Jonah Flees from the Lord (Sovereign to Save): In the famous Old Testament story, after being sent by God to preach to his enemies, the people of Nineveh, the prophet Jonah chose to run the other way. But try as he might, Jonah couldn’t outrun God. The Lord showed himself to be sovereign over the seas and the dry land—over all. The only proper response to the sovereignty of God is the fear of the Lord. Recorded on Apr 12, 2026, on Jonah 1:1-16 by Pastor David Parks.
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This sermon is part of our Jonah: Sovereign to Save series. Lost in the deep—disobedient and struggling with anger against God—the prophet Jonah was an utter mess. But God is as great as he is good. And God had as much compassion for Jonah as for his enemies, the people of Nineveh. Jonah is well known as a story of a runaway prophet and a great fish. However, Jonah is really about God’s sovereignty, the offense of grace, the fear of the Lord, what true repentance looks like, and more. Salvation still comes from the Lord, and his name is Jesus.
Sermon Transcript
Today, we get to start a brand new sermon series on the book of Jonah called “Sovereign to Save.” If you grew up in the church, you probably heard this story as a kid. Even if you didn’t grow up in church, you probably still know the basic story. With the big fish, it’s definitely a fun story to teach kids, but the truth is, Jonah is not really a kids’ story. What Jonah is really about—trying to run from the sovereignty of God, finding God’s presence when all seems lost, when you’re lost in the deep, seeing God’s heart for the lost, and experiencing the shocking power of his grace—is a message that everybody needs to hear today. So, whether this is the first time you’ve ever seriously considered the story of Jonah, or you’ve heard this many times, get ready to be challenged by a God who is sovereign to save. Jonah shows us that God’s heart for the lost didn’t start with Jesus. Saving sinners has been God’s plan as long as there were sinners to save. So if you have your Bible/app, please open to Jonah 1:1. We’ll cover the whole chapter today, but we’ll unpack it as we go. So let’s dive in.
Jonah 1:1–3 (NIV), “1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.” Let’s pause here to get a little context. So, first, what are we reading? Well, Jonah is in the Old Testament of our Bibles, so we know this happened before the time of Jesus. If we look at an Old Testament Timeline, we can see that around 2,000 BC, God chose the family of Abraham and Sarah to be his covenant people, who would become the people of Israel. These are round numbers, but then, around 500 years later, God called Moses to lead Israel out of slavery in Egypt during the Exodus. Around 500 years after that, the kingdom of Israel was established in the Promised Land of Canaan under King David. Now, the Bible says Jonah was a prophet during the reign of King Jeroboam II, which was around 775 BC. The high point of the ancient kingdom of Israel had come and gone about two hundred years earlier during the time of King David and his son, Solomon, as we recently saw in our Solomon series. But after Solomon, the kingdom of Israel, which had enjoyed such peace and prosperity, split into two kingdoms because of its unfaithfulness to God. By Jonah’s time, there was the Kingdom of Israel in the north (where Jonah lived) and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. Israel hadn’t yet fully slid into the slow-motion car crash that was the time of the Exile, but they were close. About fifty years after Jonah, Israel would be conquered by the Assyrian Empire, many of its cities were destroyed, and many, many people were either killed or forced to make the 800-mile journey into exile in Assyria. This would be the most traumatic event in their history. Now, the southern kingdom of Judah would eventually be conquered, too, but that wouldn’t happen until later. At the very least, we can say that it was a very dangerous time to be an Israelite, and no one was a greater threat to their life, liberty, and property during the time of Jonah than the evil pagan empire of Assyria. This historical context will all be important to our story, as we’ll see. Now, our main character is introduced right away in v. 1. “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai.” As I said, Jonah was a prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of King Jeroboam II. And Jeroboam was a bad dude; he did evil in the eyes of the Lord. However, the king restored Israel’s boundaries against some of its enemies. This was something Jonah had prophesied, but not because of the king’s goodness or faithfulness to God. It was only because of the goodness and faithfulness of the Lord for his people that good things happened to anybody in Israel during this time. How’d you like to be a prophet during the reign of a wicked and ungodly king? That’s a tough assignment. But the Lord said to Jonah, “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” Doesn’t sound like a bad thing for a prophet to do, right? Go to a wicked city and share the word of God with them. But what does Jonah do in response to this calling? He ran away! Surely you’ve never been tempted to run away from something God called you to do. (I’ve never been tempted to do such a thing!) But seriously, in a broken world, we often resist what God says to do. Love your neighbor. But do you know my neighbor? Forgive as you have been forgiven. But do you know what they did to me? Love your wife as Christ loved the church. This wife? Love your enemy. Ok…seriously?!? None of this is easy. And listen, I know that following Jesus can be really hard. Believe me, there are times when I feel the pull to resist what God commands in his word, or even to run away altogether. Well, it wasn’t what God called Jonah to do that was the problem; it was where God called him to go. Because, where was Nineveh, again? Nineveh was the capital of the dreaded Assyrian empire. But our boy Jonah really went above and beyond in running from God. “He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.” If we look at a map, we can see that Tarshish was in modern Spain, about 2,000 miles to the west. And where was Nineveh again? Again, about 800 miles to the east, in the city of Mosul in modern Iraq. In other words, Jonah wasn’t just passively avoiding what God called him to do. Again, Jonah went above and beyond. He tried to run away as far as he could! But why did Jonah run away? Was he scared of the Assyrians? That would be understandable, but I don’t think that was the case. Jonah hadn’t let his fear of King Jeroboam II prevent him from carrying out his calling. So why run now? Well, at this point in the story, we’ll just have to wait and see. He did have a reason. But for now, how would the Lord respond to his runaway prophet?
