The whole sermon, to read
The Hound of Heaven and the Salvation of the Outsiders
Jonah's Disobedience and the Salvation of the Gentiles
Now, let us read the Word together. Our passage is the book of Jonah chapter one, verses four through seventeen. This is our third sermon in the series.
Do you know arrowroot? The more you chew arrowroot, the sweeter it tastes. It is just like beef bone broth. The longer you simmer bone broth, the richer the flavor becomes. You know, we might think we already know this passage, but the deeper we look into the Word, the more endless it truly is. Please do not think of it as simply a familiar story. Instead, let us read and listen together with great expectation for what God wants to say to us today. I will read one verse, and you will read the next.
Then the Lord hurled a violent wind upon the sea, and such a great tempest arose that the ship threatened to break apart.
The sailors were terrified, and each man cried out to his own god. They threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.
The captain approached him and said, "How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Perhaps your god will take notice of us so that we will not perish."
Then the sailors said to one another, "Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this disaster." They cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.
So they asked him, "Tell us, who is to blame for this calamity on us? What is your line of work? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?"
He answered, "I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land."
This terrified them greatly, and they asked him, "What have you done?" They knew he was running away from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so.
The sea was growing rougher and rougher. So they said to him, "What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?"
"Pick me up and throw me into the sea," he replied, "and it will become calm. I know that it is because of me that this fierce storm has come upon you."
Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder against them.
Then they cried out to the Lord, "Please, Lord, do not let us perish for taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable for shedding innocent blood, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased."
Then they took Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the raging sea grew calm.
At this, the men feared the Lord greatly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.
Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the fish. Amen.
Yes. You know, in the history of medicine, there are many cases where an unintended side effect, something quite unwelcome at first, turned out to be remarkably useful. Because that side effect proved far more effective for a completely different condition, the drug became what people call a massive hit.
Do you know Botox? Is there anyone here who has had Botox? We usually think of Botox as an injection used in plastic surgery or dermatology to smooth out wrinkles. But in reality, Botox comes from a potent toxin found in decaying food and soil. It is a toxin called botulinum. It is an extremely lethal poison. Originally, this deadly toxin was used in ophthalmology for patients suffering from eyelid spasms, to correct crossed eyes or to stop uncontrollable eye twitching.
Then, a Canadian eye doctor was injecting this botulinum toxin around a patient's eye and noticed that the frown lines between the eyebrows suddenly disappeared. Her husband happened to be a dermatologist. Taking note of this effect, he recognized its potential for wrinkle reduction, and cosmetic doctors began using it in earnest.
Have you heard of Mounjaro or Wegovy, which are so popular these days? People call them weight loss drugs. But originally, they were diabetes medications. They are protein hormone injections developed to treat diabetes, but in the course of treatment, doctors discovered that patients were losing significant weight. So today, they are widely used as obesity treatments rather than just diabetes drugs.
People look at these discoveries and say that the side effects of medicine are a gift to humanity. But when you look closely, our salvation actually shares this very same dynamic. We are currently reading the book of Jonah. It shows Jonah's disobedience, a contest between God and Jonah. Yet Jonah's disobedience ended up bringing salvation to pagan sailors. The disobedience of Israel opened the door for the Gentiles to receive the opportunity for obedience, salvation, and repentance first. Beloved church family, this is how we were saved by grace. There is an ancient saying about a third party gaining an unexpected benefit from someone else's conflict, and our salvation is very much like that.
The apostle Paul calls this the mystery of the gospel. In Romans chapters nine through eleven, Paul explains that God tried so persistently to persuade Israel, but Israel remained stubborn to the end, just like Jonah here, even going so far as to put God's own Son, Jesus Christ, to death. Therefore, God caused the gospel of grace, the gospel of Jesus Christ, to be heard by the Gentiles first, granting salvation to the Gentiles first, so that Israel would see it, become envious, and ultimately be saved in the end times. This is the mystery of the gospel that the apostle Paul realized, and that is why Paul sought to go to the ends of the earth to proclaim the gospel. Only when the Gentiles are saved first, when outsiders like us receive salvation first, will Israel be saved in the end, bringing the kingdom of God to its fullness.
