Kerwin Baptist Church Daily Broadcast

Welcome to the Truth Network Podcast. And they said every one to his fellow, come and let us cast lots that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots and the lot fell upon Jonah.

Verse 8, then said they unto him, tell us we pray thee for whose cause this evil is upon us. What is thine occupation? Now listen to this, whence comest thou? What is thy country? And of what people art thou? It's all the same question.

I mean they're just on him. You know, where are you from? What kind of people are you from?

Where do you live? You know it's the same question. Verse 9, and he said unto them, I am in Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land. Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this?

For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? For the sea wrought, and was tempestuous. Verse 12, and he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea, so shall the sea be calm unto you. For I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.

Nevertheless the men rode hard to bring it to the land, but they could not. For the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them. Wherefore they cried unto the Lord, and said, We beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood.

For thou, O Lord, hast done, as it pleased thee. So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea, and the sea ceased from her raging. Notice verse 16, Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows. Now I want to give special attention to verse 17, and then we'll begin with our second installment in the book of Jonah. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days, and three nights. I believe that the rest of this passage in chapter 1, I want to basically give you some principles out of it that God has made clear. In other words, this is the story, this is what God has said. Now here's some principles that we need to learn. Before we go any further, I want you to understand one thing about the book of Jonah, especially about chapter 1, and about your life, and my life.

Now listen to me very closely. Sin always brings storms. Sin always brings storms into the soul, into the family, into a church, and into a nation. Sin always brings storms.

Number 1, I want you to see this this morning, fear of safety, or fear for safety. The Bible says in verse 5 that the mariners were afraid. Now you've got to think about this for a second. Alright, now this big storm has come up. It's not because of these guys on the ships, not their fault, it's not their problem, they didn't cause this. But here they are in the middle of a storm, and sin always brings a storm.

And now these guys were afraid. Now I want you to notice this word mariners. What is interesting about this word is it means that these men were extremely experienced shipmen. They had seen all kinds of storms. Now if you take one of us that maybe we have been on a boat a few times in our life, maybe been fishing, or maybe a small bass boat or something like that, and maybe we haven't been in the Navy, and we haven't been on a lot of those things. And you know it might be that you put us on a ship like this and out in the middle of the sea, and a storm comes up like this, or a storm comes up.

You know we're going to get really nervous, and we're going to get really scared because we're not used to it, and we're not comfortable with it. And buddy when that boat starts doing this number, and you all know what I'm talking about, if you're somewhat inexperienced storms can startle you a little bit more. But now wait a minute, these guys had seen all kinds of storms, but this one scared them to death. Let me tell you something I notice here, they had seen what nature could do, but they had never seen what God could do. You have never seen a storm until God brings it. These guys had seen everything there was to see. They had probably seen what we would consider horrible storms.

They were experienced. And yet when God showed up with His storm it scared them half to death. Dear friend I want you to understand that when you and I determine to go against God and go a different route, and do things a different way you better hold on. Because while you think you can just about handle anything in your life, you've never seen anything until God starts intervening. You think things are bad now, wait until God starts His storm.

Fear for safety. I want you to notice second I see futile supplication. That means this, the Bible says, notice this, and cried every man unto his God.

It was worthless. These guys in supplication is basically obviously trying to commune and they are calling out to their gods, and here they are wasting their time. Their gods could not do one thing for them in this storm.

And we say, yeah, isn't it ridiculous? Oh, this is a picture of the unsaved. Do you know that our world right now people turn to all kinds of gods to deal with the storms in their life. I mean they are trying everything and you get people desperate enough, but they'll finally get on TV and they'll start watching some of these preachers and they'll get so confused. And now we see all these Hollywood people and they are turning to Kabbalah, and they are turning to the Christian Science Movement, and they are turning to Scientology, and they are trying everything they can do to calm the storm in their life.

And yet it is absolutely doing nothing. And listen to me dear friend you can try everything in your life to deal with the storm that God has brought, but the only person you can turn to that will ever calm that storm is Jesus. I want you to notice thirdly I see a fruitless struggle. Notice not only did they say, the Bible says, they cried every man to his own God.

But notice this it says, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea to lighten it of them. Alright, I've prayed. I've called out to the gods.

That did no good. So, I guess I'm just going to have to start trying to come up with a solution myself. And that's what we do. We try everything to fix it, and when we don't then we say, well I'm going to have to fix it myself.

And so what do they do? They got this idea, we're going to throw everything out of the ship. It will lighten up the ship. And maybe it will keep us safe. And maybe it will stop the storm a little bit.

And maybe we won't rock as much. And what I find here is fruitless struggle. And they're doing all this stuff and it wasn't doing any good. They were working so hard, but they were accomplishing so little. I want you to notice how often you and I work so hard to fix things.

