. And
I tell you this, when God sends a storm, it don't go away. It
don't go away. And you ain't going to overcome
it. You're not going to get away from it. God sent that storm
on His servant Jonah and for those people in that ship. He sent a storm. And it says
the ship was like to be broken. You see, here's the difference.
When things just happen in your life, I know everything's up
to the Lord, but we won't just say things just happen, these
normal things that everybody, it happens to them. But when
God sends the storm, you know it's God that sent the storm.
Yeah, you do. Because the bottom falls out.
The bottom falls out. Everything goes to pieces. There
ain't no overcoming it. You read about this. I read it
to you a few minutes ago. They did all things religious
people do. They grabbed everything on the ship and started lightening
the load, didn't they? That's the first thing we do
when we get in trouble. Lord, if you'll help me through this,
I'll quit drinking. I'll throw it over the side. I'll quit smoking.
I'll give up gambling. Chunk it over the side. Just
keep chunking it over the side. But the waves keep pounding.
Just keep pounding. Keep pounding. And religion don't
work. Lightning and the Lord don't
work. And then you grab the oars and you go to rowing. But you
make no headway. Don't go nowhere. Those apostles
rowed all night. Didn't get anywhere. And they
said, This ain't just a storm. This ain't just a storm. We've
got a problem. We've got a problem. Somebody's
done something. I tell you, if you believe God,
and God is determined to have you as His Son, and you're running
in the opposite direction, brother, there's a storm on your horizon.
Now, there's going to be a storm. Somebody told me this over and
over and over, and I just didn't, it just went right in one ear
and right out the other. And I thought, well, you know, he
was just talking about these things. This was just all about
when the storm comes. I was watching an old John Wayne
movie the other night, old western. And this fella asked him, he
said, John Wayne pointed out this little snake, and that guy
jumped up in the air, and he said, now wait a minute, he said,
that's just a gopher snake. He said, this looks like a rattlesnake.
And he said, well, how do you know the difference between that?
He said, when you see your first rattler, you'll know the difference.
Now, I'm telling you, when God sends His storm, you'll know
the difference. You're going to know the difference.
Because it's all going downhill. It's all going downhill. You think God is going to wrap
this whole thing up when He comes down on you. No way out. There's going to
be trouble. Trouble you can't handle and
trouble you can't overcome. The ship's crew called on their
pitiful little gods, and the waves just kept coming, didn't
they? Everybody called on their gods.
Everybody did. The waves just kept coming, kept
coming. Then they lightened up the ship.
That didn't help anything. And they rowed for all they were,
and that didn't help anything. And then they got serious, and
they began to hunt for the problem. So the cast lots and the lot
fell on Jones. And so they began to question
the man. And that's what I want you to see.
God ever had you question the man? Has he ever had you question
the man? There's only one righteous man
on that ship, Winston. And he recalled the question.
The lock fell on him. The lock fell on him. You see, when God gets hold of
you, it's always those things that you thought was okay that
He begins to deal with. There was only one on board the
ship that was asleep. Jonah. See, we make these righteous
professions of faith, and we think we're all fixed up. We had that experience. We walked
down the aisle. We joined a church. We were baptized.
Whatever it was. Whatever it is that you had your
hope in. And that hope causes you to go
to sleep, like old Jonah. He's down there asleep. He thinks
everything, him and God, is just like that. They're buddy-buddies.
And he's running in the opposite direction from where God would
have him to go. And God knows where he's at.
And now he's going to wake him up. Now he's going to wake him
up. And he's going to call him into
question. What meanest thou, O sleeper? Time to wake up. Time to wake up. And so Jonah did. And then he
began to confess some things, didn't he? Well, God told me
to go down there. The God who made this sea and
made this ship and made me the living God. When the storm comes
and the trouble starts, that's when the questions come, isn't
it? What's your occupation? Where are you from? Whose kingdom
did you come from? What country did you come from?
What people are you? What do you say? You say, I'm
a Jew. I'm a Jew. I'm a Christian. I'm
a Christian. Are you now? Then why are you
running in the opposite direction? Why do you run from the presence
of the God you say you fear? Why do you refuse to submit yourself
to his Word? See, God sends a storm to expose
our rebellion and our sin. God sends the storm to destroy
our confidence. God sends the tempest. to reveal
in us the real problem. It's us. Jonah said, the only
way the vessel can be saved is to throw me in the sea. Throw
me in the sea. Will you hear me? The only way
the trouble is going to go away is if you throw yourself in the
sea. That's where you've got to go.
That's where you've got to go. You have to die. You have to
die. That old righteous man, the only
righteous man on the ship, has to be thrown in the sea. See, men will come up
front. They'll sit down and talk to
me. They'll admit all kinds of stuff, you know. I drink too
much. I really ought to give up my
cigarettes because I know it's hurting me and I do this and
I do that and I go to bars with my buddies and I probably shouldn't
do that. All kinds of stuff they want
to talk about. God went right straight to the
problem. The problem is your righteous self. Your righteous
self. He's sound asleep and safe down
in the hole, ain't he? Go get him up. Bring him up here. Now, here's the problem right
here. Your righteousness has got to go. But, oh, that's all I've got.
