The Great Storm and Jonah Revealed

Well it's fitting that we talk a little about Israel there but because we're looking at Jonah this morning and Jonah the minor prophet and we're also going to look a bit at Hosea if I get, I think I'll have time to get to Hosea. At the end of this lesson in Jonah, we're in Jonah chapter 1 verses 4 through 9.

This is where the storm reveals itself. And Jonah is revealed to these mariners going to Tarshish. There it is. It takes a little while for the computer to wake up there. So here's today's verses. I'll read from last week's from verse 1 in Jonah. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amite saying arise go to forth to Nineveh the great city and cry against it for their weakness has come up before me but Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord so he went down to Joppa he found a ship which was going to Tarshish he paid the fare and he went down into it to go to with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord and I didn't ever noticed this, but Constable calls this out, that verse 3 is a chiasm. As you know, we're at Holly Hills, we're experts in chiasms. Tell us just about every Sunday there's a chiasm in every verse. And we got to learn that that's a Hebrew poetry pattern. It's a mirror image in writing, a chiasm.

And here he puts it in for emphasis that of the disobedience of the call. So if we read again, but Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare, went down into it to go with him to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. Very bad English because you'd get docked if you turn that paper in to a teacher for being redundant. But that's actually, Jonah put a little poetry pattern right there to emphasize the fact that he disobeyed the word of the Lord.

So continuing on verse four, the Lord hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up. Then the sailors became afraid, and every man cried out to his God, and they threw the cargo, which was in the ship, into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship, laid down, and fallen asleep. So the captain approached him and said, How is it that you're sleeping?

Get up and call on your God. Perhaps your God will be concerned about us, so we will not perish. Oh, I lost it there. Here it is again. Each man said to his mate, come, let us cast lots so that we may learn on whose account this calamity has struck us. So they cast lots and the lot fell on Jud. Then they said to him, tell us now, on whose account has this calamity struck us? What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you? And he said to them, I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land. And it's kind of funny because Jonah doesn't fear him so much to obey his command there. But he's going to get the lesson. We'll look at this.

So, review so far, Jonah is a minor prophet serving God to tell forth prophecy to the northern kingdom of Israel during Jeroboam II's reign. In about 790 BC, 790 years or 780 years, somewhere in there before Christ, he was a verified prophet. And in 2 Kings we have the verse below that he gave a favorable prophecy to the northern kingdom saying that they would gain back land and strength and they'd even win back Damascus in a battle which they lost during Solomon's reign. So verse 25 of the second Kings chapter 14 says he restored that that's the King Jeroboam Restored the border of Israel from the interests of a mouth as far as the Sea of Arabah According to the Word of the Lord the God of Israel which he spoke through his servant Jonah So Jonah got a legitimate prophecy there to give to that King Jonah the son of Amittai the prophet Who was from Gath heifer? We learned where last week where Geth Hefer was. So, he was a good prophet with an excellent reputation serving God in Israel. But at some point during this or, you know, probably after that prophecy of second Kings, maybe several years, decades after it or whatever, he receives a mission to go to and preach to Nineveh.

But Nineveh was Israel's archenemy. They were an Assyrian archenemy. But due to pride and love for Israel and his sense of nationalism, he decided he couldn't accept the mission and he flees to preserve. He had this internal personal ethics code kind of that he had. of prophecy, you know, he had to serve Israel and he didn't want to be a help to Israel's enemies, which he was about to do by giving Nineveh this prophecy from the Lord.

So I said last week that Jonah was fleeing the presence of the Lord and the presence of the Lord was in the temple. And it was, but that's down in Jerusalem. But so Jonah would have been far, far north of that. So the presence of the Lord wasn't in this northern territory because they were an offshoot, but he was serving up there.

So I wanted to clear that up and we'll see where that is in a second. So he traveled from the north, almost at the border of Lebanon up there. to go far south to Joppa to find the ship going west to Tarshish. And here it is. So, on the top we have, there's Gath Heffer, where the T in Tiberius is, right in the middle of Israel, west of the Sea of Galilee there. We have Joppa, where he got on the boat, way south, but still north of Jerusalem, but way south.

And so, we see where he where this second temple was set up for the northern tribes in Leshem. And there's a tell there, a tell Dan, which is, you know, a tell that they excavated. And it's the city up there that the tribe of Dan found. They started that and that's where the northern kingdom was way up north.