But we are wasting our time. We work so hard. We're going to fix our kids. We're going to fix our marriage. We're going to fix our job. We're going to fix our finances.

We're going to fix it all. And I'm going to come up with a way and we work hard. And we plan hard. And we put forth all the effort.

But it's absolutely doing nothing in our life. We've got to turn to God. We need God's help in our marriage. And we need God's help in our finances. And we need God's help at our job. And we need God's help raising those children.

It's got to be God. You can cast everything off the ship if you want to. It's not going to do anything to help you in that storm. I want you to notice fourth I see false security. The Bible says this, but Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship and he lay fast asleep. And was fast asleep.

False security. Listen to me. Why don't you get this. Here he was in danger but he was unaware of it and unconcerned. Does that not describe us sometimes? Here we are. We are doing things in our life that is absolutely leading us down the wrong road. And here we are laid back, relaxed, think everything is fine because we are happy and we are doing what we want to do. And little do we know we are unaware and unconcerned and don't even realize how bad the storm is coming.

Here in the middle of this storm in the boats tossing and turning Jonah is fast asleep unaware and unconcerned. Sometimes I feel like that sometimes with church because Satan is fighting. And as a pastor I see kind of an overlook of everybody's life where many times all you see is maybe your friends and things.

And I am kind of responsible for a lot of things. And I look and I think, man Satan is fighting and he's winning the battle. And our folks sometimes don't even seem to care.

We have church and can't even get them to come. They are unaware, unconcerned. We are basically sleeping while the storm is going on. But I want you to understand something as I really thought about this.

Listen to me. Why was Jonah sleeping? And here is what I thought. Perhaps for some time he had been avoiding sleeping. Because the Bible says that God kept coming to Jonah in a dream saying, go to Nineveh, go to Nineveh. And as Jonah was fighting against the will of God he might not have hardly been sleeping. Every time I go to sleep God says, go to Nineveh, go to Nineveh.

And I don't want to go to Nineveh. And probably through this whole struggle he wasn't sleeping. He wasn't getting any rest. And finally when he gets down to that ship and he knows that ship is going to take me to Tarshish.

And if I go the other way it is going to take me to Nineveh. And his constant struggle he probably wasn't sleeping. It was this inward struggle constantly. And finally I think he thought when he got on that ship that God would leave him alone. Now I can finally sleep. I've told God no. And maybe God will leave me alone. I think that maybe Jonah finally thought he was out of reach of danger.

Are you getting this like I am? He thought finally I'm on this ship. I've made my decision.

I'm on my way to Tarshish. Maybe God will finally leave me alone now. And I think Jonah probably laid down and there wasn't no dreams coming. And there wasn't any commands coming in the dream. And for the first time in a long time he was sleeping really good. But little did he know God wasn't sending a dream this time. He was sending a storm. Do you know how often you and I when we struggle with what God wants us to do?

How hard it is to sleep. We go further and further away from God. And almost sometimes we get so far from God I'm going to stay away from church because I get conviction at church.

And that old preacher preaches hard and he hollers from the pulpit. And so I'm going to stay away from church and I'm not going to read my Bible. I'm not going to have my devotions. And we think we get far enough away from God that we can finally get some rest and He'll finally leave us alone. But dear friend God loves you too much to leave you alone. I think this is probably the best sleep Jonah had gotten for a long time. Thought he was finally free of God's will.

Listen to me I think if I could put it plainly I think Jonah felt when he left God's will that God would leave him alone. Guess what dear friend when you leave God's will you're going to have this false security that you're doing fine. You're going to have this false security of, hey things are finally, there's not as much stress now in my life.

You know what I'm not as busy I used to always be running a bus route and doing things and visiting and all this stuff. You know now I've gotten away from all that and now I'm more relaxed and life's just better. And you can give yourself all the false security you want to. But I'm here to tell you you have no idea of the storm that might be heading into your life. Here I believe he was in danger and he was unaware and unconcerned. I want to give you a couple of verses that I think go along with it. Romans 13 and 11, and that knowing the time that now it is high time to awake out of sleep. For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. I thought of this Isaiah 51 beginning in verse 16 God gives instruction to His people. And say unto Zion thou art my people awake, awake stand up O Jerusalem which has drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury. Thou has drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling and wrung them out. There is none to guide her among all the sons whom she had brought forth.

Neither is there any that taketh her by the hand all the sons that she hath brought up. Awake, awake stand up O Jerusalem. And sometimes you want to say, wake up, wake up, wake up church of God. Wake up. There's a storm outside your little ship.

I want you to notice before I go on to the next point and I wrote this down and I want to read this to you because I wanted to make sure I put it down right. It is the policy of Satan when by his temptations he has drawn men from God and from the duty God had assigned them. To rock them asleep in carnal security that they may not even sense their misery or danger. Listen to me folks I believe it is Satan's policy that when you go against or away from what God wants He will make you as secure as you've ever been. He will almost make you so secure that you don't even realize the misery and the missing pieces in your life.