Throw it in the sea. I don't have anything else. Throw
it in the sea. Picture you taking away all my
hope. Throw it in the sea. Ain't that what happened? God
brought him up. I brought him up. This was a
man on whom God had said his favor and set his eye. And he's
going to teach him something about salvation. Salvation is
of the Lord. It ain't of you. We want to hang on to them things,
don't we? Well, you know, I ain't always
done the right thing. One fellow told me he was mowing
the grass, and I took him out a drink of water, and he said, I hadn't been to church in years,
and he began to tell me some things, you know. I hadn't asked
him for anything. I just took him a glass of water. He was
hot, and he was an old fellow. And he began to tell me all these
things. And he said, well... I said,
do you know the Lord? Well, he said, now I ain't always
done the right thing, but he said, one thing I can... Alcohol
never touched these lips. Well, that's going to usher you
right in, I'm sure of it. See, that's where Jonah was.
He was asleep down in the hole. He was a prophet. God wouldn't
send him to hell, even a prophet. I'm a preacher. I'm a deacon. I've been going to church 35
years. All these things. See, we get
confidence in those things. We get security from those things. There's nothing in them things.
I'm telling you, the security is in Christ. The security is
in God. Salvation is of the Lord. It's
of Him. And that righteous self in the
sea. I throw Him in the sea. And I
tell you this, He showed Jonah. Jonah knew what the problem was.
He didn't say, okay, everybody run, jump in the sea. No, He
said, throw me in the sea. See, that's what happens when
we take a little comfort in the fact that everybody's sinners,
don't we? Huh? All have sinned and come short
of the glory. We can take a little comfort in that. In Adam all
die. We can take some comfort in that.
I've got good company around me now. But that old publican,
he stood afar back with his head down and he said, Lord have mercy
on me, thee sinner. Anybody will admit they're a
sinner. Nobody will admit they're the
sinner. That's where Jonah was at. He
said, I'm the whole problem. I'm the whole thing. I know that
there was a nature in Adam that caused me to do this, and that
there is a spirit in this world who sets the course and I follow
after, but it was my feet that got on the ship and my will that
made the decision to get on it, and it is my sin. I am the problem. Throw me in the sea. Throw me
in the sea. He didn't say, we're all guilty.
He said, I know it's for my sake that this great tempest is upon
you. And I'll tell you how you'll
know. When God comes to visit the sinner, He intends to save.
He takes the only religious man He has in Him, and He makes Him
throw him in the sea. That's the difference between
just worldly conviction and the conviction of God. You're going
to fess up, and you're going to get on God's side in His judgment
against you. You're going to justify God.
You're going to say, you ought to send me to hell. You ought
to send me to hell. Jonah knew he'd be on the shadow
of a doubt. There wouldn't have been a ripple
in that sea if it wasn't for him being on that ship. Throw
me in the sea, storm things settle right down. I'm the problem.
I'm the problem. You see, as my representative,
as I said before, John is a type of Christ. It's in my representative. See, we want to learn sin by
the law. I drive down the road and I see a stop sign that says,
S-T-O-P, stop. I know what that means. I put
my foot on the brake. Sometimes I don't. Whatever. I know what the sign means, so
I think I know something about sin because here's what the law
says. All I know is what it says at
face value. Where I learn about sin is in
my substitute. These mariners are about to learn
something about sin, and they're going to learn it in this man
that God cast in the sea. That's where they're going to
learn about sin. That's where they're going to learn something
about the righteousness of this God. This is His servant. This is the one He came to save.
He thrown him in the sea. This is the Lord Jesus Christ.
He came down to save a people for the honor and glory of the
name of God. And men nailed Him on a cross.
That's where you learn something about righteousness. We think
He's going to let all these little things fly. He didn't let His
Son fly. I know that much about it. That's where they learn something
about sin. And then these mariners were faced with a dilemma. And
we can learn something here. I don't know if I can teach it,
but if I can, we can all learn something right here. Listen
to their prayer in verse 14. Jonah 1.14. Now, they had tried
everything else. And Jonah, the prophet of God,
told them what they had to do. Plain instruction of God. Here's
your preachers telling them what to do. You've got to throw them
the old sign. That's what they had to ask. Now watch this. But
nevertheless, it says, they tried to row. They rowed hard. It didn't
work. It didn't work. Wherefore, they
cried unto the Lord. They're not crying to their little
pitiful gods anymore. They're crying to the God who
caused this trouble and who sent this trouble their way. And they
said, We beseech Thee, O Lord, we beseech Thee, let us not perish
for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood, for
Thou, O Lord, has done as it please Thee." In other words,
here's what to say. If we keep him among us, we're
going to die. This is a prayer to God. If we
keep this man among us, we will surely die. But if we throw him
in the sea, We're guilty of the blood of
your chosen servant. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? You see, the only choice, when
you give up that righteousness, when you throw that righteousness
into the sea, when you see your righteous self going down for
the third time, going down for the count, sinking under the
waves, your last hope going down, you're faced with another dilemma. He who was cast into the sea,
his blood's on your hands. His blood's on your hands. And
they knew it. They knew it. And they was crying unto the
Lord. If we keep him on here, we're all going to die. If we
throw him in there, we're going to suffer the judgment of God
because it's in our hands we're throwing him into the sea. And
what'd they say? You have done as it pleased thee. And I tell you, this is where
God brings you in this thing of faith. He brings you down
to see that this whole thing of Christ is of Him. He did it
because it pleased Him to do it. And yes, this blood is on
your hands. That's what Peter's very first
sermon, you go back and read it in the book of Acts where
he talked to He said, this same Jesus whom you crucified, God
has made Him both Lord and Christ. And His blood was on their hands. They said, His blood be upon
us and upon our children. His blood was on their hands.
