They Greatly Feared
5/6/202643 min
Jonah runs away for two reasons: fear and hate.
God has told Jonah to go to Nineveh to warn them, but Jonah refuses. He’s afraid to put himself in the midst of his enemies, but he’s also filled with hate toward them. So the book of Jonah addresses in a real way the questions “What do I do about my fear?” and “What do I do about my anger?”
Let’s notice three features of the story: 1) the stormy sea shows us who we are, 2) the religious sailors show us the wrong thing to do about it, and 3) the willing substitute shows us the right thing to do about it.
This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 23, 2001. Series: The Church in the City. Scripture: Jonah 1:4-17.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
[instrumental music] Welcome to Gospel and Life. Where do you turn for reassurance in a crisis? When life feels out of control, we can quickly discover that the things we turn to for our deepest security don't actually have the power to help us. Today, Tim Keller looks at the story of Jonah to explore how life storms reveal what we're really trusting in, and how our fears are calmed when we look to Jesus, who faced the ultimate storm on our behalf. [instrumental music] Our scripture reading this evening is from the Book of Jonah 1:4-17. "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 and 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 do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From