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Part 3 God's Way with a Back Slider By Graham Miller

Today we were speaking about Jonah, the disobedient prophet and it was really a Bible study on
the psychology of spiritual defeat.
You've noted down the points.
I don't want to go over them again, but just to remind you that when we are as determined
as Jonah in our backsmiding, when we've added to prayerlessness, willfulness, waywardness,
sleepiness, determination not to change our mind, and a final resolve to beat God by self-destruction,
when we've done all that, is there anything else that God can do for us?
You remember the words with which I closed from the prophecy of Hosea, reminding you
that at the very time when this drama of the book of Jonah was being enacted, there was
a prophet in Israel who was saying,
I taught Ephraim to go, taking them by their arm, but they knew not that I healed them.
I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love, and I was to them as they that take
off the yoke on the jaws, and I laid meat on them.
My people are bent to backsmiding from me.
How shall I give thee up?
How shall I deliver thee?
Mine heart is turned within me.
My repentings are kindled together.
O Ephraim, how shall I give thee up?
When a man like Jonah, or like you and me in the midst of our deliberate backsmiding,
has renounced all the entreaty of God's love and compassion, has resisted all the
memory of God's mercies in the past, has trampled underfoot every holy experience through
which we've passed under the ministry of the Holy Spirit, is there anything else that
God can do?
Is he foiled?
Is he bought?
Is he there, a broken-hearted God, standing on the outer fringe of time and eternity,
weeping hot tears of grief over the impenitent backslider, or does he turn on us and with
sharp, white anger repudiates?
Does he remove from the palms of his hands the names that he once graved upon them?
Does he tear from life's eternal book the name which once he inscribed in it?
I want to make it very clear that if God did that to every backslider in his backsliding,
none of us would be here this morning, none of us.
I would not be here.
You would not be here, because it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed.
And it is because the love of God has other weapons besides entreating arms and suffering
love that Jonah was rescued from the belly of hell.
You remember the verse form of the psalm?
His sovereign power without our aid formed us of clay and made us men, and when, like
wandering sheep, we strayed, he brought us to his fold again.
He is a God who hath power to kill and to make a lie, to create and to destroy.
He can wound and he can heal.
And what wounds?
The wounds of a friend, the wounds of compassion that bring us from our own waywardness to
his fold again.
I remember early in the war going to Vila, the capital of the New Hebrides, from our
little island hideout a few miles north of Vila, and seeing a group of Tonkonese indentured
labourers who worked for a French planter, down on the foreshore in front of the township
with a rusty old anchor chain under which they had built a fire.
They wound this chain over the hot fire to scour off the rust of many years.
The time was when it was a new chain and had been serviceable on some island cutter or
ship.
Then it had been rejected, there had been plenty of money.
There was no war, and anchor chains were easy to procure.
And then the war came, and anchor chains couldn't be procured.
And that planter remembered his old rusty chain, and he thought, I'll get that back
into service again, but first I've got to scour off the rust.
And so he got his indentured labourers to build this fierce fire underneath.
And they rolled and wound this great anchor chain, red with rust, over the flames.
There they cooked it, seared it, burned it, hurt it until they had burned and scoured
all the red rust off it.
And then they put it in a bath of pitch and asphalt, and it went back into service again
as an anchor chain.
God did that with Abraham when he went to see Abimelech.
God did that with David concerning Bathsheba's child.
God has his way of scouring the rust off every one of his people when for a time they
are cast away.
It is either that or the slag heap, and God has no intention of casting any of his gold
onto the slag heap.
All he will burn away is the scum and the dross of our backsliding.
And I remind you of Hebrews chapter 12, verses 5 and 6, and verses 10 and 11.
It's speaking about God's dealing with his own people and how hard he can be on them
in order to discipline and make them anchor chains that will shine again with usefulness.
Ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaks unto you as unto children.
My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked
of him.
For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
But he chastened us for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous, nevertheless afterward
it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby.
Reverting now to the exposition of this first chapter, let's remind ourselves first that
all Jonah wanted when we saw him in the midst of his backsliding yesterday, all Jonah wanted
was to get to that place where there was no God to see him, no God to interfere with him,
no God to reckon with.
Stiff and erect in his loyalty to a mistaken choice, he will go through with it to the
bitter end, and the bitter end will be a chosen form of self-destruction, suicide.
All he wants, in the words of Milton's Paradise Lost, is a road, smooth, easy, inoffensive,
down to hell, and he would do it honorably.
He wouldn't take anyone else with him.
He would go alone.
