Our reading today comes to us from the book of Jonah, the first chapter commencing at verse one. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, arise. Go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come before me. But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.
So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea. So the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. They hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.
But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. So the captain came and said to him, what do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god. Perhaps the god will give a thought to us that we may not perish. 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. 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'm a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.
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. Then they said to him, what shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us? For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. He said to them, pick me up and hurl me into the sea, then the sea will quiet down for you.
For I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you. Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could not for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore, they called out to the Lord. O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life and lay not on us innocent blood, for You, O Lord, have done as it pleased You. So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.
Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. So I want you to imagine that you are scaling a mountain and you're climbing up this great mountain and the cliff face is sheer. And as you're about halfway up, you look back out of the landscape and you can see growing in the distance this great storm. You hear thunder clapping, lightning begins to strike, you see fires breaking out and the storm is approaching you on the mountain. What do you think you're feeling in that moment?
Scared, fear, terror. Right? You start to look for a way to find safety. You climb further up the mountain. You find a cave that you can go into.
And the cave is sturdy and strong and you're convinced that it will protect you from this storm. And now as you look back out at the storm, the emotions have changed a little bit. The storm hasn't become less powerful, but now that you're safe in the cave, it's more like an awe that you have. It's this respect. It's this interest.
You can't stop looking at this beautiful creation of raw power. Now, John Piper, an American pastor, he uses this illustration to explain a little bit of what the fear of the Lord is. See, the fear of the Lord is not what you feel when you're on the cliff face of the mountain, terrified that God will destroy you. The fear of the Lord is when you go into that cave, that's a picture of being in Christ, you know that you're safe in Christ, but it doesn't mean that God has become any less powerful or awesome. You still tremble with awe, but it's this delight.
It's this reverence. It's this amazement. That is a picture of what the fear of the Lord is in the Bible. In the letters of John, he talks about how perfect love casts out fear. That's talking about fear of punishment.
As Christians, we no longer fear God will punish us because Jesus has paid the price already. But we do have a holy awe, a trembling delight. We are meant to walk in the fear of the Lord. In fact, the fear of the Lord is something that God requires of us. So we see in Ecclesiastes 12, at the end of the book, it says, the end of the matter, all has been heard, fear God and keep His commandments for this is the whole duty of man.
We are required to fear God. And yet, how do you know that you have enough reverence for God in your life? How do you know that you've kept your duty? Or maybe you're here or you're online and you're wanting to check out this whole Christianity thing and you're thinking, well, I don't really feel a reverence for God. I've got questions.
What produces this in someone? What produces this kind of holy awe and reverence? Well, these questions are going to find answers in our text this morning. Jonah 1. And the reason we're talking so much about fear in Jonah 1 is because the Hebrew word for fear, is all over this chapter.
So we're gonna put a graphic up on the screen that shows you the number of times Yarah occurs in the different chapters of the minor prophets. Alright? So John very helpfully explained to us what the minor prophets are in the Bible. We've got major prophets and minor prophets. The minor prophet books are not called minor because they're less important.
They're called minor just because they're smaller. And so Jonah is part of these minor prophets. And so what I've done on this chart here, I've done a search on all the chapters of the minor prophets for the word fear. And as you can see, Jonah 1 is actually even higher than Malachi 4. And as you can see, Jonah doesn't show up anywhere else.
So all the occurrences of fear come up in Jonah 1, not in any of the other chapters. And this just tells me that we're meant to be looking at this repeated word. This is good Bible reading, by the way. Look for repeated words because sometimes it's telling you what this chapter is trying to get across to you. So fear is coming up all over this chapter and it tells me that this is a major theme in this chapter.
And this is why the sermon is titled Irreverent Prophet, Reverent Pagans because when we talk about the fear of the Lord in modern day English, a lot of people use the word reverence instead because it helps us get across it a bit more. The title is for today, irreverent prophet, reverent pagans. Now we're not just doing this as a one off. Like Jordan said, we're in a series right now. We're launching a new series looking at the book of Jonah, and we're just going to take four weeks to go through each of the four chapters of Jonah and just hear the incredible message of this book.
We hear about the relentless grace of God in the life of this reluctant prophet called Jonah. It's an incredible book. And you know, this minor prophet, this book is unique amongst the minor prophets because it's not a book about Jonah's message. It's a book about Jonah himself. It's a book about Jonah's life.
