7 And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” 9 And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.
In Numbers 32, as Moses was preparing to lead the tribes of Israel into the Promised Land, which was on the west of the Jordan River, the tribes of Gad and Reuben asked Moses, once the Promised Land was taken, if they could settle on the east of the river. They (and along with half the tribe of Manasseh, who also joined them) would become known as the Transjordan tribes.
Moses was reluctant for them to settle east of the river for two reasons. Firstly, Canaan, which was west of the Jordan, was the Promised Land, and secondly, Moses was concerned that the Transjordan tribes wouldn’t join the other tribes in conquering the land God had promised them. Gad and Reuben gave Moses the undertaking that they would send their soldiers into battle with the other tribes, but Moses warned them, “If you will do this, if you will take up arms to go before the Lord for the war, and every armed man of you will pass over the Jordan before the Lord, until He has driven out His enemies from before Him and the land is subdued before the Lord; then after that you shall return and be free of obligation to the Lord and to Israel, and this land shall be your possession before the Lord. But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out.” (Numbers 32:20-23)
“Be sure your sin will find you out.” This is a lesson we have all learned - most of us the hard way. One of the best-known examples of this truth is in the story of King David and his elaborate plan to try and cover his adultery with Bathsheba. He abused his power and authority to such an extent that he even arranged for Bathsheba’s husband Uriah to be sent to the front line in the battle against the city of Rabbah. He ordered Joab and his men to retreat, but to leave Uriah exposed, which meant he was killed in battle. This would then leave David free to marry Bathsheba, who was already pregnant because of his adultery.
2 Samuel 11:26-27 says, “When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband. And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.”
David broke at least four of the Ten Commandments. He coveted his neighbour’s wife, he committed adultery, he lied, and he was guilty of murder. “The thing that David had done displeased the Lord.” His sin was found out, and he faced severe consequences for his sin.
The same thing happened with Jonah. His sin of rebellion against God found him out, and he suffered the consequences of his sin.
Jonah’s journey to Tarshish started off well enough, but things soon changed as God sent a violent storm which struck the ship, and Jonah’s sin was exposed. At first, the sailors merely begged Jonah to pray to his God, because their prayers to their pagan gods had not worked, so when this failed, they said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” (Jonah 1:7)
By now they were desperate. Their lives were in danger, and they were prepared to do anything. As we saw last week, the one man who could have helped them was Jonah, but he was asleep in the hold of the ship, which gives us a picture of the church, which instead of bringing the light of God’s truth into the world, is often guilty of sleeping on duty.
We have the answer to all of life’s problems - every single one of them, without exception, and that answer has a name - Jesus Christ. But too often the church is reluctant because of our fear of man rather than God, to proclaim Christ to the world.
Whenever the church neglects its duty to bring the light of Christ into the world, the world remains in darkness. When the sleeping church doesn’t speak God’s truth to the world, the world becomes more desperate and more lost.
The decision of the sailors to cast lots to find out who the cause of all of their troubles was is interesting, because it reflects mankind’s sense of sin. The storm was so bad that they correctly concluded that there was a supernatural cause behind it. They also, quite correctly, assumed that someone on board had angered and offended the deity that sent the storm, but by casting lots, they each denied that they were the problem.
They believed that this god, whoever he was, was angry, but he must be angry with someone else, because they couldn’t be guilty of causing such fierce anger.
This is typical of how we, as sinful human beings regard our own personal sin. We are quite happy to confess that we’re not perfect, and that we have all made bad decisions, which we would change in an instant if it were possible to turn the clock back. We are even prepared to admit that we have done and said things which have brought tremendous pain and hurt to others, but “I’m not really that bad. Yes, I’ve made mistakes, but I’m really a good person. Just ask my friends. They’ll tell you how wonderful I am.”
This is one of the ways we justify our sin. People will admit that they have faults, and even that they commit sins, but they will not go so far as to admit that because of their sin, they are justly under the condemnation and wrath of God. This is why, when tragedy strikes, people are often angry with God rather than fearful of Him.
Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:19-20, “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”
Jonah had yet to come into the light. He was hiding in the darkness of the ship’s hold, while the sailors were casting lots to see who the great sinner on board was that was the reason for all their troubles.
This is how the heart and mind of sinful man works. So long as our conscience remains dulled to our sin, we prefer other options to faith in Jesus Christ. It is only when we realise the just wrath of God toward our sin, which is the reason God gave us His law, that we will submit to the Saviour He has provided for us. Recognising and confessing our sin against a holy God is always the first step towards salvation.
We need to consider the act of casting lots for a moment. It was commonplace in the ancient world, even among the people of God. The high priest in Old Testament times used the Urim and Thummim to seek the will of God. Exactly what the Urim and Thummim were and how they were used is shrouded in mystery, but most scholars agree that that it was a form of casting lots. Casting lots was a way of saying, “Let it be God’s will that decides.”
Some Christians point to the Biblical practice of casting lots to justify gambling, and even other occultic practices like divination and astrology, but this is a mistake, because our situation today is very different from Old Testament believers. In Acts 1, lots were cast by the remaining 11 disciples as Matthias was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot, but this was the last time this practice was used in the Bible.