No one else would have to suffer, suffer.
They'd never even know that he died by suicide.
The tracks would be so completely covered.
It would be almost an honorable death in the eyes of the sailors
who saw him, as it were, give his life for them.
God would know, curse him, but God wouldn't stop him.
He would have the last word and not God.
I don't know if you've ever known that mood in your own soul.
It's a terrifying thing to see a man of God acting like that.
Paul, in 1 Corinthians 9, verse 27, prayed that he would be kept from ever acting like that,
lest after preaching to others, he himself should be a rusty chain corroding above the timeline.
I remind you that God's sovereignty is our only armor, and that as we look back over
the journey by which God has led us, whether it be longer or shorter,
we know that it was he who was our protection from beginning to end.
And as we look forward to the future, whatever its hazards and uncertainties,
we know that he is able to perfect that which concerns us,
in spite of the man who dwells within us, who wars against the spiritual man.
Now, the exposition of the passage today is in the tenor and context of God's sovereignty
to compel the backslider back to himself.
Out of the treasure house of his power, you'll notice in this chapter how God draws four weapons,
four miracles, to smite Jonah in his mad, impenitent flank.
In verse 4, God casts a great wind upon them. That's a picture, I believe,
of the weapon of God's violent dealings. He sometimes deals violently with us.
In verse 7, you'll notice that God guided the lottery, and the lot fell on Jonah.
That's the weapon of God's intricate dealings.
And in verse 15, God created a great calm over the drowning man.
And that's the weapon of God's hidden dealings.
And in verse 17, God prepared the great fish to swallow up Jonah.
And that's the weapon of God's ultimate dealings.
It was the last in the sequence of divine miracles,
the outreach of God's sovereignty over the impenitent backslider.
And I want you to notice that all of these were not the actions of vindictive,
sovereign, cold-hearted deity. This is not the God of the deists of the 18th century.
This is a God of whom Hosea spoke, the heart and holiness of love.
These are the wounds of a friend, the unasked
and undeserved display of sovereign and omnipotent grace.
The first weapon, verse 4, the weapon of God's violent dealings.
The word, but, but the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea,
seems to confirm the truth that we've seen already in Psalm 139.
If I shall say, surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me.
The darkness and the light are both alike to thee.
The word sent in verse 4 means in the Hebrew that God took in his hand a hurricane,
deliberately, specifically located it where he wanted to put it, and hurled it on that ship.
And I want to pause to say that you don't want to worry too much about apologizing for God's
actions in the first person in the Old Testament.
We are not a New Testament church, we're a biblical church.
The New Testament is not our standard of faith, it's the Bible.
And what the Old Testament says concerning God is the same harmonious testimony as is given in the
New. And if God hauls a hurricane on a little ship, he knows why he's doing it and there's
no need to apologize for God's violent dealings. Pardon me if I introduce this thought.
It was only six days ago that we gathered in the Baptist Tabernacle in Auckland and there
were three caskets at the front of the church. And the Reverend John Pritchard, an R.A. Laidlaw
Chairman of the Bible Training Institute, and the Reverend Mr. Norrish, the late Mr. Dean's own
minister at the Valley Road Baptist Church, were there terribly subdued under the heavy stroke
which struck us all in the work of God in New Zealand. And when R.A. Laidlaw, now in his middle
seventies, a man through whom God has wrought many works of grace in New Zealand, rose to speak,
he said, friends, we have been stunned by this grievous blow. We have been stunned and many
have been asking, why, why, why? Friends, he said, God is not on trial before our intellect
and we do not call him to account for anything that he does in his sovereignty,
wisdom and love. He chose to send a hurricane.
Have you ever seen a scowl from the air? I remember traveling in the blister of a P.B.Y.
from Vila to Tom Tutor in New Caledonia. We were seated on all the luggage in the tail of this
amphibious plane, flying at a very low altitude across the 300 miles of turbulent water between
the New Hebrides and the Loyalty Islands. I remember looking down and seeing a tiny scowl,
its bow wave was scarcely discernible, just a tiny speck in the immeasurable ocean.
How pitiful, how utterly pitiful was this helpless craft when God unleashed the first weapon of his
violent dealings. And yet only the weapon of God's violent dealing changed Jacob's life.
The weapon of God's violent dealing changed Jacob from being a chronic twister
into being a prince with God. He paid for it. For the rest of his life he hobbled on a crooked leg,
but his very hobbling was an evidence that he had been brought back.