And Jonah is most likely the author of this book. No one else could have known how some of these events occurred. So Jonah authored it. And when we think about the uniqueness of the book itself, it means that the genre of the book is a bit different to other prophetic books. It's important when we're reading to understand the genre, the literature that we're reading.
If you read a newspaper article talking about the weather as comedy and it's saying there's a cyclone coming prepared and just laugh at it. Oh, it's a comedy. You don't get the point. Right? So you need to understand what kind of book is this?
And the book of Jonah is unique. It's not normal prophetic literature, where it's like all these oracles and messages from God. It's prophetic narrative. It's a prophetic story. Not that it's a fictional story, it's a true story, but it's a story with an edge with a message to it.
Except for chapter 2, that's the only chapter that's more like poetry. It's a prayer of Jonah, but the rest of it is prophetic narrative. So I just want to put those things out there at the start to help us as we read through this book and as we seek to understand it to help us interpret it rightly. Now with all of that said, let's get stuck into Jonah 1 where we encounter an irreverent prophet amongst reverend pagan sailors. Let's learn about the fear of the Lord, this word fear that keeps coming up in this chapter as we explore Jonah's story.
And we're going to break down the passage into two scenes. And the first scene I've called down, down, prophet goes down. Anyone know where that comes from? That slogan? Coals.
Okay. A bit corny, but you'll remember it. Okay. Down, down, prophet goes down. Okay.
So the scene opens up and the word of the Lord comes to Jonah and tells him to go to Nineveh to call out against it because this great evil has come up before the Lord. But what does Jonah do? It says he got up. He obeyed the first command, but then he didn't go to Nineveh. He went to Tarshish to flee from the presence of the Lord.
Now there's a bunch of things that need to be explained here straight away. What is the city of Nineveh? What is its significance? Well, first of all, Nineveh is the city that became the capital of the Assyrian Empire. The century after Jonah is where Assyria really rose to the full height of its power, but even during Jonah's lifetime, they were already known to be a violent expanding military power.
The Assyrians were known for their brutality and their violence. I'm going to put up a picture on the screen of a war relief and this is called the wall relief of Lakish. This is an archaeological finding in the city of Nineveh, the ancient city of Nineveh, and this is actually up in the British Museum today. So isn't it cool how different things we hear about in the Bible? There are artefacts from different civilisations that we find in museums today and things like that.
I'm pretty sure I've seen this one because I used to live in London, visited the British Museum, and I'm pretty sure I looked at this part of the museum. Anyway, Lakish actually comes up in the Bible. So the next century, the Assyrian king Sennacherib came and destroyed a few of the Judean cities. This is actually his kind of boasting of what happened at Lakish, and the reason I'm putting it up to you is to show you how brutal the Assyrians were. So as you can see on the photo there, these two men here are meant to be some of the Judean leaders of the city, and what you can see is you can see these bones in their legs.
They've carved in such a way you can see their ribs. What they're actually depicting is that they flayed these leaders alive. They skinned them alive. That's what the Assyrians are boasting about. The British Museum actually says on their website, these officials regarded as responsible for the rebellion are flayed alive.
This is just to give you a bit of a sense of what Nineveh represents. Alright? Brutality, aggression, wickedness. This was a wicked, violent people that Jonah was called to go and preach against. Now second of all, the second thing we need to understand is the significance of Tarshish.
When you look up Tarshish in the Bible, it's associated with gold. It's associated with luxury. So reading between the lines, maybe Jonah is fleeing there because it's just this indulgent escape for him. Tarshish is a place where he can go away from the Ninevites, the Assyrians, and instead be comforted by indulgence. Either way, if I'm wrong about that, there is clearly geographical significance to Tarshish.
So I'm gonna put a map up on the screen now, and this shows us Jonah's travels. So he started down here in Israel. He went down to Joppa. That's where the port was. Got on a boat, and this is probably his likely route.
Now you can see Nineveh's over here. Jonah was headed this way. Right? He was headed in the opposite direction until he, you know, got eaten by a fish and spat out and he probably walked all the way to Nineveh eventually. So Jonah was headed in the opposite direction.
We're gonna put another map up now, which is a modern version of that. This is the modern day version. So Jonah was around here somewhere. He was sailing up here and then we're gonna zoom out to the next version of the map. So he was here.
He arrived up here. That's when he got spat out, but he was actually heading all the way over to here. Most scholars believe that Tarshish was at the bottom of modern day Spain. That becomes the Atlantic Ocean, so that was basically as far west as he could conceive in his ancient mind. He was going as far away from Nineveh as he could go.
