October 13, 2025 • 17 mins
A prophet runs, a storm rises, and mercy finds a way through the chaos. We open Jonah 1 not as a children’s tale about a big fish, but as a disruptive story about God’s grace colliding with our prejudices. Brandon sets the world of Jonah in sharp relief—Assyria’s notorious cruelty, Israel’s spiritual drift under Jeroboam II, and the scandal of being sent to preach to an enemy city. That context changes everything: Jonah’s flight isn’t just disobedience; it’s the logic of someone who knows God is kind and fears that kindness will reach the people he least wants to see forgiven.
On deck, the contrast is striking. Sailors pray while a prophet sleeps. Lots expose what Jonah’s heart already knows, and the crew shows more care for Jonah’s life than Jonah shows for Nineveh’s. Their desperate rowing gives way to surrender, the sea stills, and awe turns into worship. The chapter’s surprise conversions begin long before Nineveh hears a single word, reminding us that God’s mission is wider than our borders. And when the great fish arrives, the point isn’t spectacle—it’s strategy. God arranges a rescue wrapped in discomfort, preserving Jonah for purpose and reframing discipline as redirection rather than payback.
We explore how Jonah 1 challenges selective compassion, asks us to name our own Nineveh, and invites us to see interruptions as instruments of grace. If you’ve ever resisted a hard obedience, felt trapped in an unwelcome detour, or wondered whether God can bring beauty out of a mess you made, this conversation meets you in that tension. Listen to rethink storms that save, miracles that humble, and a mercy that won’t fit inside our grudges.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:01):
Hey everyone and welcome to the Bible Breakdown
Podcast.
In this podcast, we will bebreaking down the Bible one
chapter a day.
Whether you are a new believeror have been following Christ
for a while, we believe that youwill learn something new and
fresh every single day.
So thank you for joining us.
Let's get into breaking down theBible together.
SPEAKER_00 (00:23):
Well, hello everybody.
Welcome back to the BibleBreakdown Podcast with your
host, Pastor Brandon.
Today, Jonah chapter one.
And we're going to call todaythe beauty of salvation.
The beauty of salvation.
Now, listen, I gotta tell you, Ireally struggle with what to
call this because I am a dadjoke collector.
(00:43):
And I wanted to call this awhale of a tail.
I really, really did.
And I had to at least say it outloud, but we're not gonna call
it that.
We're gonna call it the beautyof salvation.
And listen, I love the book ofJonah, but I love it maybe for a
reason you and I would agreewith, or maybe not.
And I look forward to gettingthat, getting to that with you.
So if you have your Bibles, wantto open up with me.
(01:03):
I'm gonna give you just a minutebecause it can be kind of hard
to find.
It's back in the minor prophetstoward the end of the Old
Testament.
While you're doing that, makesure you take just a moment,
like, share, and subscribe toYouTube channel and the podcast.
Make sure you leave us afive-star review on the podcast.
I see so many of you doing that,and you're also doing it in
other apps and different things.
Thank you so much.
It really helps us get the wordout there.
Make sure that you are going tothe Bible breakdown discussion
(01:25):
on Facebook.
Also, make sure that you aretexting RLC Bible to 94,000.
That way you can just get thelink every morning and go
straight to where it is, nothave to worry about any of the
apps and stuff like that.
And make sure you go into theBible breakdown discussion.
It's not by course go there, butthe Bible breakdown.com because
that's where the kind of the hubis for all this.
(01:47):
All right.
Well, I am ready to jump intothis, and I hope you are too.
The the story of Jonah hasreally kind of just permeated
our culture for years and yearsand years.
And it's amazing to realize howmuch the story of Jonah is just
part of things.
Like you even have stories likeMoby Dick and different things
where there's just like manversus you know whale just in
(02:08):
the mix of things, and there'sso many, so much of that, you
know, can trace itself back tothis amazing story.
And we're calling it the beautyof salvation because there is
some amazing things about thestory of Jonah that if we're not
careful, we don't always notice.
We we think about the whale, wethink about Jonah, but there's
something even more amazingthat's happening in this story
(02:31):
that kind of gets lost becauseof the amazing part of the
story.
So we're gonna get into that andsee what God's Word has to kind
of uncover for us.
Well, first of all, let's jumpinto this.
Who wrote it?
Well, Jonah wrote it.
Jonah was a prophet, and we'regonna find out a whole lot more
about him.
