Camp Fire on a Wooden Ship
Jonah 1-4
Frederick Faber has penned these immortal words:
“There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, ?Like the wideness of the sea; ?There’s a kindness in His Justice ?Which is more than liberty.
There is welcome for the sinner?And more graces for the good;?There is mercy with the Saviour,?There is healing in His blood.”
Faber says there’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea. I wonder if he ever stood on the shore of some great ocean and looked out as far as the eye can see until the water meets the sky.
I wonder if Faber was thinking of those words in Psalm 103: The Lord is merciful.... He has not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear Him.
I invite you to stand with me on the shore of God’s mercy. As far as the eye can see his mercy endures forever. We can never see the end nor plume the depths of his mercy nor exhaust the supply. His mercy endures forever. Some of you have come to this meeting with questions, with doubts, with fears, with guilt. Oh come, behold the wideness of God’s mercy. His mercy endures forever mercy toward his children, Mercy toward the outsider, the unsaved, the rebel.
The story I have chosen to exam the wideness of God’s mercy is tucked away in the Old Testament. It’s the story of Jonah. Turn with me please to this little 4-chapter book.
This Story As History.
Read vs. 1,2a. For God to ask Jonah to go and preach in Nineveh in 800 BC was like asking some Jew to go and preach in Berlin in 1940. Or to put it another way it was like asking today for a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant to go and preach against Idi Amin in Uganda in the 1970’s.
You see the people of Nineveh were the Nazis, the Idi Amins, the al-Qaeda of their day. History records the horrible atrocities committed by these people. Their wickedness took a special form of brutality.
It was not uncommon for these people to tear off the lips and hands of their victims; to slowly skin alive their captives.
Their hatred of Jews was well known. And Jonah was a Jew. A Jewish prophet.
We are not told what happened in between verses 2 and 3 but I believe Jonah did a lot of talking to the Lord. O Lord, you know my ministry. It would be seriously hampered without lips and hands. I can’t preach without lips and hands. And beside I hear these Ninevites skin alive their captives And Lord you know, I’ve never been much for suffering. Oh Lord, I’ll do anything but not Nineveh. Besides, You and I know that the Ninevites are all going to hell anyway, so why brother?
Lord, I hear through the Gospel grapevine that they’ve got a marvelous church retreat centre along the Spanish Riviera in a little place called Tarshish.
Lord, I deserve a break today, so I’m going to get up and get away to Tarshish.
So... Read vs. 3. Nineveh was approximately, 500 miles north east of Palestine. Tarshish on the other hand was 2000 miles due west from Palestine. When God told Jonah to go EAST he went WEST. The Bible says that he rose up to flee from the presence of the Lord.
He thought that if he could get far enough away from the Holy Land, far enough from the People of God that perhaps he could drown out the voice of God. But the Voice can shout over 3000 kilometers. We can never run away from God. We can run from out mother’s prayers; we can run from our childhood Sunday school but we can never run away from God.
David put it this way: You compass my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. There is not a word in my tongue, but lo O Lord, you know it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before and laid thine hand upon me.
You can’t get away from God. But Jonah thought he’d try.
So… He paid the fare. There is indication here that he used Visa or Master Card. He paid the fare. I take it not all of God’s prophets can say with Peter “Silver and Gold have I non.” So he paid the fare for this cruse.
I was in a travel agent’s office the other day on business and picked up a brochure on Cruses on the Queen Mary 2 New York to Hong Kong. The pictures were so inviting. The food looked so delicious. The I glanced at the price for an outside room: $15,000 and quietly closed the book and went on to something else.
Of course, we don’t know for sure how much Jonah paid to sail from Joppa to Tarshish but it must have been high: Cruses have never been cheap.
But God’s prophet had the money and paid the fare. Anything to get away from the call of God. Jonah wasn’t the first nor the last to use money in an attempt to get away from God. But it didn’t work!
4. Read vs. 4 and 5a. These sailors knew that this was no ordinary storm. This was a supernatural interference: The gods were angry; so, every man cried unto his god. If we go thru all the gods we may come up with the One who can calm the storm.
They had a sort of Bahai prayer meeting hoping that somebody would pray to the right God and calm the storm. I mean, one of these gods has got to be the true one.
Did you ever go to your house or cabin in the middle of the night? Its pitch dark. You’ve got no flash light and a ring of keys and only one key will open the door, You fumble away, one key at a time trying to find that one key that will open the door.
Well these poor sailors were like that. Fumbling away in the dark trying each god; hoping the door of mercy would open.
Meanwhile, the man who had the key was on the deck below sleeping. There is only one key that will open the door of mercy; there is only ONE God who can bring peace to your troubled soul. But we fumble away in the dark trying, all sorts of keys.
Crying out to false gods. We try the key of astrology but the storm rages on. We try the key of sexual freedom but the storm rates on. We try the key of substance abuse but the storm rages on. We try the key of materialism but the storm rages on. Jesus cries: I am the key; I am the only key that will open the door to peace.
Look for a moment at Jonah, this prophet of God, this man who had the key. He is not only asleep, he is fast asleep.
Rumor has it that if a person can’t sleep he’s has a guilty conscience and if he can sleep soundly he is at peace with God.
But it doesn’t always work that way. Here the innocent sailors were disturbed and the guilty party was at rest, sometimes we need to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.
Here’s Jonah as guilty as sin sleeping like a baby and so...Read vs. 6—8.