False security. I want you to look at verse 6 if you would. The Bible says this, so the ship master came to him. Now I want you to understand this ship master was the oldest, most experienced accomplished person on that ship. He was the captain.

He was the head. He was the one that had seen it all, done it all, bought a t-shirt, lost a t-shirt. He had done everything. He knew everything there was to know about a ship. He knew everything there was to know about storms.

There wasn't anything he hadn't seen. He was the most experienced. He was the ship master. And he's the one that came to him in verse 6 and said unto him, what meanest thou O sleeper? Arise call upon thy God. Obviously their gods didn't work.

And their efforts didn't work. So he finally comes to Jonah and says, you call upon your God. If so be that God will think upon us that we perish not. Now I want you to just think about this picture for a second dear friend. We don't have a long time to go.

We've just got a few more things. But I want you to listen to me. I literally, you almost want to pity Jonah that he needed to be reproved from a ship master. This was a man of God.

Look at me. This was a preacher, a man of God. And yet it took an individual that wasn't even a Christian that knew nothing about God.

It took him to reprove Jonah. How bad a shape do you have to get in as a Christian where God has to even use somebody unsaved to get your attention? How far away from God do you have to get for that? It's a shame sometimes as a pastor to see individuals that have just determined because they want what they want. They get so far away from God. And many times even individuals that don't even profess to know God or claim to know God they can even see how wrong it is what they're doing. I've had people come and they have family members that don't even go to church, aren't even Christians.

And yet they give better advice to them than they have given to themselves. That's how bad it can get folks when you get away from God. Even a person that doesn't know God will have more sense than you will. I want you to notice in verse 7 we begin with our principles and I'll go through these and we'll be done this morning. And they said everyone to his fellow come and let us cast lots that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots and the lot fell upon Jonah.

Of course it did. First principle you see from this passage is this God is in control. Number one God is in control. Dear friend the Bible even says later on that God controls the casting of lots. You may think it's luck.

You may think I can't get a break. Dear friend it is nothing but God who is in control. Dear friend I want you to know something God will constantly do things in your life to remind you He is in control.

He just is. We can get mad at it. We don't like it. We can get frustrated.

It's not going to change the fact He's in control. I want you to notice in verse 8, then said they unto Him, tell us we pray thee for whose cause this evil is upon us. What is thine occupation? Whence comest thou?

What is thy country? And of what people art thou? Here Jonah was asked by God, listen to me, to preach to an entire city. He was asked by God you go when to the Lord that entire city of Nineveh. And he had not even witnessed the three or four men on his ship. They didn't even know he was a Christian. They didn't know he was a preacher. They didn't know he was a Hebrew. They didn't know he feared God because he was getting ready to tell them this in the next verse.

He'd gotten on that ship. He didn't represent Christ. He didn't share Christ. He didn't tell anybody about Christ. God wanted him to go reach a whole city and he couldn't even reach a few men on a boat.

Anybody else? A little bit convicted by that? I want you to notice secondly you will always affect others with your decisions. These men didn't do one thing to cause this storm and yet they were in the middle of it too. I've watched men that decided they were going to do what they wanted to do, what their old flesh wanted. And when that marriage broke up they hurt a wife.

They hurt children. You go ahead and have your little stubborn thing, bless God I'm going to do what I want to do. Nobody is going to tell me what to do. Nobody is going to tell me I can't go look at a bunch of mess and do a bunch of mess and you know get on a computer or go to wrong places. And nobody is going to tell me I can't do that mess.

Well you go ahead and do that mess and you'll find out the storms that you caused you're going to bring a whole bunch of people in that storm with you. Your decisions always affect others. It is selfishness. Sin is selfish. I want you to notice 3rd verse 9 and he said unto them, I am in Hebrew and I fear the Lord. What?

That's a shocker. The God of heaven which hath made the sea and the dry land. In other words God controls the water fellas. God controls the land.

It's me I'm the problem. Nobody else controls the water but God. Nobody else controls the land but God. He owns it all.

He's in control. I want you to notice thirdly look at verse 10. Then were the men exceedingly afraid and said unto them, Why hast thou done this? That's a real good question isn't it? Why'd you do it?

I've sat in the office of the people. Well why did you do this to your wife? Number 3, there's never a good reason to run from God. Never a good reason. I mean we always pick on teenagers because a teenager will go out and do something absolutely ridiculous. And mom and dad will bring them in and say, Why'd you do it?

And we say, Well just a young person all day. Yeah, well let me bring you in mom and dad. Let me ask you something. Why'd you do this? Why are you going down this road? Why are you making these decisions? Dear friend there's never a good reason to run from God. You're going to get to the point and have ruined everything and you're not even going to have a good reason why you did. Bottom line is I'm selfish.