Now, here's something that I didwant to tell you.
Some have argued that it mayhave been written later on about
(02:54):
Jonah, but Jonah didn't read it.
Here's the thing you need toknow unfounded.
As far as I can tell, very, veryunfounded.
Don't believe that.
But if you ever heard thatbefore, I just want to head that
off at the past.
Most scholars believe Jonahwrote the book of Jonah about
what happened to him.
Now, secondly, where did thistake place?
It took place primarily in threeplaces Israel, Mediterranean
(03:16):
Sea, and the city of Nineveh.
Dun dun dun, right?
Like absolutely.
Now, to whom and when?
Jonah lived during the reign ofJeroboam the Second, that's in 2
Kings chapter 14, around 793 to753 BC.
So a little bit, you know,further back than some of the
other ones.
And some of his contemporaries,some of the other prophets
(03:37):
living around the same timewould have been Hosea, Isaiah,
and Micah.
So about the time Isaiah isprophesying in all of this,
you've got a guy gettingswallowed by a fish.
So it's just all these thingsthat are happening sometimes at
the same time, and we don'talways notice that in the Bible.
Now, some background.
The overall big idea of Jonah isactually not about a fish.
(04:00):
It's actually that God's mercyis greater than our prejudices.
So we're going to talk aboutthat in just a second, but it
reveals God's heart for thenations and challenges us not to
limit his grace.
And so it is amazing that thatis lost, but it is really,
really good story.
So here we go.
Why is this important?
(04:20):
It shows that God's love reachesacross boundaries of race,
nation, and even enemy lines.
It warns us againstself-righteousness and
prejudice.
It comforts us that God's mercyis available to all who are
willing to repent, and itchallenges believers that God's
mission is bigger than ourpreferences.
(04:42):
So we're going to get into whythat is, but let's finish this.
What's going on rest of theworld?
The Assyrian Empire was a risingpower feared for its brutality.
And Nineveh was the infamous,was infamous for his cruelty.
So one of the centers of theviolence.
Now here's one of the thingsthat that the Assyrian Empire
(05:02):
would do.
Is they would take and go to thecity gates and they would say,
Do you submit?
If they submitted, sometimesthey would just take over, pay
them taxes.
Other times they would actuallysay you had to cut off a certain
amount of fingers, everybody inthe town.
I mean, it was very brutal.
If you did not submit, accordingto some of the different legends
and stuff, they would actuallykill everybody and then stack
(05:26):
the heads at the gate of thecity as a warning.
That's hero.
That's terrible.
I mean, they were very, verybrutal.
Also, Israel under Jeroboam IIwas politically strong but
spiritually weak.
The idea that God would forgiveIsrael's worst enemy would have
been shocking and offensive.
And so at this time, theAssyrian Empire and the
(05:48):
Israelites were brutal enemies.
They did not, they would, theywould kill them as opposed to
look at them very prejudiced,very racist against one another.
They thought that they were,each one thought the other was
inferior in many ways, but thenalso because they were literally
trying to kill one another, theyabsolutely hated one another.
(06:09):
And so you can start tounderstand why Jonah was not
super excited to go to Nineveh.
The context highlights raceradical mercy, the radical mercy
of God.
Interesting facts.
(07:04):
That even the animals are told,no, no, you can't eat.
So can you imagine going up toyour dog and being like, no, I'm
sorry, you're fasting today.
What a world, you know.
But that's what they end updoing.
And so let me kind of paint thisbackstory so you understand.
So you've got Assyria, which isnow a local power, you got
Israel, and they hate eachother.
And just imagine your worstenemy ever, and there's a real
(07:27):
good reason to not like themworse than that, right?
And out of nowhere, God tells aprophet, I want you to go to the
central city of your worst enemyand tell them about me.
And so on one end, the prophetis so knows the goodness of God
that he doesn't want to goprophesy.
(07:48):
Because he's afraid they mightrepent.
And if they repent, God mightforgive them.
And then they can't beslaughtered.
And that's why he runs.
And so Jonah absolutely didn'tlove these people.
He absolutely did not think thatGod should forgive them.
But God's mercy is even greaterthan that.
And so we're gonna jump intothis, and I want to also tell
(08:10):
you the reason why I love thebook of Jonah.
The reason why I love the bookof Jonah is because there are
people who try to say this as anallegory.
