02 | Jonah: Thrown Overboard

Ps. Steven R. Martins, founding pastor at Sevilla Chapel in St. Catharines, walks us through the book of Jonah with an exposition of Jonah 1:11-17.

Transcript

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Disturban theories on the Book of Jonah by founding pastor Stephen R. Martin. It's brought to you by Sabina Chapel.

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If you're with us last week, you'll remember that we had our Easter weekend, or we had our joint service, our Good Friday service, uh, with Rosedale Baptists, and that was a great time of fellowship. They were very encouraged. I understand many of you were as well. And we look forward to having uh joint services with them maybe about two, three times a year, we'll see. Uh, we're already talking about the fall and something special then. And we have when we have more information, we'll discuss that then. But it was such a good time to be with other brothers and sisters of like-minded faith and in the in the unison of spirit, praising our God and meditating upon the scriptures. You'll also remember, based on last Sunday and the past previous couple of Sundays, that both Pastor Lawrence and I are preaching from different books from Scripture. Lawrence is expositing Paul's letter to the Ephesians, and I am expositing the Old Testament book of Jonah. And this morning we're going to be continuing our study in Jonah, and we're going to take up the text where we had left off. But in order to do that, we're first going to do a bit of a review, a summary of what we have thus far covered so that we understand the context of what we are expositing this morning. As a brief review, the book of Jonah is one of the twelve minor prophets in the Old Testament. And if you remember, I have mentioned that what makes Jonah particularly unique and interesting is its contrast to the other prophetic writings, in that this book stands out for its particular satirical but historical genre and is more about the prophet than about the word of the Lord. It's more about Jonah than about the messages given. Yet, as the word of the Lord, inspired by the Holy Spirit, included in the canon of Scripture, it is nonetheless God's message to the church today. So we notice that. We notice that particularity, that peculiarity to the book of Jonah, and it is quite wonderful to be able to work through it and understand it and be able to discern the different literary devices that's been placed in there. We also noted that Jonah's prophetic ministry took place during the reign of King Jeroboam II in the northern kingdom of Israel, during the same period as the ministry of the prophet Amos. And in our study of the first chapter, verses 1 to 10, we learned of the word that came to Jonah. What was that word of the Lord that came to Jonah the son of Amitai? Well, he was commanded to go to Assyria, most specifically to the great city of Nineveh. And it was considered the great city. It wasn't a hyperbole. It was, in fact, one of the wonders of the ancient world at the time. It was great in architecture, it was great in scale, great in magnitude, great in popular and population. But for all its architectural glory and aesthetic glory, it was nonetheless a pagan and bloodthirsty city. And it was known throughout the ancient world for its cruelty, for its brutality, for its violence. We're talking about a people who would kill other neighboring nations for their own imperial interests and would actually impale them. Well, Nineveh was a place that they were to go, and Nineveh and Assyria in general was an affliction to all peoples outside the Assyrian Empire, including the Jews. And Jonah, with the prophetic insight given to him by the Spirit of God, knew that Assyria specifically, including the people of Nineveh, would be used by God in the coming years to judge his covenant people, Israel, because of their unrepentant sin, because they had strayed, they had turned to idols, they had committed great evils in the sight of God. And God had warned them that if they had returned to the sins of those who were there before them, the Canaanites, that they would be vomited from the land. And that time was coming. So for this reason, instead of obeying the word of the Lord, which is to go to Assyria, to go particularly to Nineveh, Jonah went in the opposite direction, boarding a ship to Tarshish, which was that Phoenician port city on the coast of Spain. And as I mentioned before, Jonah, who knew that God is the creator of the heavens and the earth, who made the sea and all that is in it, who made all things, well, he began to adopt a rather pagan way of thinking by thinking and assuming and acting as though the God of Israel would not operate outside of the geographic vicinity of the promised land, of the land of the covenant people. And we had mentioned that this term was called henotheism, this belief that gods occupy and govern certain geographical areas. And Jonah knew that this wasn't the case with the God of Israel, and yet he slipped into pagan thinking and pagan tendency in his way, in the way he was interpreting reality, and hence he decided to just leave Israel altogether to be out of reach of God. But in his disobedience, in his rebellion, he what he really became was a walking and talking contradiction. And when a great storm arose as a result of his rebellion, Jonah resigned himself to sleep and awaited the destruction of the ship that he was in, along with all those who were aboard with him. And we would have thought that perhaps this would be his end. The judgment of God had come upon the prophet, the son of Amitai, for his rebellion. But the Lord had other