When Jesus is asked to give a sign, so that he might be believed, so that what he is saying might be accepted as true and authoritative, Jesus responds that no sign will be given—except the sign of Jonah.  Jonah was not one of the big three, or four: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel.  The story of Jonah takes about three pages.  Those hearing Jesus might not have been sure what to make of this “sign of Jonah” talk.  Neither are we.  Is it that God sends the help that is just right?  Is it the call to remember who our God is?  Is it to look out for the whale?

Last Sunday, we considered where God wanted Jonah to go and what God wanted Jonah to do there.  Jonah’s “No” was not the response God wanted from Jonah, any more than it’s the response God wants from me or you when He gives us a mission.  Do you believe God has a mission for you?  What do you think it is?  Is it difficult, demanding, and unhappy?  Is it just the opposite of all that?

Whether really believing he could get away, or maybe just sort of desperately hoping God might let him get away, Jonah went in just the opposite direction God called him.  Jonah wanted to get as far as he could from what God asked.  What God was asking was not merely impossible: it was downright inconvenient, and so inconsiderate.  Jonah felt a little betrayed by God.  Jonah was always happy to do for God what Jonah liked to do.  He and God had always gotten along so well!  Now, though, if this was how God was going to reward all Jonah’s faithfulness, then, maybe Jonah hadn’t made the best deal he could.

There at sea, shoved around in the wind above the dark deep, the crew is desperate to understand why this is happening.  They understood about fickle, feeble, and savage gods.  They understood about being the sport of Fate, Chance, Fortune, Luck.  They also understood about appeasing the anger, the voracious anger, of the gods.  “[T]he sailors said to each other, ‘Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity’ They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah” (1:7).  In the years of wilderness wandering and even afterwards, the leaders would ask the priest to inquire of the Lord by the urim and thummim (Num 27:21, 1 Sam 14:4, Ezra 2:63): the sacred lots, maybe like specially carved sticks or colored discs; heads or tails.  Before all this Bible there were the priests, the Law, the traditions, and the prophets: these were the means through which God ordinarily chose to make His way known, to speak.  There were whole generations and centuries when the people heard God only, maybe, through the sacred lots . . . maybe—maybe—through a prophet.

There’s no priest aboard that ship on that God-tossed sea; the only witness to God on that ship is that prophet.  But the prophet is silent as the perishing crew wonders what it’s all about.  If he just keeps quiet, maybe this will all pass over.  Therefore, God speaks through other means: the lots, cast by pagan hands, hands and hearts that knew nothing of the God you and I worship, the God of Jonah whose breath stirs the waters, whose Word holds life.

“[T]he lot fell to Jonah.  So they asked him, ‘Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us?  What kind of work do you do?  Where do you come from?  What is your country?  From what people are you?’” (1:7-8).  By divine means, like the finger of God pointing, those doomed souls are directed to Jonah.  Jonah is the source of the trouble.

What is the source of the trouble in the world today, beloved?  If we’re to listen to the people doing Satanic Grammy performances, to those who sell us our culture and engineer our society, the problem is people like you and me: Christians who believe the Bible, who take God at His word.  We’re ruining everything!  The truth of the matter, however, is everything is already ruined.  Moving the rubble here or there to make the landscape look less unappealing doesn’t alter the fact.  Christians don’t ruin anything; we are, rather, mirrors in which those without God are made to see the ruin all around them, and within.  But we don’t stop there.  That is not our primary mission.  Our main objective is to pull people out of the ruins, like emergency response teams after a tornado, hurricane, or earthquake—what happened in Turkey strikes close to home!  We’re looking for survivors before it’s too late.  There’s an urgency to the work.

Very attentive now, even with the storm churning all around them, those crowded around Jonah question him.  If Jonah won’t begin the conversation, God sees to it that they will.  Who are you?  Why are you here?  What must we do?  What must we do to live?  “He answered, ‘I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land’” (1:9).  Oh!  He’s from God’s Own Regiment, and he’s AWOL!  “This terrified them and they asked, ‘What have you done?’” (1:10).  It was clear to them that he was running, running from God.  They knew all about it, even if they refused to know they knew.  God had called out to each of them, at different times in their lives.  Each time, they had turned the other way: not now, later!  They didn’t need to know God and didn’t want to.  No room for God, just like Nineveh, or Bethlehem.  That crew had all the gods they could handle, just like Nineveh.  They had no god, and that was best of all; although, there’s always a god: the foundation and aim of a person’s life, the point of all his or her striving and planning.