They try to say there is no waythat a fish could eat a person
and there's just no way.
Well, you know, actually it'snot true because there are
reports that come out like allthe time of people who do get,
(08:30):
you know, eaten by fish andactually live.
There was one that came out justa few years ago.
A guy got eaten by a shark, andhe actually survived for like I
think it was like a day, youknow, and so it is it is hard to
believe.
Like that would be very, very,very rare, almost like God did
it, you know, but it ispossible.
But here's the thing thegreatest miracle in the Bible is
(08:51):
not this.
The greatest miracle in theBible is Genesis 1.1.
In the beginning, God createdthe heavens and the earth.
Can we agree?
There's no greater miracle thanthat, that God would create any
of this at all.
And so if we can believe God cancreate the heavens and the
earth, then it is at leastpossible that God can have a man
(09:11):
swallowed by an enormous fish.
Now, I also want you to noticeit nowhere in here says that he
was that this was a whale.
It says it was a large fish.
That's because in the Hebrew,that's what the word means.
It means large fish.
We have speculated it's a whale,because we have this idea there
would have to be a really large,you know, animal, a fish, to be
(09:34):
able to swallow a full-grownman, but we don't know.
But the reality is, is if we canbelieve, Genesis 1.1, that in
the beginning God created theheavens and the earth, if we can
believe God can become man andlive a sinless life down across,
rise again, then it is not atall outside the realm of
possibility that God can have aman swallowed by a fish.
And when we get to chapter two,we'll talk about whether or not
(09:57):
he was dead.
You ever thought about that?
We'll get into all that anotherday.
But first, let's read chapterone and just kind of just
honestly feel for Jonah a littlebit here.
Here we go.
Chapter one of Jonah, verse onesays this The Lord gave this
message to Jonah, son of Matai.
Get up and go to the great cityof Nineveh, announce my
(10:18):
judgments against it, because Ihave seen how wicked its people
are.
But Jonah got up and went in theopposite direction to get away
from the Lord.
He went down to the port ofJoppa, where he found a ship
leaving for Tarshish.
He bought a ticket and went onboard, hoping to escape from the
Lord by sailing to Tarshish.
(10:39):
But the Lord hurled a powerfulwind over the sea, causing a
violent storm that threatened tobreak the ship apart.
Fearing for their lives, thedesperate sailors shouted to
their gods for help and threwthe cargo overboard to lighten
the ship.
But all this time Jonah wassound asleep down in the hold.
(11:01):
So the captain went down afterhim.
How can you sleep at a time likethis?
he shouted.
Get up and pray to your God.
Maybe he will pay attention tous and spare our lives.
Then the crew cast lots to seewhich one of them had offended
the gods and caused the terriblestorm.
When they did this, the lotidentified Jonah as the culprit.
What has this awful storm comewhy has this awful storm come
(11:23):
down on us?
They demanded.
Who are you?
What line of work are you in?
What country are you from?
And what is your nationality?
Jonah answered, I am a Hebrew, Iworship the Lord, the God of
heaven, and he who made the seaand the land.
The sailors were terrified whenthey heard this, for they had
already told them about runninghe'd already told them about
running away from the Lord.
(11:45):
Oh, why did you do that?
They groaned.
And since the storm was gettingworse all the time, they asked
him, What should we do to you tostop this storm?
Throw me into the sea, Jonahsaid, and it will calm down
again.
I know that this terrible stormis all my fault.
Instead, the sailors rode evenharder to get the ship to land,
(12:07):
but the stormy sea was tooviolent for them, and they
couldn't make it.
And so then they cried out tothe Lord, Jonah's God, O Lord,
they pleaded, don't make us diefor this man's sin, and don't
hold us responsible for hisdeath, O Lord.
You have set this storm upon himfor your own good reasons.
Then the sailors picked up Jonahand threw him into the raging
(12:28):
sea, and the storm stopped atonce.
The sailors were awestruck bythe Lord's great power, and they
offered him a sacrifice andvowed to serve him.
Now the Lord had arranged for agreat fish to swallow Jonah, and
Jonah was inside the fish forthree days and three nights.
Wow.
Well, as you can see, God'sdoing a lot of things, and all
(12:51):
along the way, he's savingpeople.
(13:16):
And as he's going the oppositedirection, God sends a storm to
get him back on track.