So Jonah really was trying to flee from the presence of the Lord. Now as we pick up the rest of the scene, so he's told where he's meant to go. Instead, he rises up to flee from the presence of the Lord. And then it says he went down to Joppa. Notice the word down, down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.
So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with him to Tarshish away from the presence of the Lord. Now while he's on the ocean trying to flee from the Lord, the Lord hurls a great wind and his tempest rises up, this huge storm, and it's this interesting wordplay. God's hurling a wind on the sea and the sailors are hurling out their cargo trying to lighten up the ship so that they don't capsize. And all the while this is happening, it says that Jonah had gone, the word down again, into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. Now here's where my little heading Down Down Prophet Goes Down is coming from.
I believe that these repeated references to down are actually significant and they're meant to make us think for a moment. Jonah's recording how much he's going down because he's showing us that disobedience always leads downhill. It's a downward spiral. Now if you think, oh Ben, you're reading into this a bit. You've been nerding out in this book all week and you know, down, down, whatever, like it only comes up three times.
Why are you thinking it's such a big deal? Well, I've put another chart for you. Here we go. The references to down in the minor prophets. And as you can see, Jonah 1, the highest out of all of the minor prophets chapters.
And then it comes up again in Jonah 2 as well. So it clearly is a bit of an emphasis that Jonah is putting into chapter one. He wants us to see that when we disobey God, it goes downhill for him. Now one last thing I want us to notice because this is narrative and we're getting a picture of who Jonah is. He's a prophet, but he doesn't seem to love and follow God.
One of the other things I just want us to notice is that when he goes down there to sleep, the captain comes down and shakes him out of his stupor and is like, what are you doing? Call out to you. Like, they're going to die. Jonah seems very negligent in this story. While they're throwing out cargo trying to survive, he goes down to sleep.
He's just ignoring it. He's still trying to ignore God. Later on the chapter Jonah admits that I know this is happening because of me. So he knew it was because of him and yet I believe very negligently he's going down there to sleep and notice as well the captain says pray to your God. These sailors, they were pagan polytheists.
They believed in many gods, so they're saying well maybe your God is the powerful one. We pray to him. But Jonah doesn't, does he? If you look at the chapter, Jonah doesn't pray to God. At this point in the story, he hasn't repented.
He hasn't admitted what's going on. He's still trying to ignore it, even with this great storm. So in this first scene, we see the prophet goes down down, prophet goes down. We learn that when we try to ignore God, we try to flee from him, it's just down down down down down for us. I mean, what was Jonah thinking?
Did he really think he could disobey God and get away with it? Did he think he could just escape God's attention? Does anyone here actually think it's possible to escape God's presence? Any other kids? Do you think what if what if you went to a cave in a mountain or, you know, you sailed to the other side of the ocean?
Do you think that God won't be able to see you at some point? What do you think, Bo? God will see you. He will see you. That's right.
Pastors, kids. Great job, God. No. Yep. Good job, guys.
Good job. So it's not possible to escape God's presence, is it? This is what we learn about in Psalm 139 where David says in the Psalm, where shall I go from Your Spirit or where shall I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, that's the grave, You are there.
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me and Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night. Even the darkness is not dark to You. The night is bright as the day for darkness is as light with You. See, this Psalm was written before Jonah's life.
And there's plenty of other references in the Bible that talk about how God sees all things and knows all things. Jonah was a prophet who was supposed to know Yahweh, the God of Israel, and yet he's trying to flee from him. The book of Jonah is full of irony, these upside down satirical kind of things. And the weird thing is the prophet, the one who's meant to know God well, is acting like God won't see him when he flees. But before we look down on Jonah, we should also look at our own hearts.
Don't we do the same thing at times? Don't we sometimes feel that, you know this area of my life I can just leave alone or maybe God won't care if I don't submit that to him or maybe I can just avoid that command and God won't do anything about it. Maybe it's to do with Jesus' Great Commission. He's given us a mission as a church. Matthew 28, before Jesus ascended, He told us to go out and make disciples of all nations.
Now one of the things to do that we're gonna have to share with our mouths the good news about Jesus. But maybe in your workplace no one even knows you're a Christian yet. Maybe in your school or university no one even knows that you're a Christian and you feel like, yeah, I love Jesus on Sundays and I read the Bible in my private sort of faith time, but God just doesn't feel as real in my workplace or whatever it might be. We feel like God's commands maybe don't apply there or maybe we're scared. I'm not sure.
