A Whale of a Storm

Carter Conlon from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. So what does God do to get a hold of a whole church age that talks about Him and sings about Him but doesn't really want His presence in their midst? So few want to go there.

We're glad you've joined us for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon. You know, a lot of people in our churches here in America don't mind the singing, the teaching, or the fellowship. They don't mind all of the things that go on in the name of God. But in reality, many of these same people are fleeing from the presence of the Lord. Carter will explain why that's happening in today's message from Jonah.

It's titled, A Whale of a Storm. We're going to follow along in some of the scriptures together and just see how this particular moment we are in history today could affect your life and where could the hand of God possibly be in all of this? Now, in the Bible, there was a man in the Old Testament. His name was Jonah. And he was called of God to do a specific thing that he just didn't want to do. And so the Bible tells us that he fled. In verse 3, Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

Now, this is an interesting concept. I've preached on this before and I have shared from my heart that I felt that Jonah fled from the calling of the Lord. And that's how many people preach this passage, but that's not what it says.

He fled from the presence of the Lord because in the presence of the Lord, he became aware of the purpose of his life. You see, a lot of people today don't mind religion, but they don't want the presence of the Lord. A lot of our churches in America today, they don't mind the smoke and the mirrors.

They don't mind the singing. They don't mind all of the things that go on in the name of God, but they actually are fleeing from the presence of the Lord because where God's presence is, there is a conviction of sin. Where God's presence is, there's a turning from wrong to right, a turning to righteousness as the Bible says. Where God's presence is, we don't just go to church and feel good about ourselves. Missionaries are born there. Callings are given there. Where God's presence is, you don't have a revival without a missions movement.

The two don't go together. A lot of people have tried to have revivals in America in the last 10 to 20 years and they've conjured up all kinds of things in the name of God, but nothing of any real significance is birthed in it because the presence of God is not really there. It's gathering to worship and to speak about God, but the presence of God calls us into something that maybe we're reluctant to do or even think that we're capable of doing. In Jonah's case, the Lord was calling him to a people he didn't much care for, calling him to a ministry he really didn't want, calling him to a place he didn't want to go. Quite often, that's exactly what the calling of God at least initially looks like. We always think that if God's calling, it's got to be my dream vacation per se. Some mission feels somewhere that I've always longed to go to, but if you go back into just the history of the Christian church, you'll find people like Hudson Taylor being called to places that were hard, places where family members had to be buried, places where there was sorrow, there was heartache. Of course, the reports of that would come back to other Christians living in relative safety, and they knew that to follow the calling of God meant to go into those places where many, many had gone before, where there was difficulty, where there was hardship, where it wasn't easy. There's something in all of us that just wants an easy path.

We want heaven, and we want more or less an easy path on the way to heaven. Now, God's speaking to this man, but he's not listening. Presence of the Lord has come to him, and in the presence of God, when God is there, God never forgets what our calling is.

We might try to forget. We might try to push it away, but God doesn't forget what he's called us to do. Three times it says in the first chapter that Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord. Now, as he is fleeing from God, he went down into the belly of the ship.

He paid a price to go in the opposite direction, and when we go in the opposite direction, there's always a price to be paid, trust me, and he headed out in the opposite direction from where God was calling him, and he went down into the belly of the ship, and in the midst of a huge storm that's affecting people all around him. Think about it today. There's a huge storm in our society. People are despairing. Suicides are now on the rise. Opiate addictions are reaching epidemic proportions in a lot of our small towns in America today.

Grandma and grandpa stoned in the car with their grandkids in the backseat, passed out in the street or in their driveway. This is what's happening in America. Abortions are on the increase in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. It's just as if evil is now on steroids in this society, and so the question is, where's the church? Where are the people of God?

Where are those who are called to make a difference in this society? I suggest to you that in the midst of this storm, the prayerlessness in God's house is an evidence that we've done exactly what Jonah did. We're sound asleep in the belly of the ship, and many, many of God's people instead of praying are sleeping. Instead of praying or just looking for something to pacify their own sense of fear or lack of fulfillment, and just as Jonah once did, we are sound asleep in the midst of the storm where people around us are crying out.

It says people were calling out to their gods, whatever their concept of God was, and I don't know if you can hear it, but the Lord hears it, and if we come into the presence of God, we will hear it too. People are crying in apartments in New York City. Single mothers don't know how they're gonna feed their kids. Young people are crying for a reason to live. The hopelessness that's wanting to swallow a whole generation is also becoming literally pandemic in our society today.