Instead of killing Jonah, whichhe could have very well done as
a judgment, he has thisbeautiful salvation of pulling
him back in the right direction.
And he says, Come on now, comeon back over here.
And then when they throw him in,and these are these are great
men, because notice they couldhave just killed him.
And then even when he said, Hey,throw me in the water, be okay,
(13:39):
they they don't do that atfirst.
So they're they're good men, notwanting to kill this this guy,
but finally they go, Hey,listen, we we we gotta do
something.
You you told us what to do.
And then when they see that Godwas so powerful, they turn to
serve him.
So God saves them in the processas well.
And then instead of lettingJonah die in the sea, God
(14:01):
prepares something he wouldn'thave chosen, but something very
effective to get him back wherehe wanted him to be.
And so here's maybe our big ideafor today, and that is this that
I don't want to speak for you,but I want to speak for some of
us that we have not alwayswanted to do what God wanted us
to do.
For a thousand reasons.
(14:21):
Maybe we just did not want tolive a life of holiness before
God.
We wanted to go our own way, ormaybe we thought we knew better,
whatever it was.
But you know what God has anamazing way of of doing things?
He has an amazing way of notjudging us according to what we
deserve.
God could have just killedJonah, God could have killed him
and he put him in the water, butinstead he found something that
(14:43):
he wouldn't have wanted and thatwasn't comfortable, but it was
just what he needed to bring himback to where he needed to be.
And there are times in our liveswhen God will allow things to
come along that are not what wewanted, not what we would have
chosen, but are just what weneed to humble us and to get us
(15:03):
right back where he wants us sothat we can make a difference
for him.
And so what if, as we end upJonah chapter one, what if we
took a moment and thought aboutour life?
I don't know what it might befor you.
Maybe there's something in yourlife that's causing you a lot of
pain right now, causing you alot of difficulty.
(15:23):
Maybe causing you to say Ireally I really wish this wasn't
in my life right now.
But if that thing is causing youto turn back to the Lord, if
it's causing you to to pray, tocry out for God, to seek him
like you never had before, to toreally turn back your heart to
God, maybe it's not what Godwould have wanted, but maybe
(15:46):
he's not stopped it so that itcan get you back close to him.
Not because God's mad at you,not at all.
Not because God's judging you,not at all.
It's because God's trying to getyou back on track so that you
can make the biggest differencefor him.
What if we looked at it a littlebit differently and realized
that God's salvation isbeautiful?
It's not always pretty, but it'salways beautiful.
(16:07):
Let's pray together right now.
God, thank you so much fortoday.
Thank you, God, that you arewith us and that you're for us
in every way.
I'm so thankful, Lord, that youare with us in more ways than we
can imagine.
And even in this moment rightnow, I know God you're working
in ways that we don't know.
I pray you'll open our eyes tosee that sometimes our greatest
trouble is actually the greatestvehicle that brings us closer to
(16:28):
you.
Thank you for all you're doingin Jesus' name.
Amen.
I love you.
I'll see you tomorrow for Jonahchapter two.
Hey everyone and welcome to the Bible Breakdown
Podcast.
In this podcast, we will bebreaking down the Bible one
chapter a day.
Whether you are a new believeror have been following Christ
for a while, we believe that youwill learn something new and
fresh every single day.
So thank you for joining us.
Let's get into breaking down theBible together.
SPEAKER_00 (00:23):
Well, hello everybody.
Welcome back to the BibleBreakdown Podcast with your
host, Pastor Brandon.
Today, Jonah chapter one.
And we're going to call todaythe beauty of salvation.
The beauty of salvation.
Now, listen, I gotta tell you, Ireally struggle with what to
call this because I am a dadjoke collector.
(00:43):
And I wanted to call this awhale of a tail.
I really, really did.
And I had to at least say it outloud, but we're not gonna call
it that.
We're gonna call it the beautyof salvation.
And listen, I love the book ofJonah, but I love it maybe for a
reason you and I would agreewith, or maybe not.
And I look forward to gettingthat, getting to that with you.
So if you have your Bibles, wantto open up with me.
(01:03):
I'm gonna give you just a minutebecause it can be kind of hard
to find.
It's back in the minor prophetstoward the end of the Old
Testament.
While you're doing that, makesure you take just a moment,
like, share, and subscribe toYouTube channel and the podcast.
Make sure you leave us afive-star review on the podcast.
I see so many of you doing that,and you're also doing it in
other apps and different things.