Jonah 1:4-10 (NIV), “4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 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. 6 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.” 7 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. 8 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?” 9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 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.)” How did the Lord respond to his wayward prophet? He sent a great wind and a violent storm. It was so bad that the ship was about to be destroyed. Have you ever been out on the water when a storm blew in? My father-in-law, Curt, is a very serious fisherman. And I’ll never forget the first time I joined my wife’s family fishing in Canada. With zero fishing experience, a big storm rolled in while we were way out one day. And the whole ride back, I was lying flat on the front deck of this beautiful, sparkly bass boat, praying for God to spare my life, as with every wave, I was picked up and thrown back down like a rag doll. In hindsight, this might’ve been a test to see if I could handle being part of their family. Now I know that we weren’t in nearly as much danger as I thought at the time, but to me, it seemed like the boat was going to break in half. But the storm that Jonah faced was different; it was a real threat. These were professional sailors, and they were terrified. They knew they were in real danger. They were crying out to any god they could think of for help and threw costly cargo overboard just trying to survive. And where was Jonah during all this? He was asleep! The captain woke him up, saying, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.” And isn’t that ironic? A pagan captain, calling on a prophet of the Lord to pray for them. By the way, irony is found throughout Jonah. No one behaves as you’d expect. But was this rock bottom for Jonah? A prophet running from his calling and sleeping when he should’ve been praying? Not even close. However, the sailors rightly understood that this storm was some sort of divine judgment against them, but who had sinned? So they cast lots, a common practice in their day (something like rolling dice or drawing straws), and the lot fell on Jonah. He was the problem. Jonah had the opportunity to come clean to these pagan sailors and confess what he’d done. But he didn’t. Maybe he was ashamed? Maybe he was blind to his own sin? Either way, according to Proverbs 16:33 (NIV), “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” So it was by divine providence that the lot fell on Jonah. Of course, the sailors wanted to know what he had done to deserve the wrath of God, but his answer terrified the sailors even more. He said, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD [Yahweh], the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” Now, this was terrifying because most people at the time were polytheistic, meaning they believed in many gods with divine power over various aspects of life and places in the world. So if there was a god who ruled the seas, their sovereignty was limited to the seas. But the Israelites were monotheistic, meaning they believed in only one true and living God, named Yahweh, who had providentially created and sovereignly ruled over the whole universe. So when they heard that Jonah was a Hebrew, an Israelite, and that he had done something to make Yahweh angry, something the storm proved, where could they go to escape? “Wait a minute,” they might’ve said, “You messed with the God who made the seas, and then you got in a boat with us?” Can you outrun a God who is sovereign over all? Good luck. But was there anything they could do to survive? Or were they all going down with the ship?