From Fear of Storms to Awe of God
Now, we can see the shadow of this gospel of grace in the book of Jonah. Over the past two weeks, we looked closely at Jonah chapter one, verses four through seventeen. First, we saw how persistently God pursued Jonah in love, giving him opportunities of grace. He stirred up that great tempest, granting him the grace of affliction to give him an opportunity for repentance. He sent the captain so that what would happen? So that Jonah would remember the word he had received and come to his senses: "Get up and call on your God!" God helped him realize his condition through that word. When even that did not work, lots were cast so that Jonah was chosen, revealing God's providence. As I mentioned before, when coincidences layer upon coincidences, they become providence. Through providence, God worked to bring Jonah back. When even that was not enough, God granted the grace of having the sailors question him so that his true identity would be revealed. This is the relentlessly pursuing love of God, moving just like The Hound of Heaven.
Yet, as we saw last week, Jonah met that love with stubborn, persistent disobedience. When he ran away, he went down into the hold of the ship, hiding in a safe space born of his own desire for security, evading God in blatant disobedience. At the same time, not only did he sleep soundly in his private sanctuary, but he also held onto his religious pride, declaring, "I am a Hebrew who worships the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." And in the end, as we will see, he went so far as to say, "Throw me into the sea." His religious pride led to total despair, resulting in reckless disobedience. His heart constantly said, "I would rather die than go preach to Nineveh! Throw me over. If I am gone, that settles it." That was his attitude.
Now, while Jonah's persistent disobedience and God's relentless love were colliding, who gained the unexpected blessing of salvation? It was the Gentiles who came to know God, the outsiders. All of God's means of grace and means of mercy, originally deployed to turn Jonah around, were applied to the Gentile sailors instead. As a result, those pagan sailors called on the name of the Lord, feared the Lord even more, offered sacrifices and made vows, coming to fear and revere God in genuine repentance, displaying the reality of salvation.
Henri Nouwen wrote a book titled Reaching Out. Please make sure to read it sometime. Drawing upon that theme, I want us to look at Jonah chapter one, verses four through seventeen as the spiritual reach of these Gentiles, as a picture of our own spiritual journey, and reflect together on this question: "How much grace have we received, and what does it truly mean that we have received grace here?"
Look at this, everyone. It may seem like a story we already know, but what happened at first? The sailors feared the storm, but later they feared God. Jonah claimed that he was someone who feared God, yet the ones who truly feared God were the Gentiles, the sailors. Applying this to our lives, we often worry about and fear the storms of this world, illnesses, money, and other people's opinions, but what happens in the end? We are transformed into people who revere God, who truly fear Him with a pure and complete awe.
Second, these men tried everything imaginable to escape the storm. They threw cargo overboard, they cast lots, they did it all. Looking at them throwing things overboard, they eventually had to cast out Jonah, the root of the problem, before they could truly know God. In the same way, we must throw out the Jonah buried deep in the bottom of the ship, the pride like Jonah lodged deep in our hearts, the sins and misplaced ambitions deeply rooted within us, before we can encounter the living God. When we empty ourselves, God fills us. When we cast things out, God meets us personally, becoming our satisfaction, our joy, our hope, and our strength. Amen. This sounds easy in words, but it is not easy at all. Because what we must cast out are our own fixed ideas, our common sense, all of those deeply held assumptions.
Third, these sailors cast lots, didn't they? And what was casting lots? It was the method common in pagan religions of that time, relied upon to discover fate, to figure out what the divine will might be. Yet those pagan sailors who cast lots ended up calling on the name of the Lord God and worshiping Him. Idolaters abandoned their idols, gave up casting lots, and stood as true worshipers who confessed that they would serve only the living God.