So, I'm pretty much guessing, but we can be fairly accurate that this was the seat of Jeroboam II's throne. And here's the headquarters that Jonah was serving right up there. But the presence of the Lord wasn't up there. He was down in Jerusalem. But nonetheless, the presence of the Lord was with Jonah, wasn't it? Because he would give them prophecies. So let's see. Here we go. Here is Tel Dan. And it's cool. I was there. I remembered this. And we went up there and we saw this exact place, Tel Dan, the seat of the northern tribes.

So there on the left would have been, I think, the little temple, the second temple, the northern temple that they built, very small. And, but they didn't have, you know, they had a golden, so they were worshiping other gods. They had a golden calf in there. So it was, um, uh, God wasn't pleased, obviously.

And then on the right, I think it's the city, the gate, city gate there from Tel Dan. So this would have been the place where Jonah was sort of serving this king way up north. And then from last week, here's the little chart of the prophets. We have David Solomon's top when they were all united, but then Israel split into a northern tribe and a southern tribe, a southern kingdom and a northern kingdom. And on the left you have, there was first Jeroboam I, right after Solomon. And then the kings went down to Jeroboam II and Jonah served a little of that Joash, which we see on the left-hand side, into Jeroboam II's reign.

And then if you see down a little, several years after, but almost concurrently, Hosea served the Northern Kingdom as well later on, maybe several decades after, and we'll look at that a little. So just to review that from last week, so we know where we are.

So here we are at verse 4, that Lord hurled a great wind on the sea, and there was a great storm on the sea, so that the ship was about to break up. Sailors became afraid, and every man cried out to his God, And they said, they threw the cargo, which was on the ship, into the sea to light it for him. But Jonah had gone below the hold of the ship, laying down and fallen asleep. So this word hurled in Hebrew is a very deliberate casting or throwing down from God. So it's no mere weather event. It's something that Very deliberate. You can see this really well in this verse, Isaiah 28, 2. Behold, the Lord has a strong and mighty agent.

As a storm of hail, a tempest of destruction, like a storm mighty, overflowing waters, he has cast it down to the earth with his hand. So that's exactly what he did with the storm, Jonah's storm. cast it down from heaven with his hand. The storm was such that it was breaking up this very well built ship of Tarshish. The mariners weren't used to the storm of this intensity and the fact that it arose so swiftly kind of really got their attention.

In Hebrew, the language of Hebrew, in Hebrew, verse 4 reads, the ship thought she would be broken to pieces. That's how the Hebrew reads literally. The men were most likely Phoenicians. Phoenicia was along the coast, northern Israel up into Lebanon, maybe up to Tripoli and up from there. So north of Israel but along the Mediterranean coast. Baal would have been the prime god of the Phoenicians.

Macaulay says that they wouldn't call on their prime god, whichever mariner had a god, he wouldn't call on that the top God, but a lesser God on the outer rung of the gods, because it was thought that you could call upon a lesser God and that lesser God would pass on your prayer up to a prime God. It's sort of like, you know, in the Catholic Church, you You can't talk to God himself or Jesus Christ, but you can get through to St. Joseph, you know? Right? That's kind of how it works in the Catholic Church, or St. Timothy. So they have their patron saints.

So that's what they would have been doing. Possibly each mariner had their own god, because it was a polytheistic world back then. And then there's these out... we learn this in Colossians that there's these levels of deities, you know, that go up the chain. It was thought that gods back then controlled chaos. And that was their main benefit to mankind.

And the sea was the ultimate place of chaos, the ultimate body of chaos that no one could tame. So here they were in the storm. I'm just guessing that that ship was loaded to the hilt with valuable cargo going to Tarshish for trade. So throwing it overboard would have been a huge sacrifice, a huge economic event. but they were desperate in this situation.

There's what they say is a possible model of the ship of Tarshish. So you can see it's big and has a sail and it's really well built and it's sturdy. So they could go all the way to at least Spain, but if you want an A in this class, you know that Tarshish is Cornwall, England. There's so many guys from England trying to claim that they're Tarshish because of the favorable prophecy they get in Ezekiel 38.