Thank you so much.
It really helps us get the wordout there.
Make sure that you are going tothe Bible breakdown discussion
(01:25):
on Facebook.
Also, make sure that you aretexting RLC Bible to 94,000.
That way you can just get thelink every morning and go
straight to where it is, nothave to worry about any of the
apps and stuff like that.
And make sure you go into theBible breakdown discussion.
It's not by course go there, butthe Bible breakdown.com because
that's where the kind of the hubis for all this.
(01:47):
All right.
Well, I am ready to jump intothis, and I hope you are too.
The the story of Jonah hasreally kind of just permeated
our culture for years and yearsand years.
And it's amazing to realize howmuch the story of Jonah is just
part of things.
Like you even have stories likeMoby Dick and different things
where there's just like manversus you know whale just in
(02:08):
the mix of things, and there'sso many, so much of that, you
know, can trace itself back tothis amazing story.
And we're calling it the beautyof salvation because there is
some amazing things about thestory of Jonah that if we're not
careful, we don't always notice.
We we think about the whale, wethink about Jonah, but there's
something even more amazingthat's happening in this story
(02:31):
that kind of gets lost becauseof the amazing part of the
story.
So we're gonna get into that andsee what God's Word has to kind
of uncover for us.
Well, first of all, let's jumpinto this.
Who wrote it?
Well, Jonah wrote it.
Jonah was a prophet, and we'regonna find out a whole lot more
about him.
Now, here's something that I didwant to tell you.
Some have argued that it mayhave been written later on about
(02:54):
Jonah, but Jonah didn't read it.
Here's the thing you need toknow unfounded.
As far as I can tell, very, veryunfounded.
Don't believe that.
But if you ever heard thatbefore, I just want to head that
off at the past.
Most scholars believe Jonahwrote the book of Jonah about
what happened to him.
Now, secondly, where did thistake place?
It took place primarily in threeplaces Israel, Mediterranean
(03:16):
Sea, and the city of Nineveh.
Dun dun dun, right?
Like absolutely.
Now, to whom and when?
Jonah lived during the reign ofJeroboam the Second, that's in 2
Kings chapter 14, around 793 to753 BC.
So a little bit, you know,further back than some of the
other ones.
And some of his contemporaries,some of the other prophets
(03:37):
living around the same timewould have been Hosea, Isaiah,
and Micah.
So about the time Isaiah isprophesying in all of this,
you've got a guy gettingswallowed by a fish.
So it's just all these thingsthat are happening sometimes at
the same time, and we don'talways notice that in the Bible.
Now, some background.
The overall big idea of Jonah isactually not about a fish.
(04:00):
It's actually that God's mercyis greater than our prejudices.
So we're going to talk aboutthat in just a second, but it
reveals God's heart for thenations and challenges us not to
limit his grace.
And so it is amazing that thatis lost, but it is really,
really good story.
So here we go.
Why is this important?
(04:20):
It shows that God's love reachesacross boundaries of race,
nation, and even enemy lines.
It warns us againstself-righteousness and
prejudice.
It comforts us that God's mercyis available to all who are
willing to repent, and itchallenges believers that God's
mission is bigger than ourpreferences.
(04:42):
So we're going to get into whythat is, but let's finish this.
What's going on rest of theworld?
The Assyrian Empire was a risingpower feared for its brutality.
And Nineveh was the infamous,was infamous for his cruelty.
So one of the centers of theviolence.
Now here's one of the thingsthat that the Assyrian Empire
(05:02):
would do.
Is they would take and go to thecity gates and they would say,
Do you submit?
If they submitted, sometimesthey would just take over, pay
them taxes.
Other times they would actuallysay you had to cut off a certain
amount of fingers, everybody inthe town.
I mean, it was very brutal.
If you did not submit, accordingto some of the different legends
and stuff, they would actuallykill everybody and then stack
(05:26):
the heads at the gate of thecity as a warning.
That's hero.
That's terrible.
I mean, they were very, verybrutal.
Also, Israel under Jeroboam IIwas politically strong but
spiritually weak.
The idea that God would forgiveIsrael's worst enemy would have
been shocking and offensive.
And so at this time, theAssyrian Empire and the
(05:48):
Israelites were brutal enemies.
They did not, they would, theywould kill them as opposed to
look at them very prejudiced,very racist against one another.