Isn't that who we are? We were all people like that once, but just like those redeemed Gentile sailors, God has transformed us into true worshipers, people who cling to God alone, find total satisfaction in God alone, and revere Him. Hallelujah! Beloved church family, this is the gospel in the book of Jonah.
So as we examine this step by step, we see what kind of people we used to be and how God is seeking to transform us. Remember what I said? How should we read the book of Jonah, or any prophetic book? We must look through them as a mirror or a window. What is the mirror? It shows us ourselves. Seeing Jonah's unbelief, Jonah's stubbornness, and Jonah's sin, we see what has been deeply rooted inside us. And what does the window show? It shows God's grace. It reveals God's determination to make us, just like those Gentile sailors, into true worshipers, into people of reverent awe who are completely satisfied with God alone, the grace He will grant us in the days ahead. That is what we look toward. God called us in Jesus so that we might become people like this.
Moving from Instinct to Faith
Now, let us examine where we begin and how we are taking, or ought to be taking, these spiritual steps forward.
The first step is that we must move from an instinctive, common-sense reaction to a response of faith. What is an instinctive reaction? In verses four and five, the text says that the Lord hurled a violent wind upon the sea, and the tempest threatened the ship. As I mentioned before, the word for threatening here is personified. That means many of the trials we face in life present themselves to us almost as an active, personal presence. That is how the book of Jonah portrays it. This tempest was not merely an ordinary weather pattern caused by natural sea winds. It was a storm sent by God with a distinct purpose. Therefore, it was an affliction that could never be resolved by human common sense, professional expertise, or practical experience. Hallelujah!
Yet how did they try to solve it? They tried to resolve it through their training, through their past experience and common sense. What did they do? Let us read verse five together.
The sailors were terrified, and each man cried out to his own god. They threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.
Now, as long as Jonah was fast asleep deep in the hold, no matter how much cargo they threw overboard from the deck, the danger would not pass. The heart of the problem was down below, yet without understanding the root of the issue, they simply threw out equipment according to their best common sense. This is precisely what we call a common-sense reaction.
In a crisis, a common-sense reaction never exposes the heart of the problem, the core values buried deep within us. You see, hardship and adversity have a way of revealing the central values a person truly trusts in when a crisis hits. In ordinary times, everyone seems kind, everyone seems faithful, everyone seems thoughtful and mature. But when a genuine crisis strikes, that is when a person's true colors come out. What they truly believe in is exposed.
Here, the true problem, Jonah, was lying deep below, while on deck they relied on their common sense, calling on the names of their gods and using their seafaring skills and sailor know-how to dump cargo overboard. Why? Because lightening the ship is supposed to keep it from sinking, right? Yet even after tossing the gear, though the ship did not sink, the tempest did not cease. It just kept spinning them around in circles in the exact same spot. That was the real problem.
This is what happens when our instinctive, common-sense, experience-based reactions fail to resolve our troubles. When we hit that wall, what must we do? We must recognize the deeper spiritual cause beneath it all. First, we actually need to be thankful that things are not working out. Be thankful! Imagine if the storm had been brought under control through their instincts and common sense, and they had sailed right out of it. Would they ever have sought God? Not at all. They would never have sought God.
Look at the disciples in Mark chapter four when they encountered a tempest on the Sea of Galilee. What did they do? They too did everything they could to push through the storm. Why? Because among them were professional fishermen, Peter, John, and James, men who had spent their entire lives catching fish, who surely believed they knew the Sea of Galilee inside and out. They must have thought, "A storm like this is something we can manage." Yet after exhausting all their common sense, their strength, and every resource they had, nothing worked. In the end, what did they do? They woke Jesus up: "Teacher, do you not care that we are about to drown?"
Beloved, spiritual formation, the training of our faith, is nothing other than falling flat on our faces before God the moment affliction strikes. It is not writing our own common-sense answer inside the brackets and asking God to sign off on it in prayer. It is leaving the brackets completely empty and falling prostrate before God. If the disciples had sought Jesus first, the whole situation would have been different.