They're mentioned favorably. So they go through all this stuff. But they did found off the coast of Israel, maybe around the Joppa area, they discovered a sunken ship. They brought it up and there's these little ingots. of tin. Little England. And that tin, they did a study, and that tin comes from, guess where? Court wall in England. Yeah, they might have a point. Who knows?

So contrast that to one of the, Jesus, about the Sea of Galilee here. That's what those look like. So little and just so you can see how much bigger a ship of Tarshish is. That would have been one like that one which Jesus calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee but you know small.

So in verse 5 we read the first part of that but I want to skip to the last part of verse 5, but Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship and lain down and fallen asleep. So, both Constable and Macaulay say that this is common on the fact that Jonah could sleep through this magnificent storm.

Why is that, right? So, that's a question that comes to your mind. But, they kind of put forth this theory that The sleep was directed as well by God, like the storm. A sleep that, like God put Adam in to take his rib, to create Eve or to build Eve. You know, deep sleep. Adam was in that deep sleep. Also, Abram, in Genesis 15-12, Abram was put into a deep sleep so that the Lord could pass through the the sacrifice which were cut in half and the Lord passed through the sacrifice just on his own, himself, not without Abram by his side to make it a unilateral covenant. So Abram slept through that whole thing. So there's thinking that this is a radam sleep, a heavy unconscious sleep.

Radam, that's the Hebrew word. So, a question came up to my mind was, why would God want to put Jonah in such a deep sleep during this? Well, Andrew, do you think it's, maybe you're going to answer it, but I'm sure you are, but do you think it maybe is so that they notice he's sleeping? I mean, that would highlight him? Yeah, sleep. Right. It provides a little highlight and they'd notice, yeah, he was sleeping.

And I think too, because God wanted to build this crisis into a full-fledged crisis, right, for the Mariners, without Jonah being there. So Jonah was not involved, so that they were just, had to deal with, so they saw the intensity of it. Because Jonah, if he would have been awake, might have prayed to God much sooner, and it would have made this thing go faster, but he wanted to build this thing up. So at one point they remember they'd forgotten about this fellow down in the hold of the ship who was abnormally sleeping. So the guilt of on whose account was this, on whose account with their God is this storm from, narrowed itself down because nothing was going well, but they remembered there was one more person on the ship. So, they're starting to focus in on Jonah here.

And it's similar to the sleep. It reminds me of in Matthew 8, and it's also talked about in the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus was in sleep on the Sea of Galilee in one of those little boats. while the storm raged. And he needed to be woken up out on the sea, right? Yeah, kind of a similar thing. Yeah, right. God wanted to build up the drama to the maximum level, I think. I don't know how Jesus slept on a little boat like that. But anyway, he did. Maybe it's the same sort of sleep. So in verse 6, we have the captain. I have a question here. Andrew? Andrew? Oh, yeah.

I think the reason Jesus slept so soundly is because he was tired. Yeah. You know, it's most often reported in Luke that he spent all night in prayer to God to find out what he needed to do and what he needed to say. And so, he lost a lot of sleep. So, you know, yeah, he slept very soundly on the rolling sea, you know. Yeah, and that's down time, right? Yeah, that he could catch up on sleep. Yeah, he needed to catch up on sleep for sure, you know. But Jonah was a different story. Jonah, I think, was put in a deep sleep by God himself.

Yeah, and good point because he was, Jesus was up all night praying and then you get up early in the morning and then you travel and you're preaching and he was preaching and healing and all day until, you know, maybe eight at night or something and then pray and then yeah, so I could see that. And that speaks more to Jesus' humanity also. He was human, definitely he was human.

And some say that this journey was a big one for Jonah and it took a while to get to Joppa and he was exhausted from the journey and they say that his guilty conscience too sort of makes you depressed and when you're depressed you're gonna sleep. You sort of have a guilty conscience sleep. Some of them kind of brought that out which may be correct. So the captain was made aware that Jonah was down in the hold of the ship and one commentator said not only did he flee as far away from Nineveh as he could and then on the ship he went to the deepest recesses of the hold and you know way in the bow of the ship somewhere a little hole in the bow of the ship to really escape the presence of God. So the furthest recess of the ship too. So with Jonah, you know, they hit the jackpot. He's God and they're figuring this out now.

But I don't see in verse six that Jonah They say, get up, call on your God. Perhaps your God will be concerned about us so that we will not perish. And it doesn't say that Jonah did that. So I say it doesn't sound like Jonah called out to Jehovah God as instructed, but remained silent.