After the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, lots were never used again. The Holy Spirit now indwells all believers, and as we spend time in the Word and in prayer, the Spirit teaches and guides us into all truth. James 1:5 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” The throne of God is accessible to us through the blood of Jesus Christ, and so we have confidence that God hears and answers our prayers.
In Jonah’s case, prior to the coming of the Holy Spirit, God, in His sovereignty, used the casting of lots to expose Jonah. Verse 7: “So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.”
This was not the first time that God allowed the practice of casting lots to expose sin. As Moses said, “Be sure your sin will find you out.” Joshua, his successor, led the Israelites across the Jordan to conquer the city of Jericho, but they were given strict instructions to not take any plunder for themselves, which was a common practice in those days. Joshua told them, “The city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live, because she hid the messengers whom we sent. But you, keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction, lest when you have devoted them you take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel a thing for destruction and bring trouble upon it.” (Joshua 6:17-18)
One man though, Achan, could not resist the temptation to help himself to the spoils of war. Joshua 7:1 says, “But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things, for Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things. And the anger of the Lord burned against the people of Israel.” Notice that the anger of God burned against not only Achan, but the entire Israelite nation.
The lesson to us here is that the sin of just one person can affect the whole church. After Jericho, the next city they were to conquer was Ai, which was expected to be an easy victory, but they suffered a terrible defeat. When Joshua cried out to God asking why this happened, the Lord said to him, “Israel has sinned; they have transgressed my covenant that I commanded them; they have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen and lied and put them among their own belongings. Therefore the people of Israel cannot stand before their enemies.” (Joshua 7:11–12)
Achan’s sin had to be exposed and repented of. Because one Israelite had sinned, Israel had sinned, and that sin needed to be dealt with, and Achan’s guilt was exposed by the casting of lots. His punishment was severe, as he and his family, who would have helped him hide what he had stolen, were all stoned to death.
Years later, in accordance with the sovereign will of God, Jonah’s guilt was exposed by the casting of lots, and now, finally, he confessed his guilt. Verses 8 and 9: “Then they said to him, ‘Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?’ And he said to them, ‘I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” In the next verse Jonah tells them that he was fleeing (or so he thought) from the presence of God.
Jonah would have been familiar with the account of Achan, and the conversation between him and Joshua when his sin was exposed. “Then Joshua said to Achan, ‘My son, give glory to the Lord God of Israel and give praise to Him. And tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me.’ And Achan answered Joshua, ‘Truly I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel.’” (Joshua 7:19-20)
All the way back in the Garden of Eden, God said to Eve, “What is this that you have done?” (Genesis 3:13)
This is what God calls each of us to do - to own and confess our sin before Him and glorify Him in His righteous judgment, remembering that as we confess our sin, we do so in the shadow of the cross of Jesus Christ, so to speak, which brings even more glory to God.
Just as lots proved that Jonah’s sin was found out, the cross tells us that God has seen our sins. The glory of the Gospel is seen in the cross and what happened there as the Son of God bore our sins. God poured out His righteous and perfect wrath at our sins on Jesus.
One of many reasons that the cross is so offensive to a sinful world that it stands as a stark, accusing reminder to the world that God has seen our sin and that the wages of sin is death, as Paul writes in Romans 6:23.
But God is a God of grace. Christians have had their eyes opened to this wonderful truth, and so did Jonah. As a prophet of God, he preached God’s grace to his own people, but he just couldn’t bring himself to take that same message of hope to the hated Ninevites, which was why he tried to flee to Tarshish.
The story of Jonah teaches us that not only should we understand the foundational doctrines taught in the Scriptures, but we also need to experience them on a personal level, in particular the doctrine of God’s grace shown to us through the cross.
It is at the cross where we see both the righteous wrath of God and His amazing grace which He offers us. Through the cross of Jesus Christ, God offers us a means of salvation, as we put our faith in the power of the blood of the Lamb of God.
Of course, we suffer the temporal or short term effects of our sin, just as Achan, David and Jonah did, but the great hope we have is that through faith in Christ, God offers salvation for our eternal souls.
At this point Jonah had yet to fully surrender to God, but he had taken the first vital step towards the grace of God. He confessed his sin.
John Calvin wrote, “If then we wish God to approve of our repentance, let us not seek evasions, as for the most part is the case; nor let us extenuate our sins, but by a free confession testify before the whole world what we have deserved.”
As the sailors pressed Jonah to come clean and tell them what was really going on, he said in verse 9, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord.” Other translations say, “I worship the Lord.” To worship God is to fear him. William Banks explains it by writing, “The fear of the Lord is not a servile, cringing type of fear but involves the idea of worship. It means reverential awe, trust, and respect.”
To a large extent, the modern Christian church has lost its proper fear of the Lord. As Michael Horton put it so well a few years ago, “He is God almighty, not God all matey.” Sometimes we forget that.
Also, a Biblical, healthy fear of God keeps us from being fearful of the world.