Oh that's a real good reason to ruin a life. I want you to notice I'm going through these quickly obviously. And by the way there's never a good reason to go against God and run against God but you always see it after. You always see it after.

When it's all said and done, I blew it. We don't ever see it before but we always see it after. I want you to notice next look at verse 10 it says, For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord because he had told them, look at verse 11, Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee that the sea may be calm unto us? For the sea wrought and was tempestuous.

I said, man what in the world could we do to stop this? I want you to notice fourthly running from God always causes turmoil. It always causes, look at me, running from God never causes peace.

That's that false security Satan will give you. But running from God never causes peace. It always causes turmoil.

You write it down in your little black book eventually there's going to be turmoil. I want you to notice verse 12, And he said unto them, Take me up, cast me forth into the sea, so shall the sea be calm unto you. For I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you. I want you to notice next we find this that God did not do this to Jonah. Jonah did this to himself.

Do you get that principle? Everybody says they are going to end up finally off a ship cast off into a sea. We find out obviously sitting in the belly of a fish. And we always want to say I just don't understand why God allowed this to happen. I don't understand why God didn't provide protection for me. I don't understand why God would let things get like this. Dear friend we can't blame God for our sin. God didn't do this to Jonah. Everybody always wants to say, well I just can't believe God would do that to a man and put him in the belly of a fish. Can you imagine how nasty that was?

Yeah, I can imagine how nasty that was. And old Jonah knows even better than anybody how nasty it was. But nobody did it to Jonah but Jonah. Daniel Haughtry can't blame any of you for my sin.

It's my fault. God didn't do this to Jonah. Jonah did this to Jonah. You know one of the hardest times is to have people understand you have got to take personal responsibility for your decisions.

Our society tells you blame everybody else and get a government grant for it. I want you to notice verse 13, I love this one. Nevertheless the men rode hard to bring it to the land but they could not for the sea rot and the tempestuous was against them. Now they decide they are going to try to outrun the storm.

Bad decision. I want you to notice next God will always win. God will always win. Hey teenagers you look at me you can fight him if you want to. I just want you to know in your life God is going to win. He's going to win.

Moms and dads you can get as smart as you want and think you have accomplished everything you can accomplish. I'm going to tell you something if you start fighting against God He's going to win. You can row as hard as you can and you can fight the storm as much as you can but that storm is going to wear you down and eventually you are going to realize I cannot win this battle against God.

He's never lost a battle yet. If Satan couldn't defeat him do you think you are going to? I want you to notice if you would verse 14. Wherefore they cried unto the Lord and said, We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life and lay not upon us innocent blood for thou O Lord has done as it has pleased thee.

So they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea. And by the way that's where all the unsaved friends are going to leave you. That's another lesson all in its own. When the going gets tough they are going to cast you out.

Alright. When you get arrested they are going to blame you. When there is trouble to be had they are going to say it was your idea.

I can give you illustration, and illustration, and illustration about that. Look at verse 15. So they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea. And the sea ceased from raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord and made vows.

By the way that's what's always done. When a person finally fears God now they want to sacrifice and make a vow. You know how many times somebody makes a mess of their life? Buddy their wife's left them. They've been drunk so many times and gotten caught with this and stuff so many times. And the wife finally leaves them and has had it and then they run to the altar. And then they want to say, I promise, I'm going to promise God I'll never do that again. Now they want to make the vow. And now they want to make the sacrifice. That should have been done way before.

I want you to notice next, and I thought this was good. Verse 17. All this went on. They finally cast him into the water. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish. By the way Matthew chapter 12 verse 40, God tells us it was a whale. That's the word used in the King James Version.

You can argue that all you want to whatever you want to do. We know it was a great fish. The Bible says in verse 17, Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. That phrase, now the Lord had prepared a great fish.

Listen to me. If you think about the fact that he gets cast into the sea, a fish swallows him. Didn't chew him.

Didn't bite him. Swallowed him whole. And the fact that he is swallowed by this fish, that fish, listen out of all that sea, and you know any of you that have ever been deep sea fishing or out on a large body of water it gets very big out there. And the fact that that fish was right there where the ship was.

Remember this is a storm so that ship is getting tossed to and fro. And the fact that the one fish that God had prepared, the one fish was in the right place at the right time and he swallowed him and he didn't chew him. And he lives in the belly of that fish which means he was able to breathe air underwater.

Let me tell you something you have to look at this whole thing about this fish a little bit different. This fish did not swallow Jonah to kill him. This fish swallowed Jonah to save him. He would have drowned. He would have died. Everybody says, well I can't believe God would do that to him. God saved his life. And what I find interesting is that God had prepared. That means it wasn't all of a sudden Jonah falls out and God looks down, hey there's a fish. Let me just grab that fish over by him. This fish had been prepared. God bless you.