The crew doesn’t cry out, “what have we done,” as though they thought God was punishing them.  They ask Jonah what he has done.  He’s angered his God.  How could he?  Why would he?  Didn’t he fear the Lord?  Well, Jonah may well have been afraid: he was running away, but I suspect his desire to get away didn’t arise out of fear so much as resentment, even disgust.  God wanted something from Jonah, and Jonah didn’t want to give it to God, didn’t want to do it, didn’t see why he should have to.  Why couldn’t things be just like they were, before?  If only God would stop being such a bother!

Whatever the cause, Jonah’s actions cast him out of living in the fear of the Lord.  He was willing to do harm to his relationship with God because what he actually had wanted was to claim the relationship without being invested in it.  I’ve heard a lot of talk about RINOs (though none about DINOs); I’m far more concerned about FINOs: friends in name only.  God is, too.

Unwittingly, from Jonah’s standpoint but intentionally from God’s, the crew’s questions aboard that floundering ship atop those wrathful waters become the occasion for testimony.  The one who didn’t want to proclaim God’s Word is now talking about God, helping those perishing pagans to see what they didn’t care to see before.  Jonah is, too.  Testimony isn’t just for others; it’s also for believers.  Those who fear the Lord share the Lord, speak of the Lord, and call others to know the Lord.  The faithful are always sending up flares, tossing life-rings out over the dark deep, hoping to rescue some.

“The sea was getting rougher and rougher.  So they asked him, ‘What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?’” (1:11).  Pagans understood, just like Jews, that the divine anger had to be appeased; forgiveness needed to be sought for trespasses.  God’s anger would fall upon all if the guilty one wouldn’t receive the judgment.  The gods required sacrifices: everybody knew that.  Atonement wasn’t just a Jewish notion.  One life for many.  Isaiah sang about it, but no one seemed to understand; no one wanted to?  Submission?  Sacrifice?  NO!  Defiance!  Resistance!  Victory of the will.  We understand that.  We like, we respond to, we cheer that story.  It’s a tragedy.  When the will isn’t God’s will, there is no victory, just tragedy bringing everything down to ruin.

Jonah was beginning to see.  Escape was impossible, had always been impossible.  God’s will was in it.  God’s will is victorious.  Defiance and resistance are the way of tragedy.  Submission and sacrifice?  God’s way of victory.  “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” Jonah told them, “and it will become calm.  I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you” (1:12).  Confession.  Responsibility.  The human will re-aligning with God’s will, submitting to God’s will, though that will does cause fear: Jonah is telling them to sacrifice him, make him the reconciling sacrifice.  Yes, that’s part of it.  Think back, though.  What was it that God had wanted Jonah to do?  Go into the storm of Nineveh, where none knew God nor wanted to.  Go to the people of many gods.  Go into the old chaos of hearts seeking their own way, their own will.  Go, Jonah, and set my Word alongside, against their many words, their many ways.  They shall see My Word, and hear My Word, and find how far they have fallen.

And then what, God? Jonah wondered.  Then what?

Cast the messenger into the old chaos.  Send the messenger into the dark deep.  He doesn’t go alone.  He doesn’t go powerless.  He doesn’t go without light or food.  He doesn’t go without hope or help.

While throwing Jonah overboard was not out of the question, the crew were humane enough to regard that as the last resort.  They were pagans, but they weren’t unprincipled.  “[T]he men did their best to row back to land” (1:13): exert themselves, save themselves by their own wisdom, intelligence, experience, and strength, their own will.  If I want it badly enough, I can achieve it!  If we want it badly enough, we can achieve it.  What does God want?  “[T]he sea grew even wilder than before.  Then they cried out to the Lord, ‘Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life.  Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased’” (1:13-14).  Did you hear?  Pagans, crying out to the Lord.  There’s music to His ears!  If God loves to hear our voices—and oh, does He!—how much more the voices of those who have not believed, who have gone any which way but God’s way?  Coming to the Lord.  Acknowledging the Lord.  Submitting to the Lord.

Yes, the Lord has done as He pleased.  God has a strange way of reaching people?  We have a strange way of turning from God, and God turns every way as He sees fit, for His purposes and His plans.  If it takes the death of his prophet, his messenger, to save the lives of pagans, so be it.