Or maybe it's in your role as a husband. Maybe like the Bible says in Ephesians that husbands are to lay down their lives to serve their wives. But maybe after a hard day at work, you're like, yeah, I'm not called to that today. Or maybe wives, like Ephesians teaches that you're meant to submit to and respect your husband, but maybe on a day when he's really annoying you, you're like, I don't feel like respecting him today. Or maybe children, the Bible tells you to honour your mother and father, But you're like, well my mother and father don't even know what TikTok is.
How am I meant to respect them? There's so many ways that we can justify why we don't do what we're called to do by God, just like Jonah. So let's not be too quick to look down on him. Jonah's life teaches us that when we ignore God, we flee from his call, it's just down, down, down, down. This is what we see in the life of Jonah. Let's continue to look at his downward spiral in the second scene, where we see fake fear and faithful fear. Fake fear and faithful fear. So it's in these verses that we get five of the six occurrences of that Hebrew word for fear that I mentioned at the beginning. In this scene we'll start to get some answers to our questions about the fear of the Lord. So we're back in the boat, the captain's just shaking Jonah out of his stupor saying, pray to your God. Jonah doesn't seem to do anything. So they're desperate out there. They're trying to figure out what is going on.
And so they say to one another in verse seven, come let us cast lots so we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us. Casting lots is a little bit like flipping a coin and saying if it's heads, it's this person, if it's tails, it's this person. It was just a way of trying to figure out the divine will. And we see God's invisible hand guiding this process because the lot falls on Jonah. So he still hasn't admitted to the captain, yeah, it's my fault this is happening, but God doesn't let him get away with it.
They cast lots and it falls on Jonah. And you can see their desperation. They say to him in verse eight, tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from?
What is your country? And of what people are you? They just splatter all these questions over him because they want to know what's going on. We're about to die here in this great mighty storm. But notice that Jonah doesn't answer all the questions.
He doesn't answer the first one. He doesn't tell them that it's on his account that this evil has come upon them. That will come later. And he doesn't answer them about his occupation. He doesn't tell them that he's a prophet, that he's literally a spokesperson for Yahweh and yet he's fleeing from Yahweh.
Maybe he was embarrassed about that. Anyway, he gives them this speech in verse nine. He says to them, I'm a Hebrew and I fear the Lord. Those capital letters for LORD is the Hebrew word Yahweh. I fear Yahweh, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land. Now that sounds kind of pious, but we should think for a moment. Does Jonah really fear Yahweh?
Good job, Bo. He doesn't fear Yahweh. If he feared Yahweh, he'd be doing what God wanted. He wouldn't be fleeing from it. He wouldn't be. So this seems like some pious mumbo jumbo religious language.
Jonah seems to be more proud that he belongs to the one true God, Yahweh, and to the nation of Israel as a Hebrew than he is interested in actually obeying Yahweh and doing what he says. See, think as we read through the story, we're not meant to read this as such a good announcement. I think this is a pious sort of proud religious mumbo jumbo speech. And then it says in verse 10, then the men were exceedingly afraid. So in the original Hebrew, exceedingly afraid is just fear to great fear.
So the word for fear comes up twice in that sentence. So the prophet is saying, I fear Yahweh, but he's not even obeying Yahweh. But these pagan men, these sailors who hardly know a thing about the one true God, they're trembling before him. They're seeing the storm. They're actually fearing a great fear for God, a genuine fear, not a fake one.
Then they say to him, what is this you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. My understanding is that he told them they'd be going onto the ship. I'm fleeing the presence of Yahweh, but they thought he was just like all the other pagan gods. Oh, okay.
Yahweh's probably, you know, takes control of the district of Israel or something, but once you're on the sea, he's gone. But Jonah, remember he said he made the sea in the dry land. So he's told them, my God has made everything. All of this is his jurisdiction. He's the one who's bringing the storm.
And so then they said to Jonah, they said, what do we have to do about this to get rid of this storm? And Jonah says, and I'll just read it, quote it for us, verse 12, pick me up and hurl me into the sea, then the sea will quiet down for you for I know he readmits it. I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you. Just a couple of things there. They said, why has this great evil come upon us?
He softens it. He said it's because of me that this great tempest, this great storm has come upon us. He doesn't want to admit that it's because of his great evil that all of these innocent men are in this situation about to lose their lives that he was the one who was sleeping at the bottom of the ship while they're desperately trying to save themselves when he could have repented and turned back to God and turned things around. Now the fact that he says hurl them over into the sea, I don't know about you, but I used to read that as kind of a noble thing. He's saying throw me overboard and it'll stop.