But Charles Feinberg says that he does believe that Jonah did pray at this point, but that only made the storm worse. So you have to kind of choose your kind of story there as to did he pray or didn't pray at this point. Well, perhaps he thought he was going to die with the ship. He thought, well, that way I won't have to go to Nineveh. I'll just die. Oh, yeah. Or he just delayed praying. And he was fully expecting to die when he decided that the best way is for him to throw him off the ship.

So now they cast plots. So they're really drilling down on the source of their calamity. So, Feinberg says that lots, when they draw lots in the Bible, that's not against the will of God in the Old Testament. He used that message, or that method, several times before people were indwelled with the Holy Spirit, to be guided by the Holy Spirit, like we are, before Pentecost. And God would jump into a lot to direct it when needed. But I think lots were also used by diviners and things like that. So, you know, yeah, so it was kind of a pagan thing too, but God would use it when he needed to.

Examples here, they cast Lot to find the man Achen. Right after Israel crossed over the Jordan into the land of Israel, they were, and they just took down Jericho and now they're on to the next town, Ai. And they were going to, they went to war with them, but they lost. Now it's because Achan took war booty. So that he was found out by casting lots to find out who took war booty in Joshua 7, 14. And the division of land, Right after this in Joshua 15, how the tribes were given their land, that was by Lot. They cast lots for that.

And then Saul, Jonathan, his son, was a warrior and Saul commanded, he made this really stupid command that everyone shouldn't eat. for a day or something or until they win this battle. But Jonathan wasn't there. He and David were coming from somewhere else. So he was coming very quickly but along the way he would keep running but ate honey along the way.

And he was found out by Lot. So now Saul had to kill him. Because that's what Saul said he would do. But then he ended up not. So that was a Lot situation. And that's in Samuel chapter 14. And then getting Matthias as the replacement. apostle for Judas, right, was by lot. So, lots were certainly going on back then.

Proverbs 16.33 says, the lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the Lord. So on to verse 8.

Andrew, do we know what they used to cast lots? Was it dice? Yeah, or it was stones? Was it like a shorter stick or that kind of thing? I think they used all of the above really. But I think they did have a form of dice back then that they would do that. Yeah. I think it was a couple methods. Yeah, that's a good question. So now they know and now they're interrogating Jonah. Tell us now, on whose account has this calamity struck us in verse 8? What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? What people are you? He's now at that table where it's dark and they have a light. He responded in verse 9 saying, I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.

So they really know that their stowaway has done something big. But what they're doing, I think, is drilling down on the forensics of what happened, what Jonah did, the pathology of this situation that he made his God so angered. So that's what they're doing. And I call it a forensics, it's forensic pathology. getting to the source of what went down here. The more information they could get from him, I think they thought the better they could formulate a plan to get out of this situation.

Jonah's response, though, is the reason Jonah's a very great man, upright prophet, and his response is, I am a heap, very direct and matter-of-fact, very true. So his response was just beautiful and short. I am a Hebrew. I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land. So you've got the deity of Jehovah God. You have who he is. He's a Hebrew.

They knew that Hebrews were connected to the Hebrew God and they know that that Hebrew God was the creator. I think all these Phoenician guys, mariners, knew that in the back of their... everyone must have known that. Because they would have known from the stories of taking Israel out of the land of Egypt, right? And getting them across the Red Sea. They've all heard that story of God's power.

So, in response to the Mariner's queries here, oh, and along with, he gives an exquisite prayer that will come up in the next couple of weeks, in the belly of the whale, or the fish, in chapter two. I think this response in verse nine and then his prayer in the belly of the whale is why I think God so respects Jonah and really loves this prophet. And that's why Jonah was picked to go through this calamity because he is, besides being willful and disobedient, he is very mature and he When you read his words, he knows who he is, right? And he knows who God is and he expresses it beautifully. So upon hearing that this was the Jewish God that they were dealing with, they become really terrified.

We learn that next week in verse 10. And now it all comes clear. This Jewish God sent a storm and they know that he's powerful because You don't need words to describe it. They went through the storm. Andrew, I like how, this is next week's material, but I like the response. How could you do that? Are you nuts? Yeah, right.