In any case, this is how it goes for all of us. When our experience fails us, what should we expect next? We must understand that God permits the afflictions and storms of life to open a fresh pathway, to reveal an entirely new kind of answer to us. You know, this is hard. Things are not working, but they do not seem to be resolving either. That is truly difficult, isn't it?
Think about it. We will all encounter this storm at least once in our lives. But when we meet it, will it become an avenue through which we experience God in a fresh way, or not? That is where faith is determined. When we recognize this as grace, we encounter God more deeply and in a new way. But when we respond merely out of instinct, common sense, and past experience, we will never meet God.
God is standing behind the storm. This is not a problem that can be solved by experience or instinctive reactions. That is why we must stop stubbornly presenting our common-sense solutions to God. Instead, we must look to God first and cry out to Him. We must see this as grace and ask, "This affliction is grace to me. What is God trying to do? What will of God, what character of God, is He seeking to reveal to me through this suffering?" That is what we must consider. And it is for this very reason that God chose and called us first in Jesus Christ.
From Religious Coping to Revelation
Now, what reaction do the people show next? Having exhausted all their options to no avail, they say, "Let us cast lots." Let us read verse seven together.
Then the sailors said to one another, "Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this disaster." They cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.
By this point, the sailors realized that their own experience and knowledge offered no way out of this tempest. Yet the ship was neither sinking nor escaping. Feeling completely trapped, as though boxed in by the storm, they thought, "This must be fate. We are trapped in this tempest by some transcendent power." In that moment, what did these Gentiles turn to? They turned to casting lots. Recognizing a transcendent power, an unseen destiny, they prepared to submit to that fate. That is what casting lots was all about. And this is the second stage we must move beyond: a purely religious reaction.
From this point on, a path opens up where faith can begin to emerge. When we listen to testimonies, don't we often hear stories very similar to these sailors? People say, "I tried everything, and when nothing worked, I finally turned to God, and my problem was solved." Now, if finding that solution leads you to discover God, that is wonderful. But if your journey ends simply because the problem is resolved, you have not truly met God.
So at this stage, we must not stop at merely sensing that there is some transcendent power out there beyond this world, some divine entity. Knowing God Himself is what truly matters. At this stage, coming to know God properly is far more crucial than simply getting the problem solved. Otherwise, we end up endlessly rubbing our hands together in superstitious bargaining, stuck in a transactional, blessing-seeking religion. Do you know why people go to fortune-tellers or shamans? Because they sense that there is some fate, some providence, some unseen force governing this world, and they want to decipher it. They want to lean on it. So they set out a bowl of clean water and bow repeatedly, bargaining for good fortune.
Our faith is not that kind of religion, is it? We know that Jesus is the answer, and we know that Jesus, as the personal Son of God, is in relationship with us and continues to guide us. The reason the sailors were afraid was because they sensed this mysterious power of fate.
And then, their fear deepens even further. What are they afraid of? The lots are cast, and Jonah is chosen. When Jonah introduces himself, who does he introduce? He says, "I am a Hebrew," and in verse nine, "I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." Now, for the very first time, these Gentile sailors come to know God. This is the gospel, isn't it? When God was introduced to them through Jonah, they realized that the Lord God of heaven was the very one who stirred up this storm and was pursuing Jonah, and they were filled with fear. Notice how the nature of their fear shifts. Instead of merely fearing the storm, they now fear the great, transcendent power who is the Lord God Himself. They realize who He is and tremble.
Yet they cannot stop there either. That transcendent God who exists out there must become personal to me. At this moment, these Gentile sailors still do not have a personal relationship with the Lord God. For now, they are simply terrified. And without that relationship, things only become more dire.
Even so, a remarkable reversal takes place here. Jonah professes with his lips that he fears God, yet as he runs away in his stubbornness, he does not actually fear God at all. On the other hand, these Gentile sailors, who had never known God before, are struck with genuine awe before the transcendent yet personal power of God. Looking at the circumstances, they recognize that this is God. Even so, He was not yet their God. He was not yet my God. They had advanced from fearing the storm to fearing the great God, the Lord, who commands the storm.