plans. As we had read in the text, Jonah was brought up from the belly of the ship. He was urged to pray to his God while everyone else prayed to their pagan gods. You know it was really something when an unbeliever urges you to pray to your God, to pray to the true God. And when they discerned that someone had done something to anger the divine, and they must have discerned something perhaps in the way the storm was unfolding, they cast lots, which was sort of like casting a die in those times, and they discovered that it was Jonah who was at fault. Jonah was the one who had brought all this calamity upon them. So to put this turmoil into perspective, verse 1 speaks of the word that came to Jonah from the Lord. Verse 2 tells us what that word of the Lord was. And verse 3 reveals to us Jonah's rebellion and that he does the opposite of what the Lord commanded, fleeing from the place where he was to declare the word of the Lord. And if you've noticed in verse 3, the name Tarshish is repeated three times. Tarshish, Tarshish, Tarshish. And it's making it emphatically clear that Jonah had resolved within himself to rebel against the God of Scripture. It wasn't that, oh, maybe the Lord is speaking to me, but I'm not sure. Maybe, you know, maybe I got it wrong. Maybe it's my feelings. Maybe, maybe it's just, you know, my sanity, I'm losing it. No, he had made it very clear that he was rebelling against the clear word of the Lord given to him by the Spirit of God. Now, all this, of course, came to light when Jonah was pressed by the sailors. Because though he only speaks a few but very powerful words in verse 9 when he's confronted by these sailors, when they're saying, What is this, what you have done? It's assumed that he explained, obviously, in great detail, what was actually transpiring, because the answer he gives in verse 9 doesn't explain the whole picture. So he would have explained it to them. And the writer, of course, of the book of Jonah is only going to highlight what is necessary for us to know because we already know the context. It's given to us in the verses prior to that. And so they understand that this prophet of God is fleeing from God, and he has brought this calamity upon everyone. And as you would expect from a book that is satirical in genre and marked by a strong use of irony, and though, again, remember, this is not a fictional work, this is not a mythological work, it's true historical, and so it's just the way that God put all these events together very beautifully. We find pagan sailors, so unbelievers, unrepentant sinners who had no knowledge really of the law of God and lived however they please and committed great atrocities unto God. We have these pagan sailors confronting the man of God, the prophet of God, Jonah, the son of Amitai, over his sin. So you know things are really bad when God uses unbelievers to call out your sin. I'm not sure if that's ever happened to you before, and I hope it never happens because it's quite a very humiliating experience. But of course, if the Lord does allow it to happen, it's for our sanctification. But if you've ever been in that situation where you've done something wrong or you're doing something wrong in whatever situation that might be, and then you have unbelievers who turn to you and say, Aren't you a Christian? You're supposed to do this and yet you're doing that? No, no, you know, the unbelieving world, they they hate God, they hate the gospel, they have a tendency, of course, a disposition to oppose the gospel, but there's an expectation from the unbelieving world that Christians will behave like Christians, that God's people will behave like God's people. And this is an occasion where pagan sailors realize that this man is not doing what is right before God, and they call him out. They call him out in his sin. So here too we see a genuine lament on the part of the sailors. By deciding to rebel against God, Jonah not only risked his own life, this is where they said, What have you done? And the reason they're saying this is not just because he sinned against God, but he was willing for a group of unsuspecting pagans to suffer along with him. It was just a Jonah demonstrated a total disregard for the lives of others. Now we have to understand Jonah contextually at this point because it helps us to understand the text we have this morning. He was what we might call a nationalist in the limited sense, that he didn't actually want to see any harm come upon his people, even while they walked in blatant sin. So hence he refused to proclaim judgment upon Nineveh because he knew that the Lord would show mercy if the Ninevites were to repent, and that the Assyrians would, of course, in the course of time, as the Lord appointed it, be used as an instrument of judgment against Israel. But alongside this, we also see a very clear disdain for those outside the covenant people of God, for those outside of Israel, for those who are not descendants of Abraham. Because by boarding a ship of pagan sailors, Jonah effectively reasoned that their lives were of really lesser value than those of God's covenant people. And so he regarded So as the Ninevites the same way. Thus he showed really little concern if these pagans suffered as a result of his rebellion. Well, at least they're not part of God's covenant people and just these other, you know, people who don't know anything what they're doing and they're evildoers, they're just, they'll perish along with me. So, you know, surely the situation would have been different had he been traveling with fellow Israelites. But it seems that he fled not only from the God of Israel or tried to flee from the God of Israel, he