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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy
word.
Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a
violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were
afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea
to lighten the ship.
But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell
into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up
and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not
perish.”
Then the 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. 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?”
He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the
God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?”
(They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them
so.)
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?”
“Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and
it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come
upon you.”
Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But
they could not, for the 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.”
Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the
raging sea grew calm. At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered
a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to Him.
Jonah 1:4-16
This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks
be to God.
In yesterday’s opening devotion from the Book of Jonah,
we found God selected messenger hightailing it in the opposite direction God
told him to go (northeast to Assyria’s capitol of Nineveh), attempting to run
away from the Lord by going south and boarding a ship out of Joppa for the
Spanish port of Tarshish.
We pick up where we left off yesterday with Jonah and the
others onboard the ship at sea and on their way to their destination. Let’s
look again at what happened:
Then the Lord sent
a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship
threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his
own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.
But Jonah had gone
below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to
him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will
take notice of us so that we will not perish.”
Then the 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. 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?”
He answered, “I am
a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the
dry land.”
This terrified
them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from
the Lord, because he had already told them so.)
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?”
“Pick me up and
throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is
my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”
Instead, the men
did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the 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.”
Then they took
Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. At this the men
greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows
to Him. Jonah 1:4-16
Think God was going to let Jonah get away from Him?
Think again because as we see, the Lord conjured up a
great wind within a mighty storm on the sea which immediately placed everyone
on the ship in peril.
How bad was it?
So bad that the Sailors were crying out to their own gods
and throwing cargo overboard to try and lighten the load and keep the ship from
capsizing.
Yes, things were frantic on deck of the ship as everyone
was in survival mode but below deck, Jonah was asleep, completely oblivious to
the panic happening above. It had to be a deep sleep to not know what was going
on but Jonah is soon jostled by the ship’s captain who states the obvious and
commands Jonah to get involved with everyone else, calling to his god so maybe
everyone might be spared from perishing.
Well, we get a sense that all this calling out to gods
was completely ineffective because it doesn’t take long for the crew to come up
with an alternate plan. They decided to cast lots to find out who was causing
the calamity upon them. This matter of determination is not only found in this
book but elsewhere in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament where we
read about the Roman soldiers casting lots in dividing up Jesus’ garments (John
19:24).
So who was the guilty party?
The crew discovered it was Jonah through their lot
casting exercise and we find them immediately interrogating him saying:
“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?”
Jonah gives them the information they sought, declaring
himself a Hebrew who worshiped “the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea
and the dry land”. He went on to tell them what he had done, that he had run
away from what the Lord had told him to do.
That was all the crew needed to hear in order to become
completely petrified in fear because they had heard about the power found in
the judgment of Jonah’s God, a judgment they were obviously experiencing. Unsure
of a solution to the dangerous, terrifying situation, they turned again to
Jonah for his take, inquiring as to what needed done to calm the sea.
What happens next is a fascinating decision by Jonah, a
choice which is interesting on several levels. For here’s what Jonah proposed
the crew do to save themselves and the ship:
“Pick me up and
throw me into the sea and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that
this great storm has come upon you.”
What an amazing move by Jonah who seemed so self centered
before as instead of going forward to do what God commanded, he looked out only
for himself, doing what he wanted to do. His consideration before he boarded
the ship in Joppa was only on himself but now that his actions had threatened
the very lives of others, Jonah was willing to sacrifice himself to save
everyone else.
This is a move that is so captivating to me because there
are comparisons that can be made to Jesus, who would later come as the Savior
of the world.
First, you may remember yesterday that as we looked at
two other books of the Bible, we learned that Jonah was not only a part of the
tribe of Zebulun but resided in Gath Hepher which was located in Galilee. So
Jonah was a Galilean just as Jesus would be when He came after the days of
Jonah.
Go back to the willing sacrifice of Jonah to spare those
on the ship and you might be reminded of the crucifixion Jesus was willing to
endure in order to save all mankind from their sins. The main difference between
these two acts was that Jonah was giving himself up to spare others from the
punishment he deserved where Jesus gave Himself up to bear the punishment we
deserved.
As I said, a very interesting parallel.
Back to the scriptures for today where we find the crew
trying everything they could think of to avoid having to do what Jonah told
them to do but to no avail. We can sense the anguish they were feeling over the
thought of killing someone they thought might be an innocent man, crying out to
the Lord to not hold them accountable for what they were going to do.
And with that plea, “they took Jonah and threw him
overboard” and as soon as they did, “the raging sea grew calm”.
This takes us to the secondary outcome of Jonah’s self
sacrifice. For as soon as the people onboard witnessed what happened, they “greatly
feared the Lord”, offered Him a sacrifice to the Lord and “made vows to Him”.
Not only was everyone saved but they had come to believe
in the one true God, the Lord God Almighty, the God Jonah had run away from. It
had been a spiritually transformative experience for not only those who were
still above the surface of the sea but Jonah, the man who was quickly sinking
below the waves. More on that tomorrow and in the devotions to come as we
continue this look at Jonah’s incredible story.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
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