What we must realize here is this: if we hear the word of revelation and still live in terror of the storm, still fear people, still fear money, and still fear our future, then we are in a worse state than those Gentile sailors. Those sailors heard Jonah's word of revelation, heard about the God Jonah described, and believed. They came to understand their fear in light of the fear of God. As a result, they feared God behind the storm far more than the storm itself.
Yet if we hear the word of revelation today and fail to grasp that God is awesome, great, and magnificent, greater than Nineveh, greater than any evil, the one who sends the great storm and brings about a great and holy dread, if we do not realize how great our God is, then we will continue to fear the world, fear the storm, fear money, walk on eggshells around people, and constantly fret about whether our future plans will succeed.
When they reached that point, God did not leave them there. Because Jonah remained stubborn, God extended grace to people like us, those sailors, in order to bring Jonah to repentance. Through that grace, they transitioned from a mere religious reaction to a response of revelation. They progressed from a common-sense reaction to a religious reaction, and from a religious reaction to a response of revelation.
Beyond Human Conscience to Total Surrender
Next comes the response of conscience. What does this response look like? Having realized the truth, they were filled with fear, yet the storm grew even wilder. So they asked, "What should we do to you?" And Jonah replied, "Pick me up and throw me into the sea." He could have simply jumped in himself, but he insisted on being picked up and thrown by Gentile hands. That came from Jonah's pride.
He added, "I know that it is because of me that this fierce storm has come upon you." How did the men respond to this? Verse thirteen shows what might very well be our own reaction. Let us read verse thirteen together.
Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder against them.
This is precisely the response of our human conscience. Beloved, this is often our final stronghold. Among all people, the hardest group to bring to faith in Jesus Christ are those like the Pharisees, who believe their conscience is clean, upright, and entirely righteous. It is so difficult for them to accept Jesus. You must realize you are a sinner to need Jesus; you must recognize your brokenness to need Jesus. But because these people already feel somewhat confident and righteous in themselves, it is extraordinarily difficult. What was the conscience of these sailors telling them? They asked for a solution, and Jonah said, "Throw me in." But they thought, "We cannot possibly throw Jonah into the sea!" So what did they do? They rowed with all their might.
They had been given the clear answer that removing Jonah would cause the storm to subside, yet they could not bring themselves to accept it. Measuring everything against their own standard of thought, they decided, "We must not do that," and rowed with all their strength.
Their own standard of thinking failed to grasp the divine revelation and the wrestling taking place between God and Jonah. So they rowed frantically toward the shore. In Hebrew, there is a very interesting expression here. It literally means digging into the dry ground. Have you ever heard the expression about digging pointlessly with a shovel? Rather than simply rowing, it conveys the idea of digging into the sea as if digging into the earth. That is how intensely they strained.
It was just like having an outboard motor running right in front of you while you desperately try to row in reverse. They were fighting directly against the sea. Have you ever tried swimming in the ocean? When I was young, I learned to swim in a pool, and later I went out to swim in the ocean. The waves kept crashing in, and even though I was swimming with all my might and taking beautiful strokes, I was not moving forward at all. I stayed in the exact same spot. I truly understand how those sailors felt. You see, this is so painful. It feels just like our lives when we pour out tremendous effort, only to remain stuck in the exact same place.
Why does this happen? It happens because they took Jonah's revelation merely as the word of a man. They judged it by their own human conscience. Their conscience had been improperly formed, and their worldview and values were not built upon the Scriptures. So when the word of God came straight to them, they sat in judgment over God's word with their own human thinking. Jonah said, "Pick me up and throw me in." That was God's revelation! Yet out of their own religious conscience, they protested, "Oh, we cannot do that!" and rowed furiously to solve it themselves.