When a sinner comes to Christ, he understands His blood is on
his hands. It's not the watermelon I stole. It's the Son of God I nailed
to the tree. My sin is not some simple sin. They couldn't see the sin. You
see, Jonah in their eyes wasn't worthy of death. He didn't do
anything worthy of death. He was just a little disobedient.
I mean, even for a sailor, you know, lash him up there on the
main mast and take that cat of nine tails and hit him about
20 or 25 licks and send him back to work. Not guilty to die, not
guilty to be thrown in the sea. How about that innocent blood? Oh, but at God's hands. And you see how these issues
are so far above us, it's difficult to even try to get a picture
in your head of what's taking place. God takes His Son, and
by faith, by faith, you have to see Him dying on that tree. You've got to see His blood on
your hands. Ain't that what Paul said? Our
confidence is this, when He died, I died. I died. The mariners aren't going to
die because they only died in their place. Throwed him in the sea. If I seek to assist, to help,
or to preserve this substitute by something that I hope to do,
then the storm is going to claim everybody on the ship. Everybody
is going to die. But if I cast him into the sea,
then his blood is on my hands. And this is the dilemma of the
gospel. If I let go of my efforts to
preserve myself, I see no hope of life. If I cast my substitute
in the depths of the sea, then his blood is on my hands. The
only thing left for the sinner to do is bow his head to God
and pray and submit himself to God's will. God, you're doing
this. This is at your command. This
is you that brought this trouble on. This is you that brought
this man aboard our ship. And at your command, we're going
to throw him in the sea. We're going to throw him into
the depths. Faith sees the death of Christ to be on his hands,
and at the same time, according to the good pleasure of God.
And it's shut up to the death of Christ as the only way to
preserve his life. He has to die. There's no other
way. No other way. And I'm telling
you, that ought to eliminate all these arguments that folks
throw at you. There's no other way. You see how simple it was
there on the ship? Either you die, or he dies. That's just how simple it is.
You shut up to the death of Christ. Well, shut up to it. It's the only way to preserve
his life and appease an angry God. And faith sees in the substitute
the reason for the storm and the reason for the storm to be
stilled at the same time in that substitute. Now, watch what happens. And this is what always happens.
They took up Jonah and they cast him forth in the sea, and the
sea ceased from its raging. The prophet of God told him he
must be thrown in the sea, and God prevented everything
but that, to still the tempest. And when God sends the storm,
only Christ crucified can take it away. That's why Paul said
when he came to them, he said, I purpose to preach nothing else.
This is the only thing that's going to do you any good, is
Christ crucified. Nothing else is going to get
it done. And he said, therefore, being
justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ. These heathen mariners believed God and cast the prophet
in the sea. Cast the man in that they could
find no reason for death in. And the sea went calm. Now watch
this, verse 16. He said, Then, The men feared the Lord exceedingly,
and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows. And
this is what the Apostle Paul was talking about, Christ's crucifixion. When that becomes a reality in
your heart, you'll fear God. You'll fear God. And He has to shut us up to it.
That's what this whole thing is about. He shut Jonah up to
it. He shut those men on that sea up to it. And then I want
to show you this before I close it. Here's the prophet of God
in rebellion. He's running away. God said go
this way. He went this way. He ordained the rebellion of
Jonah. Now, this is how all-seeing God
is and how eternal God's purposes are. Here's Jonah in his rebellion. Before he was even in rebellion,
God had already prepared the fish. That's why he said he had
prepared a great feast to swallow up Jonah. Well, how did he know
Jonah was going to go over that way? Because he purposed it. What in the world would he get
out of purposing Jonah to go over there? He was going to save
them men on that ship. Going to save men on a ship going
to Tarsus by taking a prophet bound to Nineveh in rebellion
and sending him in that direction. That's the hand of God. That's
the hand of God. And I'm telling you, when Jonah
was in the belly of that whale, these things became clear in
his mind. When he was standing on that
ship, these things were clear in his mind. Salvation of the
Lord. God ain't going to change. Throw
me in the sea. Throw me in the sea. And then
God took him down and out of the belly of hell he cried. He
understood. He knew. If God was going to
take him that instant, he knew this for certain, salvation is
of the Lord. And he cried out. And we'll get
into those things in the weeks to come.