They thought that they were,each one thought the other was
inferior in many ways, but thenalso because they were literally
trying to kill one another, theyabsolutely hated one another.
(06:09):
And so you can start tounderstand why Jonah was not
super excited to go to Nineveh.
The context highlights raceradical mercy, the radical mercy
of God.
Interesting facts.
(07:04):
That even the animals are told,no, no, you can't eat.
So can you imagine going up toyour dog and being like, no, I'm
sorry, you're fasting today.
What a world, you know.
But that's what they end updoing.
And so let me kind of paint thisbackstory so you understand.
So you've got Assyria, which isnow a local power, you got
Israel, and they hate eachother.
And just imagine your worstenemy ever, and there's a real
(07:27):
good reason to not like themworse than that, right?
And out of nowhere, God tells aprophet, I want you to go to the
central city of your worst enemyand tell them about me.
And so on one end, the prophetis so knows the goodness of God
that he doesn't want to goprophesy.
(07:48):
Because he's afraid they mightrepent.
And if they repent, God mightforgive them.
And then they can't beslaughtered.
And that's why he runs.
And so Jonah absolutely didn'tlove these people.
He absolutely did not think thatGod should forgive them.
But God's mercy is even greaterthan that.
And so we're gonna jump intothis, and I want to also tell
(08:10):
you the reason why I love thebook of Jonah.
The reason why I love the bookof Jonah is because there are
people who try to say this as anallegory.
They try to say there is no waythat a fish could eat a person
and there's just no way.
Well, you know, actually it'snot true because there are
reports that come out like allthe time of people who do get,
(08:30):
you know, eaten by fish andactually live.
There was one that came out justa few years ago.
A guy got eaten by a shark, andhe actually survived for like I
think it was like a day, youknow, and so it is it is hard to
believe.
Like that would be very, very,very rare, almost like God did
it, you know, but it ispossible.
But here's the thing thegreatest miracle in the Bible is
(08:51):
not this.
The greatest miracle in theBible is Genesis 1.1.
In the beginning, God createdthe heavens and the earth.
Can we agree?
There's no greater miracle thanthat, that God would create any
of this at all.
And so if we can believe God cancreate the heavens and the
earth, then it is at leastpossible that God can have a man
(09:11):
swallowed by an enormous fish.
Now, I also want you to noticeit nowhere in here says that he
was that this was a whale.
It says it was a large fish.
That's because in the Hebrew,that's what the word means.
It means large fish.
We have speculated it's a whale,because we have this idea there
would have to be a really large,you know, animal, a fish, to be
(09:34):
able to swallow a full-grownman, but we don't know.
But the reality is, is if we canbelieve, Genesis 1.1, that in
the beginning God created theheavens and the earth, if we can
believe God can become man andlive a sinless life down across,
rise again, then it is not atall outside the realm of
possibility that God can have aman swallowed by a fish.
And when we get to chapter two,we'll talk about whether or not
(09:57):
he was dead.
You ever thought about that?
We'll get into all that anotherday.
But first, let's read chapterone and just kind of just
honestly feel for Jonah a littlebit here.
Here we go.
Chapter one of Jonah, verse onesays this The Lord gave this
message to Jonah, son of Matai.
Get up and go to the great cityof Nineveh, announce my
(10:18):
judgments against it, because Ihave seen how wicked its people
are.
But Jonah got up and went in theopposite direction to get away
from the Lord.
He went down to the port ofJoppa, where he found a ship
leaving for Tarshish.
He bought a ticket and went onboard, hoping to escape from the
Lord by sailing to Tarshish.
(10:39):
But the Lord hurled a powerfulwind over the sea, causing a
violent storm that threatened tobreak the ship apart.
Fearing for their lives, thedesperate sailors shouted to
their gods for help and threwthe cargo overboard to lighten
the ship.
But all this time Jonah wassound asleep down in the hold.
(11:01):
So the captain went down afterhim.
How can you sleep at a time likethis?
he shouted.
Get up and pray to your God.
Maybe he will pay attention tous and spare our lives.
Then the crew cast lots to seewhich one of them had offended
the gods and caused the terriblestorm.
When they did this, the lotidentified Jonah as the culprit.
What has this awful storm comewhy has this awful storm come
(11:23):
down on us?
They demanded.
Who are you?
What line of work are you in?
What country are you from?
And what is your nationality?