Marriages are falling apart. People don't know where they're gonna get provision, and they're calling out to whatever their concept of God is, and if you can see it in your mind, some are lighting candles. Some are burning incense. Some are chanting.

We don't know what they're doing. People are doing all kinds of things because of the severity of the storm that's come worldwide now in this generation, and so suddenly the captain of that ship comes down into the belly and starts speaking to the conscience of this man and says, arise, call on your God. Perhaps your God will consider us so that we may not perish. Now this is an unsaved man coming to the man of God and saying, rise and start calling out to your God, and perhaps he will have mercy on us, and so Jonah finds himself suddenly on the deck of the ship very much like Paul the apostle did in Acts chapter 27.

Now the sailors that were on that vessel said to him, tell us, for whose cause is this trouble upon us? In other words, why is this happening in our world? What is your occupation? Where do you come from?

What is your country? And what kind of people are you? And suddenly he's confronted with the reality of who he is. He's confronted with the reality that he was commissioned by God to go to a place to tell the people who are known for their godlessness and their violence about the justice of God. He feared in his heart that these people would be shown mercy and he didn't want them to be shown mercy. The scripture clearly tells us that at the end of this book called Jonah.

So he fled in an opposite direction. But suddenly coming into his consciousness is who are you? I want to ask people that are online listening, who are you? Who are you? What is your occupation? Where do you come from? And what is your country?

Like where's your citizenship? What kind of a people do you belong to? What is your heritage? What has been handed down to you from previous generations? What is your speech supposed to sound like?

Where's your conversation supposed to lead people to? What kind of people are your people? And if we had the courage to answer that question today, we would say, well, I come from a lineage of people who went into arenas and were torn apart by lions rather than deny the God that they served. I come from a heritage of people who died by the sword, who were put in prisons, who were mocked, who were stoned, who were sawn asunder as the scripture says. I come from a heritage of people who really through blood and fire passed on a torch to me to bring to people in my generation.

A torch that talks about the mercy of God, talks about the provision of God, the protection of God, the sacrifice of God's son on a cross so that all men and women and children may be set free from the penalty and the power of sin. It says the men on that ship were exceedingly afraid, verse 10. And they said, why have you done this? For they knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. You see, why did you do this? Why did you flee from God's presence and bring this storm upon us?

Now I'm not sharing this to indict the church, but this actually happened. And we know from scripture that God sent this storm to get a hold of this one man. And all these sailors on the ship are in a storm now because one man is going in the opposite direction to where God has called him. What do we have to do then?

What shall we do? They said in verse 11 that the sea may be calm for us because the sea was getting worse and worse and worse. And I want to tell you something, the coronavirus is only the beginning of sorrows. It's only the beginning of trouble that's going to touch us worldwide. The days ahead are going to be extremely difficult for everybody. Even as one time Mordecai, the cousin said to his cousin Esther, don't think because you found a palace to live in that you're going to be safe.

This crisis has come into this world is going to touch everybody and in every place. Now his answer is very strange unless you begin to understand that God's starting to speak something to us through this passage of scripture. He said to them, pick me up and throw me into the sea, then the sea will become calm for you. For I know that this great tempest is because of me.

Find a smooth sailing place. I'm not called to live to focus on my own safety, security, my own happiness, my own way of doing things. I am called by God for a divine purpose.

And if you will throw me into the midst of your trouble, it will become calm for you. You see, we as the church of Jesus Christ, are light, we are salt, we are defined this way by Jesus Christ himself. We are to bring healing, preservation of truth. We're to create thirst for the things of God.

We're to be lights that are set upon a hill that cannot be hidden. So throw me into the midst of your trouble. In other words, instead of sleeping in the middle of the ship, throw me into the center of your storm. That's the purpose of my life.

That's what I'm called to be. This was the beginning of the understanding that he had caused hardship in other people's lives because he had turned away from the full calling that God had placed upon him. Now, he's in a storm. They're in a storm. But Jonah's storm is about to turn from a storm to a whale of a storm. That's where I think we get the expression. It was a whale of a storm. It was a whale of a windstorm. I heard it when I was a kid.

I didn't realize it, but most likely that terminology, of course, came from the book of Jonah. Just when you think it couldn't get worse, you imagine they take him and in his mind, okay, if you'll just kind of throw me overboard or maybe at this point, it's almost like a suicide mission for him. Just let me die and everything will be well.

I know that God has allowed this because I'm running from the call of God. So if I die, then maybe God's anger towards me will be pacified and the storm will cease and you'll be safe. And so they take him up. As a last resort, they throw him overboard and he probably thinks at this point he's going to drown only to be swallowed by a whale.