Jonah 1:11-16 (NIV), “11 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?” 12 “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.” 13 Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. 14 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.” 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.” This is God’s word. So Jonah finally confessed. “I’m the problem,” he admitted, “If you want to survive the storm, you’re gonna need to throw me overboard.” These sailors might’ve been pagans, but they were decent men. They didn’t know everything about Jonah’s God, but they probably figured that killing one of his prophets wouldn’t be the best introduction. So they tried their best to reach land. But when it was clear they weren’t going to make it, again, ironically, these pagan sailors started praying to God, asking for his understanding that they weren’t trying to kill anybody. The prophet was sleeping when he should’ve been praying, seemingly unconcerned for the sailors’ lives. By contrast, these pagan sailors prayed and tried their best to save Jonah’s life. When they threw Jonah overboard, and the raging sea grew calm, they realized God had mercifully spared their lives. And how did they respond? They worshiped the Lord. They believed and, Jonah says, they greatly feared the Lord. Now, what they had just survived was certainly scary. But in the Bible, the fear of the Lord isn’t about being afraid of God. Instead, the fear of the Lord comes from recognizing that God is God and you are not. It happens when you come face-to-face with the power and the greatness of the Lord God Almighty, and you realize just how small you really are. In those holy moments, your heart is filled with reverent awe. (“Whoa!”) It was the fear of the Lord then that motivated these men to offer their first sacrifices to Yahweh God and make their vows to him. In other words, encountering the personal power of a God who was sovereign over the wind and waves, over life and death itself, made them fear the Lord and respond to God as God. And this leads us to the big idea of this whole chapter: The only proper response to the sovereignty of God is the fear of the Lord. Have you ever been somewhere as an adult that made you feel small? Years ago, our family did a road trip out to Colorado when our kids were little. We drove up into the mountains near Estes Park, Colorado, into the Rocky Mountain National Park, which was a blast. If you’ve never been, it’s pretty wild. You can drive up 12,000+ feet into the mountains, literally above the clouds. And they have all these places you can pull off the road and take pictures. But I remember one place in particular where we were looking out over this incredible view, looking down on the clouds. And in the presence of all this beauty and grandeur, I got this incredible sense of smallness. Something like, “If you made all this by a word of your power, Lord, then who am I compared to you?” That’s the fear of the Lord. Have you ever had that sense? The sailors did that day. Have you ever looked up at the night sky and seen all the billions of stars and galaxies and felt small? Have you ever looked out from the shore of one of the Great Lakes or an ocean, especially at night, and felt small? Like, “Whoa!” But if these created things make us feel small, how much more for the creator of the heavens and the earth? God is sovereign over the mountain. And he is sovereign over the seas. He is sovereign over the storms and over every other moment of our lives. Therefore, what? Therefore, you should fear him. Fear his name. Look on him with reverent awe. Pray to him, friends, and worship him. Why? Because the only proper response to the sovereignty of God is the fear of the Lord. As a prophet, Jonah knew this, but he foolishly and sinfully chose to run from God instead. He didn’t fear the Lord. And you might think that that’s where Jonah’s story would end. Cast into the sea for disobeying the sovereign Lord. Lost beyond all hope. But it’s not. This is just the beginning! So does the fear of the Lord even matter? Well, the psalmist says, ”For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him” (Ps 103:11) and “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him” (Ps 103:13). God loves those who fear him. The proverbs say that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Pro 9:10) and knowledge (Pro 1:7), and is a fountain of life (Pro 14:27). God blesses those who fear him. But nowhere do we see the love and blessings of God more than in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because only in the gospel do we see that when we were like the people of Nineveh, when we were like the sailors, when we were like Jonah, when we deserved the storm, God not only sent us a prophet—he sent his one and only son, Jesus Christ, the word of God made flesh, to be the way and the truth and the life for us who would follow him. And Jesus came willingly; he didn’t run away. But his calling was more than just preaching. Jesus faced the full destruction of the storm of God’s wrath against sin in our place on the cross. We just celebrated all this last week. The sailors threw Jonah overboard in what they thought would be a sacrifice of his life, but, as we’ll see next week, it wouldn’t be the end for Jonah because God is sovereign to save. But Jesus was sacrificed for real, he really died, so that like the sailors, we might have peace with God instead of wrath, and life instead of death, by grace and through faith in Jesus’ name. The main theme of the book of Jonah (and the Bible!) is that our God is sovereign to save. This is who God is, and this is what God uses all his sovereign power to do. So today, have you been running from God? Have you been running from God’s word or his calling on your life? You’ll never outrun a God who is sovereign over all. Why don’t you stop running? Turn around, and see him for who he truly is. No one can run so far from God to be irredeemably lost. There’s still hope for you. Just as there’s still hope even for the people in your life who seem the least likely to have faith in God, perhaps like the people of Nineveh. But for now, the only proper response to the sovereignty of God is to say, “Whoa. You are God, and I am not. Blessed be the name of the Lord!” Let us pray.