Jonah answered, I am a Hebrew, Iworship the Lord, the God of
heaven, and he who made the seaand the land.
The sailors were terrified whenthey heard this, for they had
already told them about runninghe'd already told them about
running away from the Lord.
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Oh, why did you do that?
They groaned.
And since the storm was gettingworse all the time, they asked
him, What should we do to you tostop this storm?
Throw me into the sea, Jonahsaid, and it will calm down
again.
I know that this terrible stormis all my fault.
Instead, the sailors rode evenharder to get the ship to land,
(12:07):
but the stormy sea was tooviolent for them, and they
couldn't make it.
And so then they cried out tothe Lord, Jonah's God, O Lord,
they pleaded, don't make us diefor this man's sin, and don't
hold us responsible for hisdeath, O Lord.
You have set this storm upon himfor your own good reasons.
Then the sailors picked up Jonahand threw him into the raging
(12:28):
sea, and the storm stopped atonce.
The sailors were awestruck bythe Lord's great power, and they
offered him a sacrifice andvowed to serve him.
Now the Lord had arranged for agreat fish to swallow Jonah, and
Jonah was inside the fish forthree days and three nights.
Wow.
Well, as you can see, God'sdoing a lot of things, and all
(12:51):
along the way, he's savingpeople.
(13:16):
And as he's going the oppositedirection, God sends a storm to
get him back on track.
Instead of killing Jonah, whichhe could have very well done as
a judgment, he has thisbeautiful salvation of pulling
him back in the right direction.
And he says, Come on now, comeon back over here.
And then when they throw him in,and these are these are great
men, because notice they couldhave just killed him.
And then even when he said, Hey,throw me in the water, be okay,
(13:39):
they they don't do that atfirst.
So they're they're good men, notwanting to kill this this guy,
but finally they go, Hey,listen, we we we gotta do
something.
You you told us what to do.
And then when they see that Godwas so powerful, they turn to
serve him.
So God saves them in the processas well.
And then instead of lettingJonah die in the sea, God
(14:01):
prepares something he wouldn'thave chosen, but something very
effective to get him back wherehe wanted him to be.
And so here's maybe our big ideafor today, and that is this that
I don't want to speak for you,but I want to speak for some of
us that we have not alwayswanted to do what God wanted us
to do.
For a thousand reasons.
(14:21):
Maybe we just did not want tolive a life of holiness before
God.
We wanted to go our own way, ormaybe we thought we knew better,
whatever it was.
But you know what God has anamazing way of of doing things?
He has an amazing way of notjudging us according to what we
deserve.
God could have just killedJonah, God could have killed him
and he put him in the water, butinstead he found something that
(14:43):
he wouldn't have wanted and thatwasn't comfortable, but it was
just what he needed to bring himback to where he needed to be.
And there are times in our liveswhen God will allow things to
come along that are not what wewanted, not what we would have
chosen, but are just what weneed to humble us and to get us
(15:03):
right back where he wants us sothat we can make a difference
for him.
And so what if, as we end upJonah chapter one, what if we
took a moment and thought aboutour life?
I don't know what it might befor you.
Maybe there's something in yourlife that's causing you a lot of
pain right now, causing you alot of difficulty.
(15:23):
Maybe causing you to say Ireally I really wish this wasn't
in my life right now.
But if that thing is causing youto turn back to the Lord, if
it's causing you to to pray, tocry out for God, to seek him
like you never had before, to toreally turn back your heart to
God, maybe it's not what Godwould have wanted, but maybe
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he's not stopped it so that itcan get you back close to him.
Not because God's mad at you,not at all.
Not because God's judging you,not at all.
It's because God's trying to getyou back on track so that you
can make the biggest differencefor him.
What if we looked at it a littlebit differently and realized
that God's salvation isbeautiful?
It's not always pretty, but it'salways beautiful.
(16:07):
Let's pray together right now.
God, thank you so much fortoday.
Thank you, God, that you arewith us and that you're for us
in every way.
I'm so thankful, Lord, that youare with us in more ways than we
can imagine.
And even in this moment rightnow, I know God you're working
in ways that we don't know.
I pray you'll open our eyes tosee that sometimes our greatest
trouble is actually the greatestvehicle that brings us closer to
(16:28):
you.
Thank you for all you're doingin Jesus' name.
Amen.
I love you.
I'll see you tomorrow for Jonahchapter two.
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