You can be sure this was no quiet game of 20 questions. These were desperate men yelling to be heard above the roar of the angry waves. What is your occupation? What’s your hometown? What is your country? And of what people are you?
I find it rather interesting that out of the four questions asked Jonah only answered the last one. But it was the significant question: Of what people art thou?
I am a Hebrew and I fear or I trust in the Lord, the God of heaven, who hath made the sea and the dry land.
And Ladies and Gentleman, in this new dispensation of grace the significant question is not: What is your job or what city do you live in or what is your nationality but of what people are you? Can you say I am of the People of God?
I want to pause for a moment at vs. 9. at this incredible statement of Jonah. I fear the Lord. I trust the Lord.
Is that so? Well, Jonah, if you trust the Lord so much why aren’t you on your way to Nineveh? How can you trust God and run from him at the same time? How can you say you fear the Lord and disobey him? That doesn’t add up! That doesn’t make sense.
But before we are too hard on Jonah perhaps we need to take a long look at ourselves we often we are no better than Jonah. What we say with our mouth doesn’t add up with our lives. We say we trust the Lord but when he asks us to do a hard thing we back off. We take the easy route. Read 9.
The Bible says that when these men heard these words they were exceedingly afraid. They knew intuitively that their ‘Mickey mouse’ gods were worthless & that Jehovah was the only true Cod.
Read vs. 11-12. I’m not quite sure why Jonah didn’t jump in the sea himself. Perhaps he figured he was in enough trouble with God he would not add suicide to his list of sins. So, he asked the men to throw him in.
Read vs. 13. Here we have a picture of humanity trying to find peace without coming to grips with the real problem. These poor sailors were working their heads off but still the sea ragged.
The problem wasn’t their works it was sin on the ship in the person of Jonah. Until sin was cast overboard there would be no peace. It’s the same in our lives We can do all sorts of good works; we can be very sincere; but unless we come to grips with the sin in our life and repent of that sin we will never know the peace of God.
Read 14—16. A lot of people read the story of Jonah and get swallowed by the whale: but I’m excited to discover that an entire shipload of pagan sailors were soundly converted.
They got rid of sin in the person of Jonah. That’s Repentance. They feared the Lord exceedingly. That’s faith. And they offered a sacrifice unto the Lord. That’s Worship.
The word ‘worship’ here means that they build a fire and slaughtered an animal to worship the true God of heaven. Now remember this was a wooden ship. To build a campfire on a wooden ship would be considered dangerous at the best of times but here on the high seas it could be disastrous.
Anyone passing by that ship would have thought those men were crazy? Nobody in his right mind builds a campfire on a wooden ship.
How many of you have friends and relatives who said when you got saved: Be careful, don’t go too far with this thing. It can be dangerous. You could end up in a mental hospital. To the world old fashion Conversion and Spirit anointed worship seem crazy. To the unsaved man following Christ with all your heart makes about as much sense as a campfire on a wooden ship.
But friends, these sailors were having a great time. They had never felt more secure in their lives. These new converts believed that it was far safer to worship God and have a little fire then to offend God and be cast into the Lake of Fire.
So, they worshiped God. But that isn’t the end of the story. Look at verse 17. Chapter 2 records part of the three-day prayer meeting Jonah had in the belly of the great fish. You will notice in vs. 9 that Jonah finally came to the same place the sailors had been. He says I will sacrifice into thee with the voice of thanksgiving. At this point the Lord spoke to the fish and said: O.K. let him go. Read 10b.
What follows in chapter 3 many Bible scholars believe is the greatest revival in human history.
Read 3:4,5. Nineveh a city with a population at least as large as Winnipeg: (600,000 people). A world capital with an influence far greater than its population would suggest. Nineveh that great city, believed God. Read 5—10.
This Story as an Illustration of the Mercy of God
Now let me ask you something? Do you see the wideness of God’s mercy in this story? Do you see how merciful God is toward his own children? Can you see how merciful God is toward the wicked, the sinner, the outsider?
Oh, the mercy of God! Some of the brightest words in the Bible are found in Chapter 3:1. The word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time. Here was a man that had knowingly, deliberately, disobeyed God. A man who knew the will of God and did the opposite. A man who blew it completely!
Yet God gave this man a second change. That is not to say God’s mercy is soft. God’s mercy often involves hard discipline, painful chastisement.
I am speaking to some Christians tonight who like Jonah have heard the voice of God and disobeyed. You have gone your own way and done your own thing.
O friend, God is not thru with you yet. His mercy will not let you go. He will call upon the winds and the waves if necessary to bring you back to himself. He wants to give you a second change. As a matter of fact, for most of us his mercy has gone far beyond the second chance: He has forgiven us over and over again
Oh, my fallen Brother, tossed about on the sea of disobedience, fling yourself upon the mercy of God. Give him once again the sacrifice of your lips even praise and thanksgiving.
Can you see the mercy of God, the wide mercy of God toward the outsider, the sinner the bad people. People who don’t even know who the true God is?
I think of those sailors. I think of the people of Nineveh. They were so sinful yet the mercy of God warmly embraced them. Not a soft weak spineless sort of mercy but a mercy that warned of certain Judgment to come unless the people repented.
A mercy that reached out to a different race of people. A mercy that extended to the King on his thrown to the beggar in his rags. And that is the kind of mercy that flows out of the heart of God in this meeting tonight.