But I don't think it is and you can, you know, have a different view if you like. But think about it. If Jonah was going to repent and actually listen to what God said at the beginning of the chapter, He would have said to them, I'm a prophet who was sent to Nineveh to preach. I'm trying to flee to Tarshish, opposite direction. Please drop me off so I can go and preach.
Instead, he says, throw me into the sea. Throw me into certain death. You see, this might be Jonah's most selfish moment yet. We know from later on in the story in chapter four that Jonah says in chapter four he would rather die than see this mission succeed to Nineveh. This may be another way his final attempt to get away from God's call in his life.
Just throw me in, I'll be dead and it'll be done. Maybe I'm wrong, but as I read through the chapter, it's just all this Jonah's showing all these negative things about himself. I don't think we're meant to see him as a noble hero. I think we're meant to see him as someone who's fleeing from God, disobeying God. Whereas the pagan sailors, ironically are the ones who seem to fear God, have more of a reverence for God.
So after that happens, despite the fact that this man is the one who got them into trouble, they don't just go, let's just throw him overboard. He didn't even tell us. They actually try to save him. They row as hard as they can to get out of it. And when they can't, they decide, well, we've got to do what he says.
We've got to throw him overboard. But then they reverently pray to Yahweh and say, please don't let this innocent blood be on our hands. And you've just done as you have pleased. Please don't hold it against us. And they throw them overboard.
The storm ceases. And then they feared, again, says that they feared exceedingly. They feared a great fear and they offered these sacrifices and vows to Yahweh. See, this is one of the great ironies in chapter one, is that the pagan sailors who may or may not be saved, or we don't know if they had a saving fear in the end, we don't know, but they at least had a genuine revelation of the awesome holy God and they tried hard to do what was right in his eyes. You see, those who truly fear God or revere God are not those with position, but those with obedience.
Jonah was a prophet, but he had a fake fear or fake reverence. Just because I'm a pastor doesn't mean that I fear God more than everybody else. You've got to look at my life. If we love our religious badges more than we actually love God, we don't revere Him. If we proudly announce that we are Christians, that we belong to God like Jonah did, but we don't actually obey His word, we don't revere God. It's a fake fear. It's a hypocritical fear. A true fear of the Lord looks more like what the pagan sailors embodied.
They had this great concern to do what was right in God's eyes. They prayed. They were merciful to a man who had endangered their lives. They tried to row back to land before throwing him overboard. They show us a bit more of what it looks like to truly fear and to want to do what God's will is.
Someone who just claims in their words, I fear God, but doesn't obey God, does not have the fear of the Lord in them. The fear of the Lord comes along with obedience. It's one of the great ironies of the book. And yet who of us can really look down on Jonah? At least he's humble enough to write this chapter with all of his shortcomings.
I'm not sure many of us would do that. To put all of his shortcomings out there for all of us to know. Who of us can claim that we perfectly fear the Lord? Who can look at our own lives and go, well, I've got this great reverence and that's why I know I am a true God fearer. None of us can.
Too often, I know at least for myself, I walk in the fear of man or the fear of missing out, FOMO, rather than the fear of the Lord. The only person who walked in the fear of the Lord perfectly was Jesus. Like Jonah, Jesus is a prophet. He's more than that, but Jesus is the great prophet who discloses God's word to us, who himself is God's word to us. Like Jonah, Jesus is a prophet, but unlike Jonah, Jesus actually walked in the fear of the Lord.
You see, this was actually prophesied of Jesus in Isaiah. It says in Isaiah 11:2. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, and His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. That was prophesied of Jesus. Jesus didn't fear God's wrath as a sinner. Remember that's not what the fear of the Lord is. Jesus was sinless.
And the fear of the Lord is this delightful, trembling awe for God. Jesus delighted in His Father and He loved to do His Father's will. So He said in John 8, I always do the things that are pleasing to Him. It's precisely because Jesus walked unfailingly in the fear of the Lord that he can save us from our failure to fear the Lord rightly. Jesus is a better prophet than Jonah.
Jesus actually walked in the fear of the Lord. He had such a delight in His Father, such an awe for Him that when He was in Gethsemane, at that final intersection, just before the cross, and He was trembling under the weight of the judgement He was about to face, He talked about this cup, the cup of God's wrath that He had to drink on our behalf, not because of His own wrongdoing. It filled Him with dread. And He was saying to the Father, I don't want to do this yet. Not as I will, but as You will.