also fled from his own people because he didn't want the judgment that would fall upon him to fall upon his people. His concern for his people was, of course, genuine, but it was also tragically partial. But as we're going to see this book, while showing us how we ought not to be like Jonah, because the more you learn about Jonah and his heart motives, the more you're just disgusted by it. And you're just like, I just I do not want to be like that. It also reveals God's love for those who are outside his covenant people. And that's what this book reveals. God's love, in other words, for mankind, God's love for those of every nation in tongue. And here he foreshadows in this book and in this actual text that we have this morning, what he would accomplish to bring these people who don't know their right hand from their left, that's to say they don't have any discernment between what is right and wrong. What he would accomplish to bring these people into the covenant people of God in Jesus Christ. It's a foreshadowing, it's a prophetic foretelling of what is going to take place. And it's no wonder that Jesus referenced the prophet Jonah in his earthly ministry. It was a message as well to God's people, particularly to the Jewish elites, to the Pharisees, to the scribes, to those who had very distinct Jewish nationalist views, to view those outside of Israel as future participants in his kingdom, as future citizens of his kingdom, Gentiles who would sit at the same table as the patriarch Abraham and feasting with all his descendants. And so Jesus, by mentioning Jonah, doesn't just point to the sign of Jonah, which I'll touch on later, but also was trying to send a message that God loves not only Israel, but all who bear his image. Well, with that summary, we can now look to our text here specifically, looking now at verses 11 to 17. And as we're continuing this study, I can mention to you that in this particular text that we have this morning, we can discern five parts in the unfolding narrative. So we're going to consider the first part, which is found in verses 11 to 12. And it says, Then they said to him, What shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us? For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. And he said to them, Pick me up and hurl me into the sea, and then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you. Now these pagan sailors correctly assumed that there must be some way to appease the God of Israel, the God whom Jonah had angered. And so they inquired, you know, would it be by some means of animal sacrifice? Would it be by a pledge? Maybe it's by a vow? What could possibly stay God's wrath? They ask him. And Jonah answers, pick me up and throw me overboard into the sea to my death, and this will all stop. Because all of this is because of me. God is angry, particularly with me. Now, if these pagan sailors were anything like Jonah, they would have been very quick to just throw him overboard. They would have no disregard for his life, just threw him overboard. Because Jonah had shown no regard for their lives when he first decided to board the ship. But unlike Jonah, and this is the great contrast again, and the irony, they actually care about his life. They genuinely care about his life, so much so that they refuse even to consider the idea of throwing him overboard, even though the tempest was getting worse and worse. The storm was getting worse. Now, interestingly, though Jonah is clearly not a model that we should strive to imitate, at least when he's in rebellion, in this moment we see him finally express some concern for these pagan sailors. He must have had pity on them. And he offered them a solution to their problem. God is angry with me, just cast me off the boat. I'm not on the boat anymore. God's anger will not be on the boat anymore. It'll be on me and I'll be in the water. And that solution, of course, was just sacrifice me. Sacrifice me. It's interesting he doesn't say, I will sacrifice myself. He says, You must sacrifice me. You must throw me overboard. You know, Jonah could have jumped overboard himself. There was nothing keeping him. He wasn't bound, he didn't have any chains. There's nothing that could have kept him from just jumping off of the ship. But he must have reasoned that if he also, if he were to have done that, he would have angered the Lord, for he had no right to take his own life. Perhaps if these pagan sailors did it for him, he wouldn't be guilty of taking his own life. And the fault would actually lie with them. His blood would be on their hands, not on his own. And yet, these pagans were very wise and did not want to partake in such an act because they knew what this would entail. They didn't want blood on their hands. Now, for pagans, they were actually proving to be much more righteous than Jonah in this moment. It's amazing what we're witnessing here on the scene. And yet, in spite of all this, in spite of Jonah's rebellion and his stone-heartedness, we see a prophetic foreshadowing of what Christ would accomplish for those whom he calls his own. We might say that all of mankind is in that boat of earthly life, under the tempest of the wrath of God, knowing that when this life comes to an end, when the ship falls apart, divine judgment will follow and it will be eternal. But Christ, the Son of God, enters that boat. And unlike Jonah, he doesn't seek a way out of the will of God. Rather, in perfect agreement with the divine counsel of God, ordained by the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit before the foundation of the world, Christ offers his life as a ransom for many. He lays down his life for the salvation of all who believe. Here then we see the prophetic image of a self-sacrificing Savior. It's not Jonah, of course, it's Jesus Christ, whose death satisfies the wrath of God. Those who believe will be saved, those who do not will suffer God's just wrath over their sin. So we see here the prophetic image of the gospel. The second part that then follows in this unfolding narrative is verse 13. Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they couldn't, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. So, contrary to conventional wisdom, the sailors decide to row back to shore. And I say contrary to conventional wisdom. One, I'm not a sailor, so it's not my wisdom, but it's just the conventional wisdom of what's out there in maritime trade. The greatest threat in a storm, particularly something of a hurricane force, is not actually to be out at sea. It's to actually be near dry land or near the shore, near the harbor. Because there you'd be smashed to pieces by the force of the wind, the force of the waves, whatever uh the docks or whatever other protrusions there might be that would await them, perhaps even sandbanks that might be awaiting their boat as well. It was essentially to choose death. So, contrary to conventional wisdom, they decided to row back to shore. And they sought, in effect, to flee from the God who controls both sea and dry land, because they would rather attempt that than throw this man to his death. You know, they genuinely cared about Jonah's life, and they weren't really sure. Can we trust him? I mean, he came on this board with a certain agenda, with a certain intention, and it really was not to our benefit, and we're in this quandary and we asked for a solution. He's given us this outlandish solution. Can we really trust that what he says is true? Because if we throw him overboard and he dies, that might actually mean our death. We've killed the prophet of God. But as they would soon learn, much like Jonah himself, there is no running from God. There's no escaping from God, there is no escaping his presence. The more they tried, the worse it became. And it became increasingly clear a decision had to be made. Because if they didn't, it mean their deaths. So here then follows a third part in verse 14. Therefore they called out to the Lord, O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you. So faced with the judgment of God, these pagan sailors do what you would actually expect them least to do, to call out to the Lord. You know, what might we have expected if these are just general pagans? Well, you would have expected perhaps to curse the God of heaven and earth, to curse the God of Israel, to invoke the name of their own gods, or continue in their futility until death, thinking that they can somehow surpass and perhaps defy God. But no, that's actually not what they do. Instead, they humble themselves and they cry out to God for mercy. They have no choice but to heed what Jonah, the son of Amitai, the prophet of the Lord, had told them to do. They would indeed throw him overboard, but before doing so, they plead with the Lord. They asked that they not be found guilty for this act, that they not be charged with murder. For though Jonah had angered the Lord in their eyes, it wasn't right for them to cast him to his death. He was innocent to them in the sense that he hadn't done anything against them deserving of death. Now maybe we might disagree about that considering the quandary he placed them in. And yet you see this genuine care and love for this person, Jonah, whom they barely even knew. And so they cry out to God and ask him for mercy. You see, they recognize Jonah as a prophet. They recognize that there is no God like the God of Israel. Here is actually a very beautiful scene because if you think about it and you begin to peel the layers away like the layers of an onion, their paganism begins to wane. Begins to get washed away. Because they're not turning, they're not turning to their pagan gods. They're turning away from their pagan gods and they're turning to the true God of Israel. They're awakened from their stupor, from their sleep, and they confess, For you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you. Now there are other portions of Scripture where we read that the Lord does whatever he pleases. And texts such as these, they testify to God's sovereignty, to his power, to his dominion over all things. It testifies that there is none who can compare to the Lord, and none who can possibly compete with him. Now consider, for example, the text of Isaiah, chapter 46, verses 5 to 10, and I'll read it out for you. It says, To whom will you liken me and make me equal, and compare me that we may be alike? Those who lavish gold from their purse and weigh out silver in the scales hire a goldsmith and he makes it into a god, then they fall down in worship. They lift it to their shoulders, they carry it, they set it in its place, and it stands there. It cannot move from its place. If one cries to it, it does not answer or save him from his trouble. Remember this and stand firm. Recall it to mind, you transgressors, or you rebels. Remember the former things of old, for I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times, things not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose. You know, if we're talking about satire, we're talking about irony, and here we have the prophet Isaiah, God is speaking to the prophet Isaiah, and we see this literary device, and God really mocks the worship of false gods. And he's talking about these idol worshipers who take something that they consider precious, some precious metal, whether that's gold or silver, and they bring it to