This is what it looks like to shut out the Word and refuse to receive it. It means saying, "I will only accept words that do not offend my conscience." People like that find it very hard to believe in Jesus. People just like me. That is why the book of James warns, "Not many of you should become teachers." Those who think they know a great deal, who believe they have vast experience, often find it far more difficult to accept God's revelation. Why? Because they only want to pick and choose the words that suit their own standards. We call that being a picky eater, and people do the exact same thing with the Word of God.
In the end, completely exhausted, they finally raised their hands in surrender before God. These men had failed to realize that their poorly trained conscience was judging the Word of God, placing their own conscience above the Word. That is why, when told to throw him overboard, they rowed with all their might. When told to leave, we sit down and stay. When told to let go and release, we keep clutching tightly. When told to fall on our knees and pray, we feel compelled to run around and meet someone. This is a profound spiritual problem. Instead of responding to God's word in faith, we react out of our own conscience, our common sense, and our personal standards.
When things reached that point, God gave them grace to take another step forward. They finally reached the end of their conscience-driven striving. As the tempest grew even fiercer, they finally threw up their hands. Let us read verse fourteen together.
Then they cried out to the Lord, "Please, Lord, do not let us perish for taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable for shedding innocent blood, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased." Amen.
Beloved church family, please remember this prayer well. You need to compare this brief prayer carefully with Jonah's lengthy prayer in chapter two. Right here, these men finally offer a genuine prayer. Why? Because every single thought and every effort of their own had been completely blocked, leaving them no choice but to cry out sincerely before God. This is an earnest prayer, and this is true prayer: abandoning all of my thoughts, my methods, and my ways, and surrendering my will to the will of God. "Not as I will, but as you will, Father." That is what prayer is. That is the secret to answered prayer.
True Prayer, Radical Obedience, and Genuine Worship
God sent the storm in pursuit of Jonah, and God caused the lot to fall on Jonah. But now, the sailors have no choice but to plead directly with God themselves, directly. Through this prayer, beloved, these sailors finally call God the Lord God, their own God. Not just the God they heard about from Jonah, not the God of their parents, not the pastor's God, but my God, my Lord and my God, our God. That is how they can now address Him. Why? Because if they do not, they will die.
So look at where these sailors began. In verse five, each of them called out to his own idol, to the name of his own god, but here they cry out, "O Lord." Whose name is the Lord? It is the covenant name given to Israel. It is the privileged name of revelation given uniquely to Israel. Yet here are Gentiles taking that very name and confessing Him as their personal, transcendent Lord: "O Lord, God, the Lord God."
Jonah does not call on the name of the Lord here, does he? Jonah refuses to pray all the way through this scene. He will not pray until he is deep in the belly of the fish. He just will not pray. If it were me, I would have prayed long before this, but he refuses. Yet who is praying? The Gentiles are praying! Jonah will not cry out, so who cries out? The Gentiles cry out! And what do they say? "We plead and plead with you." That captures the intense, desperate nuance of the Hebrew text.
Think about this. They pray, "Do not hold us accountable for shedding innocent blood." Why do they say that? Because in those days, many capricious pagan gods were thought to be appeased in a storm through human sacrifice. Even today in parts of Southeast Asia and elsewhere, there are ancient tales of human sacrifice, like the well-known story of Shimcheong, where a person is thrown into the waters as an offering to calm the sea god. But these Gentiles do not treat the Lord like that. They are saying, "We are not throwing this man in as a human sacrifice to appease a storm god. You are not that kind of god." They recognize who He truly is.
They do not treat the Lord God like an idol. They openly confess that what they are doing is not a pagan human sacrifice. That is why they say, "Do not charge us with innocent blood. Throwing him in is not an act of human sacrifice to calm the storm."
Furthermore, they are not taking God's place to execute Jonah. Jonah wanted that. Instead of jumping into the sea himself, he said, "Pick me up and throw me in." He meant, "You do it with your own hands. I will give up in despair through your hands, without getting blood on my own hands." But the words that should have come from Jonah's mouth from the very beginning now come from the mouths of these sailors: "Do not hold us accountable for shedding innocent blood." And then they say it again: "O Lord, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased." Beloved church family, this is the central theme of the entire book of Jonah.