Now, his storm just became a whale of a storm. I don't know about you. I can't fathom being in a worse place than that. I can't fathom it. You're in a whale.

I mean, figure this one. You're in a whale and you're down in the belly of the whale and all that that represents and all that that smells like and how dark that is and I can't even just begin to fathom what that would have been like for Jonah at that moment. But I'll tell you one thing.

He began to pray in that place. I'm looking at people here that they don't know what to do. The storm has gotten so big.

The waves are so high. I have one here. I'll just read you one example right at the end. It says from Ohio, my husband's at a breaking point. He's a pastor and a business owner. He's in desperate need of prayer. The pressures are too much.

Well, might I suggest maybe one's got to prosper, one's got to live and the other's got to die. It's hard to be a pastor and a business owner at the same time. Now, Jonah prayed to the Lord from the fish's belly, chapter two. Now, here's his prayer. I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction and he answered me. I cried out. We won't cry if we're not afflicted. It's really that simple. That's the kind of creatures that we are.

If everything is going smoothly and we're allowed to just live in our slumber, if we can flee from the presence of God, then we will just more or less ride through life like that and finish our course like that. But he said, I cried because of my affliction and he answered me. And he answered me. It doesn't say and he was fed up with me and it doesn't say and he said, don't talk to me anymore. You haven't obeyed my calling.

It doesn't say no. You ran from the calling I placed on your life. It says, no, he answered me out of the belly of sale, which is in a sense the place of the dead. I cried and you heard my voice for you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas. The flood surrounded me and all your billows and your waves passed over me. Then I said, I've been cast out of your sight, yet I will look again towards your holy temple. Jonah says, I recognized that the place I was in, it was because of my lack of commitment to your calling in my life and because I chose to flee from you instead of walk towards you.

I chose not to believe that you could use my life for something of great value and instead I chose my own way, paid the fare and headed off in the opposite direction. But yet you sent this storm and then you send a whale of a storm my way and I felt as if I deserved your judgments, all your billows and your waves, all your warnings, everything in the scripture that tells me what I've become or what I've failed to become is passing over me suddenly over my mind is coming back. The word of God that I neglected, the promises I didn't claim as my own, the strength I could have had, but I forfeited it for my own ideas.

And then I said, I've been cast out of your sight, but he said, yet I will look again towards your holy temple. The water surrounded me, even to my soul. In other words, this trial was so deep, it etched itself in the very fabric of my being.

It couldn't go any deeper. By which end I was at the point zero of life. The deep closed around me, weeds were wrapped around my head.

In other words, a deep sense of failure was just all it's all I could think about. This sense of God, what did I do with my life? And what did I do with your presence? And what have I done with your calling? And look at the people that came into sorrow because of my life, the storm that they had to endure because you were trying to get a hold of me. And I believe with all my heart that Jesus Christ is trying to get a hold of his church again in this hour. He's trying to get hold of every person that sits in every seat in every house of God.

And yes, he will allow a storm to come because all things are working together for good because we do love God deep down and we are the called according to his purpose, not our purpose, his purpose. I went down to the moorings of the mountains, the earth with its bars closed behind me forever. In other words, the things of this world were trying to convince me that it was hopeless. I had no future. There's no way to get out of here.

I went down verse six to the moorings of the mountains, the earth with its bars closed behind me forever. In other words, I was hopelessly swallowed up by my failure, hopelessly. There was no way out.

I knew it. There was no way to get out of this predicament I'm in. There's no way to get out of this fish that swallowed me.

There's no way to get out of the death fated within me. I remembered the Lord and my prayer went up to you into your holy temple. Now, seemingly it doesn't even get any farther apart than that. Isn't it amazing? Like I'm down as low as I can go and you're as high as you can go. But oh God, I'm praying to you now. And if you can still hear my voice, he says in verse nine, this is where it starts to really turn. But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving.

Isn't that amazing? Before he set free, before he rediscovers his purpose, he says, God, I'm just going to start thanking you. I can't go any lower. It doesn't get any darker.

It doesn't get any worse. But I'm making the choice now. I'm just going to thank you for being merciful and thank you for being a deliverer. I'm going to thank you for being kind.

I'm going to thank you for being the one who opens prison doors. You set captives free. You heal the wounded in heart. You give sight to the blind.

I'm going to start just thanking you for being who you are. And he says in the end of verse nine of chapter two, I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. In other words, I am called of you to bring this great message of salvation to anybody who can still hear it. And I'm called to go wherever you send me to go. It's not my choice.