If there's any other way around this, let it be, but not as I will, but as You will. It was the fear of the Lord that kept Him obeying the Father's will, even when it was hardest, even when it seemed impossible. It was the fear of the Lord that meant that He didn't call down angels to come and kill those who were opposing Him, but instead submitted Himself to the whole process. It was the fear of the Lord that kept Him up there on the cross, dying in agony, being spat on, being accused. It was the fear of the Lord that led Jesus to obey His Father's will and to secure our salvation.
To pay the price for our lack of reverence, for our disobedience, for our failings, for our shortcomings. Jesus really shows us what it looks like to walk in the fear of the Lord. And when this gospel takes root in your heart, it creates it results in a delightful awe, doesn't it? I love talking about the gospel. I love talking about the cross because when I talk about it and when I just meditate on it, I'm just like, wow, I can't believe Jesus did that for me.
I can't believe that He died on cross for my sins. It fills me with this. It is a trembling awe. It is an amazement. It is a delight to want to know Him more.
It's this gospel that produces the fear of the Lord in us, that makes us want to obey God, not reluctantly obey God. Jesus' life and death on our behalf that produces in us the fear of God we need, that overpowers all of our excuses to serve God in the roles that He's called us to. How could we say no to the one who held nothing back from us? Who gave up everything to save undeserving sinners like us? The question that Jonah 1 poses to us is this.
If even wind, waves, and pagan sailors revere God, why shouldn't we? Why shouldn't we? The wind does, the waves do, even the pagan sailors had some kind of reverence for God. Why shouldn't we as people who know Jesus, who know the gospel? Now some of you are walking in the fear and the reverence of the Lord.
You are trying, you're wanting to follow Him, you're trying to submit to your life to Him. It doesn't mean you'll look at yourself and you'll see perfection, so don't beat yourself up for that. But if you're genuinely trying to walk with the Lord, praise God for that. That's a work of the Holy Spirit in your heart. Others of you might be sitting here though and you know that the Holy Spirit is just pressing down on you and convicting you saying this is an area you haven't given to Me. I want you to bring it to Jesus.
I want you to bring it to the cross. And for you, maybe you just need to stare at the cross a little bit longer and look at what Jesus did for you and offer it to Him and submit your life to Him. God is jealous for your whole heart, your whole life. If even wind waves and pagan sailors revere God, why shouldn't we? Now some of you may not know the name Helen Roseveare, but her life is one of the clearest modern pictures I know of the fear of the Lord. Helen was a British medical doctor who in the 1950s left comfort and safety to serve Christ in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. She helped establish hospitals, train nurses and brought the gospel to people who had never heard the name of Jesus. Then during the civil unrest of the 1960s rebel forces swept through the region and in that process Helen was captured, beaten and brutally abused.
I mean she went through unspeakable atrocities at the hands of these rebels and it's because she was a missionary and because she bore the name of Christ. She later spoke honestly about the darkness of those days and she's written books about it, talks about the loneliness, the anguish and the wrestling with God and asking God, was this worth it? Why did I come here? And yet through it all, she came to see something deeper. The fear of the Lord, that settled conviction that God is worthy, that His glory matters more than anything else anchored her. Years later, reflecting in all she had endured for the sake of Christ, she said this, and I just think this is beautiful. She said, the privilege God offers you is greater than the price you have to pay. The privilege is greater than the price. Those are incredible words from a woman who was tortured and abused for serving Jesus, for doing good. The privilege is greater than the price. That was a woman whose heart was captured by God's beauty and supremacy and glory and worth.
She feared the Lord. If even wind, waves and pagan sailors revere and obey God, why shouldn't we? Let's pray together. Father, You are Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy. We know that the angels never cease to proclaim Your holiness in heaven, that the worship of You never ceases because when we see You, we are just overwhelmed with Your worthiness and Your glory.
And we thank You that You've given us such a clear picture of who You are in Christ that He reveals Your beating heart for us at the cross. And we just ask that Your Spirit would impress this on our hearts. That You would give us a true knowledge of You that leads to a genuine fear of You. Thank You for what You're already doing among us. Thank You for the works of faith and love that are already happening among us.
And we just pray Father that You would continue to pour out Your Spirit, to pour out Your goodness, to fill us with a trembling awe and delight in who You are. We ask for this in Jesus's name. Amen.