As the church we are called to be faithful in our proclamation of the full counsel of God. In other words, we are not to change the message of the Bible in an effort to make it “user friendly” for non-believers. The Christian author Robert Kendall wrote in one of his books, “The solution to making the message of the church ‘relevant’ to the world is not to be found by concealing our identity. The idea is that we must adjust our message so that the man in the street will now accept it. We have been doing it for years, bringing the message down, step by step; yet modern man is unimpressed.”
Jonah thought he could get away with concealing who he really was and who it was he was supposed to be representing. As the church, we need to guard against making the same mistake, and it begins with both a knowledge of, and fear of the Lord.
The result of a God-fearing church is that the world knows what it stands for, and which God it serves, instead of being a sleeping church that fears the world and in so doing waters down the message of human sin and its desperate need of a Saviour.
In verse 9, Jonah said, “I fear the Lord.” At last, he revealed who it was he served, and the reaction of the sailors in verse 10 was, “Then the men were exceedingly afraid.” In verse 5 they were afraid of the storm, but when they began to realise just who this God was who sent the storm, they were exceedingly afraid.
They were exceedingly afraid because for probably the first time in their lives, they began to understand just who this God is, and the power He has.
We see something similar with Jesus’ disciples in Mark chapter 4, when He calmed the storm while they were crossing the Sea of Galilee. What was their reaction? Did they throw their hats in the air and give three cheers for Jesus, saying, “We knew you could do it?”
Far from it. “They were filled with great fear and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?’” (Mark 4:41)
The reaction of the sailors on Jonah’s boat teaches us that when the church is awake, and faithful to the message of the Gospel, God uses the church to wake up the world.
Many Christians ask why there is so little fear of God in the non-believing world. Part of the answer is that there is so not enough fear of God in the church.
Those who truly fear the Lord will show the world who the Lord is. We pray, “Thy will be done,” but are we serious about the sovereignty of God and His absolute authority over us, or do we, like Jonah, try to flee from God when things are not going the way we would like?
When we as individual Christians and corporately as the church represent the true God to the world by speaking and preaching the truth of who He is, His righteous wrath at their sin, the judgment that is coming, and the hope of the Gospel that saves, that is when repentant sinners will turn to Christ and be saved.
I read this quote from Vernon McGee at our Wednesday Bible Study last week: “The sinner down here on this earth seems to think he is getting away with sin. God sees; God hears, and He is able to keep a record of what man does. My friend, there are only two places for your sins: either they are on Christ, or they are on you. If they are on Christ, the judgment is passed; if they are not, you have only judgment to look forward to in the future. Those who are in Christ have the glorious prospect of life with Him to look forward to in the days ahead. My friend, if you have not yet come to Christ, you will have to stand before God in judgment.”
That’s the message the world needs to hear, but we’re hesitant to share that truth because we don’t want to offend people.
And the reason we don’t want to offend people is because too often the church fears man more than it fears God.
A faithful, God-fearing church is to proclaim the truth of God to a lost world that needs to know that there is hope. Judgment is coming, but God, who is rich in mercy, has provided His only Son as a means of escaping the wrath of God that we all deserve.
The storm that God sent to bring Jonah to repentance was, although a terrifying experience at the time, a blessing. For us, the purpose of the trials God brings into our lives are a blessing too. He sends them to draw us to Himself and to bring us to repentance.
Why did God not calm the storm the moment Jonah confessed? For the same reason He doesn’t immediately calm the storms in our lives. There are times when we must suffer the consequences of our sin in the short term because we learn better in times of adversity.
Hugh Martin was a Scottish theologian who lived in the 19th century, and he wrote in his commentary of Jonah, “The storm still raged as Jonah and the mariners trembled; the temporal consequences of sin must still be felt. Therefore, to deepen your repentance and confirm it; to inspire you with a holy terror of like iniquity in time to come; to grave painfully and burningly into your heart and memory experiences and recollections that shall rise swiftly to the aid of your integrity and virtue, if tempted to like offence again; God may see meet to prolong the storm that He has awakened, even after it may have been blessed to bring you to repentance.”
God calls each of us to repentance. He knows your sin, and He knows my sin, and just like Achan, David and Jonah, when we confess our sin and come to Him with repentant hearts, God forgives and in so doing receives the glory.
Fear the Lord. What Moses said to the tribes of Gad and Reuben applies to each of us: “Be sure your sin will find you out.” You have no secrets from God. The glory of the Gospel is that Jesus has borne the punishment you deserve, but you need to turn to Him in repentance and faith. Confess your sin, call on the name of Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. That is His promise to you.
Homegroup Study Notes
Read Jonah 1:7-10
Jonah has now begun his long and difficult journey to repentance. As know, he still had much to learn, but he finally confessed, “I fear the Lord.”
How does a healthy fear of the Lord lead us to repentance?
Christians often (quite rightly) are saddened by how little fear of and reverence for God we see in the world, but how does the lack of fear of God in the church add to this?
If the church feared God more than it feared man, we would be far more effective in sharing the Gospel. How does “watering down” the truth of God and His wrath at sin do more harm than good?
Read Numbers 32:20-23
If you feel able, share how your sin has found you out in the past.
What did God teach you, and how has your faith grown through that experience?