And perhaps you can magnify the grace of God for the violence of his dealing in bringing you from
the path of backsliding. The second weapon that God employed was the lottery referred to in verse
seven, the weapon of God's intricate dealings. The word lot there is simply lottery and it has
given a name to the modern word lottery which to all of us here is a tainted word, stinking,
smelling, reeking of trickery, chance and cunning. Yet we need to know that the lot or the lottery
was a standard practice in heathen societies in the ancient world.
It was used to determine doubtful matters. Shall we go to war or shall we not? Shall we build a city
or shall we not? Stones and inscribed tablets were commonly put in a vessel or a septical and
shaken up much the same way as they do with the marbles in a building society ballot and they
were spilled out and then the auguries were read in the way in which the stone or tablet fell.
In heathen society in Assyria, Babylon, the ballot was often used after prayer.
God was appealed to to give his guidance and direction. We needn't have any scruples in
wondering why it was that God used the ballot as the method for the partition of the promised land,
Joshua chapter 14 and chapter 18. We have however some scruple about the way in which the
eleven disciples used the ballot in Acts chapter 1 verses 15 to 26 to choose a successor to the
one who fell from his office, Judas. I point out that the ballot was never used in scripture
after the gift of the Holy Spirit who is given to lead us into all truth so that we don't need
ballots or straws or head up to up coins to find out the will of God for our lives. We don't need
any cunning, any astrology, we don't need to read any horoscopes because we have the ultimate
knowledge of God's will through scripture as we are illumined by the Holy Spirit.
God now used the intricate process of a heathen lottery. He chose the intricate dealings of a
heathen lottery to smite Jonah a stunning blow and if you are out of line with God's will
then you are to remember that God has a thousand intricate ways to circumvent
your backslide. They're all done in love but they're certain, they're sovereign
and they're irresistible. Proverbs chapter 16 verse 33, the lottery is cast into the lap
but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord and that's the weapon of God's intricate dealings
and perhaps he's working with you with that very weapon while you're here. Then in verse 15 we have
the weapon of God's hidden dealings. Verse 15, so they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea
and the sea ceased from her raging. You'll notice that Jonah not only bowed with submission to the
finality of the lottery but he embraced it with a great deal of alacrity and when they said well
what are we to do now that we know that you're the Jonah, what are we to do now? He said I can
tell you that very simply. If you put me over into the sea you'll be able to get back to port,
the sea will be calm, I will disappear and everything will be all right. Now they didn't want
to do that. The only person who wanted to be put overboard was Jonah and the only person who
insisted on Jonah being put overboard was himself and in the putting overboard of Jonah it wasn't
murder, it wasn't manslaughter, it was suicide. Jonah sought it, Jonah insisted on it and Jonah
knew that not until he had had his way would it be safe for the rest of those on board.
Reluctantly they cast Jonah overboard and quickly he sank out of sight. You can get out of your mind
these medieval portraits, medieval paintings of this great fish with its cavernous mouth
open waiting to give a comfortable landing to Jonah as he was tossed over by four hefty sailors.
It's all pure illusion. They never saw the fish, they never knew that Jonah had done other than
satisfy his desire to perish in the sea. The crew no doubt conducted a hurried burial service
and probably the captain said and we've forgotten to ask who is next of kin were.
And he wasn't gone at all, he wasn't dead at all. God's hidden dealings were just beginning
and the decisive moment had almost come. Remember that when other helpers fail
and comforts flee there is still the mysterious ministry of God's hidden dealings.
You must reckon on this parents in relation to your children. You pray for them but you pray
for them in panic and not in trust. And because you don't see each one of them walking in a
present experience of joy in Christ you're quarrelling with God. You're saying Lord he's
just about to fall overboard and he'll be finished if he does. Don't you trust God's hidden dealings
and aren't they more marvelous than his visible dealings? Some day you'll magnify the power and
authority and sovereignty of his grace when you'll see them coming from the north and the south and
the east and the west and you'll remember then that the covenant and the promise are unto you
and to your children. Don't compose premature obituaries on some Christian friend who's at
the present time in the wilderness of some way with heart purpose but come to God and say Lord
take your time take your way but I'm glad to know Lord that you will not lose your goal
for the gift and the calling of God are without repentance. And then the fourth weapon the weapon
of God's ultimate dealings verse 17. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah
and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. For every fugitive from
divine love and the divine will God prepares a surprise and as we look tomorrow at chapter two
you'll notice that God's mediation is put bluntly, clearly, starkly and with flinty
obviousness in the words thou didst cast me into the sea thou didst send me into the deep
all thy waves and thy billows went over me and Jonah never doubted that God had released the
hurricane that God had directed the lottery that God had sealed him off in the depths
and finally that when Jonah was reconciled to death God had sent this last ultimate weapon
and delivered his soul from heaven. Ever since Julian and Porphyry pagans and skeptics have
poured scorn on the miracle of the great fish. Some cite the similarity of pagan fables such
as the fable of Arian and the dolphin and they suggest a common mythical origin.