So they must know that this, and they've heard it for centuries now about Jericho. They knew that story. They would have known about the crossing the Red Seas and yet they worshiped other gods. I don't know. Why? Deep down, everyone was terrified of the God of Israel, right? How could he do that?

That's going to be next week's subject. That's going to be good. In the future, like next week when he's thrown overboard and the sea immediately calms, what do you think What do you think they think now about the God of Israel and vis-a-vis their gods? And we'll learn that because we'll have to wait till next week.

So I'm just closing this section here with You know, do you think these mariners carried these events of this day with them for the rest of their lives? Or what their mindset was when they continued on in this journey to Tarshish must have been just really transformational for them in their lives. So there you go.

Those are four through nine of Jonah. And now I just want to do a couple slides or a slide and a half of Hosea and his prophecy. A little after Jonah's prophecy, but And more towards review, there are 12 minor prophets, and they're not minor because of their message, but regarding the size of the volume of their book. Feinberg says they're not minor in importance, but relative in size to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.

That's why they're called minor. But they're better referred to as the 12. That's how rabbis refer to them. They have the Hebrew canon as divided up into the former prophets, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, and then the latter prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12th. So there's Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and then the 12th. And Jonah is one of the 12. They're called Minor Prophets, but they're the Twelve because they bind them all together in one book, like they would roll up all the Minor Prophet books into one giant scroll, so it would be called the Twelve. We learned that from Verm too. they would combine Jeremiah into Isaiah and Ezekiel into the one scroll. So it's called the scroll of like Isaiah. But Jeremiah and Ezekiel were included in the two.

So Jonah, the story, the theme is God's love for all nations, whereas Hosea is God's love for Israel. Like Jonah's, the fact that Joan, the book of Jonah has no prophetic discourse. The story or the circumstances is in itself is the sign of the prophecy. The same way is it with Hosea. His actual home life is the prophecy for the first chapter, a couple chapters, and then from chapters 4 through 14 is that's where God gives him the discourse, you know, about future events.

But Hosea was told to marry this woman, Gomer, who goes into harlotry. And God was saying through this, you are not my wife, Israel, and I am not your husband. He says the land commits vague, flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord. God even bears children to Hosea and Gomer. And he has to name one son, Lo-Ami. And Lo-Ami means, you are not my people. And his daughter, he had a daughter, he had to name her Lo-Rumah, which means not compassion, not pity. So here's Hosea, you know, getting up in the morning doing prophecy, but the whole world could see that, hey, Hosea, I just saw Gomer down. on Colfax.

Just very public. So it's a sign that God is telling without using words. He's using the circumstance to give them profit. A sign is what it is. So through this God is saying you are not my people and you are not to be pitied. But how can we say this when God made an eternal covenant with Abraham, unilateral, saying that you will always be my people and I will always be your God into eternity. How could he go against that? But I think what it is, is he's just making a point in your current state, in your condition, you are not mine.

But positionally, in your eternal standing, the covenant stands forever, right? This is a prophetic discourse in verse 11 of Hosea chapter 1. And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel will be gathered together and they will appoint for themselves one leader and they will go up from the land for great will be the day of Jezreel. It's giving future prophecy, the millennial kingdom prophecy. In that day, Christ will stand on the Mount of Olives.

And it's that day where Hosea is talking about in verse 11 there, Hosea 1.11. And the Mount of Olives will be made to split into two in its middle from east to west by a very large valley. That's from Zechariah 14, 1-4. And Christ will route once for all, all of Israel's enemies, and he will personally, in person, espouse their cause, is where that prophecy all goes. And in that day, Israel will be named, once again, Ami, my people, and Rumah, pity and compassion.

So I thought that was really cool. Feinberg brought that out. So that's, I'm just comparing Hosea's, this little story in Hosea to this Jonah prophecy here. Very similar, but to different groups. So there you go. Next week we'll continue with Hosea, or Jonah. Right. That'll be good. We're going to get thrown overboard next week. We're going to get wet next week. So, good stuff there from Jonah.

Okay, I'll close in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jonah, and we thank you for the whole of Scripture, both the Old Testament and certainly the New, and all that we learned of your ways. your holiness and your power and your grace and your mercy towards us and having both testaments bring out in stereoscopic detail who you are. Thank you for that. Thank you for these things. In Jesus' name, Amen.