someone, another fellow human being in the trades, and they ask him to fashion it into a particular God, and then they have to carry that God because that God's not powerful enough to walk on its own. And then they prepare a space for its God because that God can't do anything to prepare a space for itself. And they place it down there, and then they began to cry to it for help or for mercy or for deliverance. And God is saying, Is this not idiocy? Is this not senseless to be turning to something that which cannot save, that which is lifeless, that which is dead, that which is nothing but a figment of imagination? There is no God like the God of Scripture, like the God of Israel. That is what this text is saying. That is what Isaiah says, that is what the pagans say here. The Egyptian gods have nothing on the true God, the Babylonian gods have nothing on the true God, the Assyrian and the Phoenician gods, they have nothing on the true God because they're all false gods. And we can say the same thing today: the God of Islam, the gods of Hinduism, the God of secularism, the God of Darwinism. All these different idols, whether they dress themselves in religious garb or irreligious garb, they are not God. They have nothing on the true God. They cannot deliver, they cannot save themselves, they cannot do anything for man aside from leading continuously into his own destruction created by his own sin. These are all false gods, they have no power, they have no status, they have no true existence apart from being figments of man's sin-tainted imagination. I believe it was Timothy Keller who said that the human mind is an idol factory. If it's not centered on Christ, it will just continue to produce and fabricate and produce and fabricate like a warehouse, like a production line, creating different types of idols. But scripture tells us there's only one God, and he does all his holy will. This was, in fact, a moment of conversion. We have something that you would normally see in the New Testament happening here in the Old Testament as a testimony of what's going to take place, what's going to be accomplished by Jesus Christ. So you have pagan soldiers in the moment of conversion. Consider the fourth part, verses 15 to 16 of the text. It says, So they picked up Jonah and they hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. And then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. Salvation came that day upon those sailors in the ship. Salvation came to those sailors in the ship. And we have maybe a lot to say about Jonah's rebellion, about his disobedience, but we cannot doubt the sovereignty of God. And we cannot think that he cannot accomplish his will because of us sinners. We can't do anything to object, to obstruct the will of God. Even in his rebellion, God worked out all these events in such a way that those pagan sailors came to saving faith. And that's how we ought to understand this text, because it's here that they witness that we witnessed their salvation. They witnessed their salvation. They threw Jonah overboard and the storm ceased. It must have dissipated almost immediately. And instead of returning to their pagan ways, instead of saying, well, that's great, we got out of that, now we can go back to our own way of life. We read here that they feared the Lord exceedingly. In other words, they recognized them as the true God, the only God worthy of their worship and their praise. And that's made clear by the fact that they offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and clearly, on the one hand, out of thanksgiving for their salvation, but also in repentance for their sins. And they would have made vows unto God. It doesn't go into great detail, but it doesn't take very much to know. They would have said, Lord, we will worship you and you alone. All of our gods, they haven't done anything for us in the past. No, you are the only one who has ever answered our prayer and revealed yourself in such glory and majesty and power. In other words, they recognized him as the true God, the only God worthy of their worship and praise. I mean, how else should we interpret such vows? How else could they meet they mean what they would, and that they would worship no other God but the true God of Israel? As Jacques Elul writes in his book, The Judgment of Jonah, what counts is that this story is in reality the precise intimation of an infinitely vaster story, and one which concerns us directly. What Jonah could not do, but his attitude announces, is done by Jesus Christ. He it is who accepts total condemnation. It is solely because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that the sacrifice of Jonah avails, that it fulfills its purpose. There's a fifth section that follows now, and which will one which will uh set up the second chapter of Jonah, verses 17. And it says, And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Now the sailors thought that they had thrown Jonah to his death. But unbeknownst to them, Jonah's life would be spared. God had preordained, that is to say, he had appointed, he had established before time a great fish to swallow him up. Now, this here is often where the caricatures begin. As you remember when we first started in the introduction, we talked about how Jonah was often caricatured. Very similar to how the Noah's flood and Noah's Ark is often caricatured in a lot of literature, whether it's Christian or even uh or even secular. And this is actually what we see here as well in Jonah. Many tend to take this text and they say, well, it's either a fairy tale story or it's mythological, or we or if they claim to be Christians, they'll say, Well, it's not really historical, it