It's your choice. And Jonah suddenly in the midst of his trial remembers what he had vowed to the Lord and says this incredible word. Salvation is of the Lord. It's up to you, Lord, how you choose to bring this great message of salvation and to whom you bring it to and who you use to send it there. And so verse 10, as soon as he praises, I will do what I said I would do. God, if you will touch my life again, I will live for you. I will serve you.

I will speak for you. I will go where you call me to go. So the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. I love this story. And suddenly he finds himself on land in the place of his calling, but something has changed. Something in this man's life has changed.

And here's what it is. There is an incredible presence of God with him. Amazing presence of God. It's a three day walk through this city, a city of Assyrians known for their godlessness, known for their cruelty, known for their desire to conquer other people, the absolute enemies at that time of the people of God.

And Jonah walks through the city and his message is really simple. 40 days and it's all over. God's senior wickedness, 40 days. The fire of God's coming down or the ground's going to swallow, whatever's going to happen. You're going to be burnt up. The city's going to be gone. You're all going to die.

40 days. And what he didn't realize is the presence of God that he had run from is now with him. And God, it's not so much Jonah. God is speaking to the people. Jonah is just confirming what God has already been speaking to the people.

Praise be to God. And the scripture tells us the people of Nineveh believed God. It doesn't say they believed Jonah.

I love this. In chapter three and verse five it says, so the people of Nineveh believed God. There was this incredible presence of God with him, proclaimed a fast, put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. The word came to the king of Nineveh. He rose from his throne, laid aside his robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes.

It is truly, truly amazing. Then it says God saw their works. They turned from their evil way and God relented from the disaster he said he would bring upon them and did not do it. Jonah had no idea that Nineveh, a city of thousands, I forget how many it was, 110,000, 120,000. He had no idea that 120,000 people were going to turn away from their sin and turn towards God. He had no idea.

In his mind he was just going there to pronounce judgment on this particular city. He had no idea what God's going to do. You see the Lord does not show us the whole plan. He just shows us the next step. And all you and I are required to do is take the next step and then take the next step and then take the next step.

And every day take the next step. It was only a three day ministry and we're talking about it thousands of years later. We're still talking about a three day ministry.

Amazing when you think about it. Three days and it's all written down. Imagine if you serve God for just three days and got four chapters in the word of God for it.

That's what Jonah got. Three days. Three days of obedience.

Three days of opening his mouth and telling people there's a justice. But there had to be something of God in his message that spoke of mercy. You see because I don't think he was speaking about mercy. I think his message was just about judgment. But God was overriding. He at least had a vessel through whom he could work and he was overriding that message of judgment alone and he was speaking about mercy. The people knew.

The king knew. The whole of Nineveh knew that God would be willing to show us mercy if we would turn from our wickedness and turn towards him. And because of the obedience and the short, short ministry recorded here of one man, 120,000 people were spared an eternity in hell. They were spared for a season so they could get to know God.

They were spared for a generation from a judgment that would send them into a darkness forever. You see when you and I are walking in the right place, when we're doing what God calls us to do, you see it's no longer about us. It's now about other people. It's about them finding forgiveness. It's not about just us getting out of all of our struggles and our trials. If heaven is your home, if your name is written down in God's book of life, if you have trusted Christ for your salvation, if you could honestly say God is your father, that Jesus Christ is your savior, the Holy Spirit is your helper, if you can say that heaven is your home, your future is secure.

Now it's not about you, it's now about others. And when Jesus says follow me, there is a cross that comes with that. I'm sorry, I wish I could tell you like some others that it's just going to be a life of ease and plenty, but that's not what the Bible says.

There are seasons and times in this world when it's going to be difficult to live for God, but with God, all things are possible. I love this one thought that in a moment, Jonah is back on land. He's not far away from his calling. He's in the exact place of his calling.

He's literally spit out on the shores of Nineveh where God had called him to go. And an incredible presence of God is with him. And so this is my prayer for you. I'm not just praying for your healing. I'm praying that you become mighty. I'm not just praying for your deliverance from drugs or depression or addiction or whatever it is. I'm praying that you become mighty, that you not just come out of something, but you go into what God has for your life. Oh, some of the greatest evangelists in the world are people who had the greatest struggles before they came to the knowledge of where God was leading them. Oh, praise God. If you can hear me tonight, if you can hear this, God can raise up an army.

This world is in a storm, and this world needs an army of God-empowered, spirit-filled men and women who go to the place that God has called them to. The message today has been brought to you by Carter Conlon from Times Square Church. For more information, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. Plan to be with us next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.