To anybody who knows God's dealings in their own heart the question of the historicity of this
great fish is no problem. I just remind you as a textual matter that the Hebrew words are great
fish just as simple as that but when Jerome came to translate the Hebrew and the New Testament Greek
into the Vulgate Latin version he got a little bit tied up in Matthew chapter 12 verse 40
where the Greek word is kettos meaning a sea monster generic not specific and he thought well
now a sea monster to do this job properly would probably be a whale and so putting it into Latin
he translated it ketus or setus which is the as you know the name of the species so he moved from
the generic word ketos meaning a sea monster to the specific word ketus Latin meaning a whale
and that's why in Matthew 12 and 40 it's reported as Jonah was three days and three nights in the
belly of the whale but Jesus didn't say that he said in the belly of the sea monster it's a matter
of indifference to me and I hope to you what kind of creature in the sea made this comfortable home
for Jonah for three days all I want to remind you about is that Frank Bullen who was converted
in the sailors rest at Port Chalmers near Dunedin about 70-80 years ago and who sailed on the
whaling ships round Fovo Strait in the south of New Zealand for many years and knew more about
fishing among the whaling fleets than any other author who's ever written on it Frank Bullen tells
us regarding the cashelove whale that they had the capacity to swallow and vomit up great pieces
of squid which are their principal food he describes the capture of one such cashelove whale
as follows the ejected food was in masses of enormous size some of them being the size of the
hatch house eight feet by six feet by six feet the real miracle of course in this matter consisted of
the divine interception of Jonah's wilful headlong flight from God by means of this submarine that
was God's purpose he sent it just as just at the crucial moment just as the Australian inland
flying doctor service arrives crucially at the right moment by means of telly radio to take a
dying patient to the nearby hospital it couldn't have been more wonderfully calculated the only
difference was that there wasn't any telly radio and there wasn't any helicopter and there wasn't
any patient there was a man with a sick heart who needed God's therapy and then of course there was
the collateral miracle of Jonah's preservation in the body of the fish for three days no the real
miracle was not in the scenery and the circumstances the real miracle and this
is the way God worked on this occasion was the giving of a new heart to a man who didn't want
a new heart was the bringing back of a man who didn't want to be brought back was the sloughing
off and scouring off of the rust from a chain which didn't want to go back into service and
didn't want to be scared of its rust that was the miracle and that is the point where we must
adore divine grace who takes us in the midst of our stubbornness our resistance our unwillingness
to concede God's will in our soul tight-lipped the defiant and like that
makes us breaks us makes us and uses us
how shall we magnify such grace some of you have read c.s lewis's brief introductory biography
autobiography surprised by joy listen to what he says in this connection about his own conversion
you must picture me alone in that room in maudlin college oxford night after night feeling
whenever my mind lifted for a second from my work the steady unrelenting approach of him whom i so
earnestly desired not to meet that which i greatly feared had come upon me in the trinity term of
in the trinity term of 1929 i gave him and admitted that god was god and knelt and prayed
perhaps the most dejected and reluctant convert in all england i did not then see what is now the
most shining and obvious thing the divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms
the prodigal son at least walked home on his own two feet but who can duly adore that love which
will open the high gates of heaven to a prodigal who is brought in kicking and struggling resentful
and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape the hardness of god
is kinder than the softness of men and his compulsion is our liberation
it was marvelous in its timing it was grace in the fact that it initiated in the power and
sovereignty of god and it was of grace in the completeness of the work done jonah if he ever
wrote a later autobiography would never have said well you know god and i got down to this problem
and we talked things over and i said well god i guess we'll make this up again no jonah was
impenitent until god sovereignly overrode his very determination and brought him from the terrible
wilderness of his backsliding into the blessed fellowship of his peace and his face and i feel
it's my duty from this scripture this morning to say to my own heart as one who needs this message
as much as any and to your heart who with me our backsliders day by day before god to say that god
will do the same for you and for me even if he has to pursue us to the very jaws of death he has more
than these four weapons and remember his wounds are the wounds of a friend old love that wilt not
let me go i give my weary heart to thee i give thee back the life i owe that from thine ocean depths
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