must be symbolic and poetic, and a lot of hyperbole here is that didn't actually take place. But this is where it begins. Now, what here we read big fish, and when we do, most people immediately think of maybe a giant tuna or a bass or something of that sort of nature, right? A big fish in a very literal sense, because whales aren't fish. Uh, but that's not what the ancient Hebrew text actually means. The the Hebrew for great fish in this verse is dagol. The term dag, D-A-G, is a broad category, all right? It's not a specific zoological term. And so it can, we can re uh it could really refer to any large aquatic creature. It's not specifically a type of species, uh, it's a very broad category. The adjective gadol that's used here actually merely intensifies the description. In other words, it emphasizes the vast magnitude of the creature. It's not just a creature, it's a massive creature. It is massive, great. Now, we read this and um probably in line of what a lot of people have thought. Some have suggested that it was a whale, not a fish, that must have swallowed Jonah. But that's not necessarily the case. Uh now it's true that there was no specific Hebrew word for whale. The association actually comes from later translation traditions, such as uh the Greek in the Septuagint, that is to say, the Greek uh translation of the Old Testament and in the Gospel of Matthew. Uh there we see, we we we there that's where the tradition generally begins of associating this creature with a whale. But if we want to narrow down what kind of creature this may have been, we can rule out a few options. If we think of a whale, we might immediately think of a blue whale. I mean, blue whales technically are the largest creature in the seas. They're massive, they're huge. If you've ever seen their bone structure in a museum or any sort of natural history place, you'll realize just how massive these creatures are. And they have a massive mouth. There's no question about that. Its throat, but here's the problem: its throat is only about around 10 inches wide. A person's not going to fit through a throat that wide, at least not alive. So it really would not have been able to swallow a person whole, regardless of how large the whale actually is. A killer whale would not be feasible either, it's not large enough, nor most other whales, except maybe the sperm whale, which could theoretically swallow a person whole, but its internal space actually may be too restrictive. There's also no clear indication that sperm whales commonly swallow prey whole in this way, that it would actually swallow a person whole. Now, if we limit ourselves to marine creatures alive today, it's actually difficult to identify such a creature, but we can't deny the historicity of this account. We can't dismiss it. We can't say it's symbolical. But if we expand the parameters to include marine reptiles, one particular candidate emerges that could easily swallow a person whole and whose stomach would actually be sufficiently large, and moreover, we have accompanying fossil evidence precisely of this kind of feeding behavior of swallowing living things whole, the Mosasaur. Now, if we take scripture as the ultimate authority for all knowledge, and that it provides us with the parameters for how we ought to understand the world, then we take seriously enough its testimony regarding creation. On that basis, what we are what we often call prehistoric creatures would have been created alongside other creatures of the earth during the creation week. And the reason that we don't find, for example, the term dinosaur in scripture is simply because the word wasn't coined until about the 19th century. Prior to that, such creatures would have been referred to more generally as just general part of the creation order, as aquatic creatures or sea creatures or land creatures. And there is, in fact, one instance in scripture where a description may fit that of a large land creature, a sauropod, the behemoth in the book of Job, chapter 40, verses 15 to 24. Again, that's not symbolic, that's historical. And another where a description may actually fit that of a powerful marine creature, a marine reptile that we would consider perhaps prehistoric, the Leviathan. And that's also described in Job chapter 41, verses 1 to 34. So if such creatures existed in Job's time as part of God's creation, then it's not unreasonable to consider that there may have been remnants that existed after the flood, even into the time of Jonah during the reign of King Jeroboam II. Now, admittedly, we have accounts across ancient cultures of dragons and great sea creatures, and while they're often exaggerated and they are often dismissed as myth, one could argue that they actually reflect encounters with creatures now extinct, perhaps due to changes in the earth climate, very distinctly different from the world before the flood. And if you if you have a hard time understanding, perhaps believing this, well, consider this, for example. Are you familiar with the coalacanth? The coalacanth is a very specific prehistoric fish. It was a so-called prehistoric fish, known only from fossils, until it was discovered alive in 1938 off the coast of South Africa, and then a second species found in 1997 near Indonesia. So then why not a massive marine creature such as this? Now, whatever this creature was, it was real, it was not mythical, it was historical, and it had been appointed by God to swallow Jonah whole and to keep him in its stomach for three days and three nights. A supernatural occurrence, especially considering the lack of oxygen and the presence of stomach acids. And yet God preserved the life of Jonah. And this