Stormy Messages

                              Jonah 1: 1-15     Acts 27: 13-26

 

 

          The Bible is a great and powerful set of documents and stories, still the most read in history.  God uses many tools to build his case. One can’t help but notice that God will use different means to get to different people in different ways. For instance, he used family jealousy to get Joseph on a caravan to Egypt, where he would later save a region from starvation. He used a teenage shepherd named David with a sling and a few smooth stones to bring down a giant warrior and save his people. In today’s message, God uses a storm, first to get the attention of a delinquent disciple, and later to illustrate how his providence can deliver us from the direst of situations.

          The book of Jonah starts out in this way. It says that the word of the Lord came to Jonah.   It can’t get any heavier than that.  God comes calling on Jonah and God commissions him to a task. Go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it.    Now Jonah, hearing the word of God, indeed rises and where does he head? To Tarshish, a land in the exact opposite direction of Nineveh.  The book says that Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord. There is our first piece of irony. Have you ever tried to flee from the Lord’s presence? I certainly have. It’s sort of like trying to hide behind your pencil. It’s just not going to work. No one can hide from the presence of the Lord. But that doesn’t stop us from behaving like Jonah and going the other way, as if that will somehow throw God off our scent.

          But Jonah tries. He books passage going the other way and sets out to hide from God. God is not impressed. What Jonah encounters next is a great storm on the sea, followed by his  being thrown overboard, further followed by Jonah being swallowed by a great fish, in whose bowels Jonah resides for three days. During his time in the fish’s belly, Jonah prays. It is the only thing he gets right in this story. He calls out to be saved by the God he has ignored and indeed he is saved. The fish literally vomits him out upon the dry land. There is more to the story, but that’s all we need to know for this message. For this message is about two things: the greatness, the universal sovereignty of God, and the way he uses things like storms to get our attention and make his point.

          Look at the story of Jonah. What do you see? You see God calling Jonah to a task and Jonah in open rebellion. You see the crew of a ship floundering as they first try praying to their gods, which doesn’t work because they are not the true God. Then they try casting off the cargo to lighten the load. Their own efforts fare just as miserably as did their prayers to false gods. In desperation, they ask Jonah and he takes the blame rightly for God’s action. You see not only the sea in all its fury in a storm, but also the power of some of its inhabitants, in this case, a great fish. And what you can see from the interplay of these elements of wind and rain and great seas and great sea creatures is that all of them are subject to the direction of God. When God says stop, they stop. When God says vomit, the great fish can no longer hold his prey. The story is not of a man surviving three days in the belly of a fish, but of the sovereignty of God. God’s will is to be carried out, and all nature will obey.

          In the story of Jonah, God unleashes a storm to get the attention not only of a crew of unbelievers, but also of a disobedient disciple. Jonah is made to descend to the belly of a great fish to find the power of God in his life. There is no running away from God’s presence. Jonah was not doing his work. He was commissioned by God and he ignored his task. God sent a storm into his life as a corrective.         

          The book of Acts contains the story of yet another storm. The apostle Paul was on board a ship bound for Rome. When it docked in Crete, God told Paul to advise the crew not to leave the harbor because a great storm was coming. Now Paul was a big traveler, but the pilot and the owner of the ship thought differently and ignored his advice. They actually voted and the majority favored leaving. They sailed out with a gentle south wind and for a while, felt good about their decision. Their good humor was destined to take a very bad turn, for soon a northeaster came at them from the land. They tried to turn into the wind, but were unable. They were literally carried along by the storm with no way to guide or correct course. In desperation, the cargo was thrown overboard, as was the ship’s tackle.

          For fourteen days and nights, the little ship drifted with the current. Then, Paul had a vision that the people would be saved, but the ship would be lost. The people aboard followed his advice and stayed aboard until the end.  They had ignored him once, but the second time they heard and obeyed him because they perceived him to be a man of God. Two hundred seventy six people were on board, and every single one was saved from almost certain death.

          Paul was doing his work. He was living for God and he was enabled in his task by a vision from God. God sent a storm into his life not as a corrective like he did for Jonah, but as a confirmation that indeed Paul was on task.

          Eugene Peterson says that “God constitutes our work.” What does that mean? It means that God established that which is to be our work here on earth. It is God who gives it form. We may be trained as engineers or teachers or farmers, but that is not what our real work is. We have to look to God to find our work. Usually what we find is that the work of Christianity is to be carried out by us as we go about our daily lives at our jobs, in our homes and in our play. God constitutes our work.

          A quick Google search reveals that there are at least thirty seven instances of the use of the word storm or storms in the Bible. Today we have looked at only two of them. We have seen that God may send a storm to get our attention, to send us a wakeup call. We have seen that God may send a storm to affirm that we indeed are right where he wants us. What ways has God sent a storm into your life? And what have you taken from those experiences? God is our refuge, our shelter, our protector. He is also our prompter, our sovereign, our judge.

          What constitutes your work? As Peterson says, “the storm either exposes the futility of our work (as in Jonah) or confirms it (as in Paul).” There will always be storms in our lives. We cannot escape life any more than we can escape the presence of God. We cannot find his will by going along with a majority vote. There is only one voice to whom we need to listen. We cannot fool or manipulate God.

          What we can do is find our vocation. God has already prepared it for us. He calls each of us to his work. And his work is our work. There is no need to fear the storms of life, unless you plan to try to outrun God like Jonah tried. His failure is our lesson. God is talking to you. You just need to be listening.