Salvation belongs to the Lord. Amen. It is God who chooses who receives salvation and who receives mercy. So even Nineveh, people whom Jonah believed fully deserved to die, are people to whom God can extend grace. Salvation rests in God's sovereignty; salvation belongs to God. And what do these men confess? The confession of faith that should have come from Jonah's lips is this: "Do as you desire, according to your will. You alone are the Lord who does whatever pleases you." That is the exact translation of the original Hebrew. "You alone." The emphasis is right there. What does that mean? It means these pagan sailors are able to address God as "You," as a personal Being. This is the gospel given to us: that we can address God face to face as our Father, and that we can pray following the teaching of Jesus, "Your will be done." Isn't that the true confession of faith? Hallelujah!
Through this confession that salvation and judgment belong entirely to God, these Gentile sailors finally come to believe in God as their very own God.
If we do not grasp this, we cannot understand the story of Mary either. When the angel came to Mary and said that a virgin would conceive, that was a terrifying word. If Mary had objected, saying, "How is that even possible? I cannot do that. I am not even married! How can an unmarried virgin bear a child?" if she had refused like that, the story would have gone quite differently, or God would have found another woman. But what did Mary say? "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me according to your word."
Now look, the Gentile sailors obey. In verse fifteen, they took Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the raging sea grew calm.
In complete contrast to Jonah, these men confess their faith, call upon God, cry out to God, acknowledge His sovereignty by saying, "Lord God, you alone do as you please," and then they obey. They are the exact opposite of Jonah. When God told Jonah to go, Jonah ran away in the other direction. But what about these men? When Jonah says, "Pick me up and throw me in," they actually pick him up and throw him in.
Believing that they are not the judges, but that God is the one at work, they do something completely contrary to their own conscience, their common sense, and their seafaring experience: they pick up a man and throw him into the sea.
Beloved, this is what a true response to God's revelation looks like. It came out as an act of obedience, the act of throwing him in. What did they throw out earlier? They threw out the cargo. That was done according to their own will. Now, doing the same physical action of throwing, they throw Jonah according to God's will. The physical action looks similar, but whether you throw according to your own will or according to God's will makes all the difference. When we go out into the world, we may look very similar to everyone else. But whether we eat according to God's will, speak according to God's will, and live according to God's will, that is where the real difference lies.
No matter how wonderful the Word sounds, if we do not lay down our own thoughts and receive it in obedience, our prayers will remain hollow and the Word will remain on the surface. There will be no fruit of action. Beloved, what must you throw overboard? What do you think you need to cast out? What is the Jonah deeply rooted inside of you? What is that Jonah buried deep within my heart, still wrestling with God, still arguing with God, still trying to run away from God, still refusing to acknowledge God? Or what are those old ways of the pagan sailors? What must we cast away in faith? Please reflect on this.
Then in verse sixteen, the culmination of their response appears as worship. Look at this. They heard the Word and received revelation from Jonah: "I worship the Lord God." So they came to believe in the Lord God. They prayed, calling upon the name of the Lord, and they obeyed. They threw him into the sea, and what follows next? Sacrifice and worship follow.
Let us read verse sixteen together.
At this, the men feared the Lord greatly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. Amen.
Look at this, everyone. What were they afraid of at first? In verses four and five, the sailors were terrified of the storm. Then they were afraid at Jonah's words. And finally, in verse sixteen, they feared the Lord greatly. Here we see the word gadol, meaning great. God told Jonah to go to the great city of Nineveh because its great wickedness had come up before Him. When Jonah ran away, God sent a gadol storm, a great tempest, to strike the ship, and a great dread overtook them. It is the fear of the Lord, holy reverence for God.
Beloved, the worship that springs from this reverent fear of God is true and complete worship. They realized they were completely unworthy. Before this, they were terrified of the storm, just like the disciples. But now, being afraid of the storm is no longer the issue. The hardship of almost dying is not the issue anymore.