is the text to which Jesus refers when he speaks of his own death and his resurrection. Just as Jonah was in the belly of the Dagadol, the great, this great massive creature, for three days and three nights, so Jesus would lie in the tomb dead for three days before rising again. You see, when the Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign in order to authenticate who he claimed to be and that all that he taught was true, he said, An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. And he was referring to his death and being dead for three days and rising from the dead on the third day. Why would Jesus die? Well, we know this, for the salvation of all those whom we would call his people, those who would confess his name and believe in him. In closing, and in reflection on our scriptural text of the questions posed to Jonah, we ought to ask ourselves: who are we? If we're in Christ, we're God's covenant people. What has God commanded us to do? To glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And how exactly do we do this? How exactly do we glorify God and enjoy him forever? Well, firstly by believing in Christ, the Son of God, whom he had sent, by repenting of our sin, much like these pagan sailors had done. By obeying his law, unlike Jonah, who disobeyed the word of the Lord, by worshiping him according to his word. That is to say, turning aside from all idol worship, turning aside from all antithetical contrary philosophies that do not comport with the word of God. By loving God and our neighbor, well, clearly Jonah was not doing either of the two. By pursuing holiness and by persevering to the end. By these things we glorify God in all of life. By these things we glorify God in all of life, and we enjoy him forever. As the late American Christian philosopher H. Evan Renner put it, and I love repeating this, life is religion. You see, the moment we came to faith, as these pagan sailors did on that boat, everything changed. Our lives were once lived religiously in service to the lie, in service to the kingdom of darkness. But in Christ, our lives are now to be lived religiously. That is to say, in cultic worship, in praise and adoration, in service to the truth. To the one who created the heavens and the earth, to the one who made the dry land and the seas and all that is in them. To the one who is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. Let's not be like Jonah. That's the message that we're going to see throughout this book. Let's not be like Jonah. Let's instead be like these sailors who humble themselves before God and cried out to him. Because God will not ignore those who cry out to him for grace and mercy. Those who call upon the name of Jesus with humble and earnest hearts, he will hear. And praise God, praise God that he works all things together for the good of his people. I mean, just think about it. What a comfort it is to know this very fact that our unfaithfulness, that our moments of disobedience and rebellion cannot derail the will of God. Just as much as we cannot contribute to it and think to ourselves that we might credit ourselves with what is solely God's doings. No, He will accomplish and always accomplish all His holy will. And you and I are the benefit beneficiaries of that holy will. Praise be to God. Let us pray. Lord Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of your word and just the massive and precious jewel that it is for us, Lord, for we see it almost like a diamond. We see so many different aspects of it from different angles, and we are able to discern so much and just see the beauty of it. And Lord, there's a message there for us to see. There's a message for us to grasp. And Lord, we thank you for your word is made clear to us. Lord, let us not be like Jonah in any way. If there is any hardness of heart, Lord God, or impartiality within us, if there's anything in us that displeases you, we pray, O Holy Spirit, reveal to us and purge it from us. Remove it from us, burn it with fire, sanctify us, so that we may reflect your image and not the distorted image of us before we came to faith. Lord, we pray, remove sin from our lives. Remove that tendency, that this that uh tendency to turn to it, that disposition to sin. Remove it, Lord. Remove us from us any carnal desires, remove from us any idle worship, anything that comes to our minds, whether it's overtly or ex or uh very explicitly idolatrous or not, Lord, help us to protect our hearts and our worship, to guard our worship so that we do not offer up strange fire, but rather that we may offer true worship from the altar of our hearts. Lord, we pray, as these pagan sailors did, have grace and mercy upon us. Forgive us all our sin. Cleanse us, O Lord, and make us righteous in you as you have done, and fill us with your spirit, O God. And help us to proclaim this gospel message to those who do not know. Help us to persevere, Lord, even when things are hard. Help us to remain steady in the faith and to fulfill what you've commanded us to do even if we don't like it. Because you've called us to do it, and we will we will come to realize that when we do what you've called us to do, we will actually find great joy, for we do it out of love for you. Help us to crucify the flesh and to live in the spirit. Help us, Lord God, to walk in a straight line in the path of truth. And we pray, Lord, for those who may be sick in the church, for those who may uh may be going through difficult times and times of need, Lord, draw near to them, help them, bless them, and help your church grow, we pray. In your name we pray, Lord Jesus Christ. Amen and Amen.

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