[AI translation] Dear brothers and sisters, you will remember - or at least many of you will remember - that two weeks ago we left off explaining the story of the prophet Jonah, how this man of God ran away from the presence of the Lord. He was supposed to go to Nineveh, and he went - or at least wanted to go - to Tarshish in a very different direction. So instead of going north, he was going to the far west coast. Instead of the path of obedience, he chose the path of disobedience. He wanted to run away from the task, he wanted to hide from God, and now the story goes on, "But the Lord...". Perhaps it would be simpler to say: but the Lord..., but God...I don't know if you can sense, brothers and sisters, in this continuation, a quiet irony. In the preceding verses you can almost hear the footsteps of a man running from God. He looks back and forth stealthily, wondering if someone is following him. Then there is a boat, he quickly gets into it. He feels that maybe everything is all right now, because this boat is taking him to the opposite part of the world from where he should have gone. Finally the boat leaves. He sighs in relief and goes down to the bottom of the boat. There he lies down and falls asleep. But God... This foolish man, here he thought he could escape to sleep from the consequences of his disobedience.
So many Jonahs of today simply think that they will sleep their way out of God, but, dear brothers and sisters, sleep is not the answer! Sleeping is a very good thing, by the way, but sin, sin of omission, disobedience to God, cannot be extinguished like a weariness. How many times does it happen that God calls us, gives us a commission, and we know very well what we are supposed to do, we just don't like the obedience. We run away and think, well, let's sleep on it for a day or two, time will pass, and in the course of time everything will be right again between God and us.
But, brothers and sisters, our sins do not expire. The secular law sets a time limit for punishment, and if someone is not prosecuted within the time limit, he has escaped punishment. But before God, our sins and disobediences cannot be dealt with in such a way that, well, they will be forgotten in time, they will be time-barred, and time will make everything right. No, brothers and sisters, sin - sin of all kinds - can only be dealt with in one way with the Lord: by putting one's sins into God's forgiving grace by a very humble and very serious confession of sin. Until this is done, all your sins are on record, and the hand of God will most certainly overtake you. In vain do you say: Oh, it is long past, it is covered with the dust of time! Let us not dwell on old memories, let us be glad that they are past, let us be glad that they are forgotten. No, brothers and sisters, for God will never leave us alone. God will catch up. He will not leave you alone until you deal with him personally.
Well, he didn't leave Jonah alone. This poor man thought he was now beyond God's reach. You poor Jonah! Well, God is a lot closer to you than you think! And this is good fortune, for what would you be without it? Thou modern man, thinkest thou that if thou breakest off thy connection with God, God will break off his connection with thee? We humans would do that, and God would do that. We humans are very easily inclined that when somebody does not listen to us, we warn him in vain, we see that he is going to his doom, we try to restrain him, but fail, then we pronounce judgment on him: Well, he can't be helped, let him go to his doom, I can't do anything more for him. Imagine what would happen if God treated us like that! How miserable we would look! But God doesn't let his people go to their doom so easily. He always finds a way to catch up with the Jonahites who are fleeing from him, to snatch them out of their path of disobedience and turn their lives back to himself. Let us remember one thing very seriously, dear brothers and sisters: that God loves those who believe in him more strictly than those who do not. Do not misunderstand, this does not mean that he loves them more, no, because God loves everyone equally, loves everyone equally well, but he loves his own more strictly than those who do not believe in him. He does not let Jonah sail so calmly to Tarshish because Jonah is his chosen one. It is because Jonah is the bearer of his Spirit, because Jonah's mission and his commission would take him somewhere else entirely. His calling is to another place. Behold, another may sail at leisure wherever he pleases. Not Jonah! Others can cheat, steal large sums of money without being found out and without any particular harm. Jonah can be caught cheating on a tram ticket. The sons of the world can change their mistresses every week without any scandal. And the child of God is the one around whom a storm breaks out at the mere appearance of such a thing. This is what I mean when I say that God loves his own more strictly. So he somehow keeps a closer eye on them, keeps a tighter rein on them, and punishes them sooner, because he loves them. And because he paid a very high price for them: the life of Jesus. They are dear to him, they are costly to him; and especially because he wants to use them. God will not give up on you, Jonah, even if you give up on him and on obedience to him. God will not give up on you. Take note of that, all Jonahs take note of that. This Jonah will experience it very soon, and all Jonahs will experience it very soon. Here in the story we see that Jonah has his plan, he has his good calculation, and apparently everything is going great, everything is going beyond expectation.
But the Lord, but God... what is God doing? Behold, we read, "He sent a great wind upon the sea, and there was a great tempest upon the sea". I could say, dear brothers and sisters, that God sends one of his angels after Jonah. Why do I say that he sends an angel after him, because he sends a storm after him. Well, brethren, it is because in Psalm 104, verse 4, we read this, "the Lord makes the winds his ambassadors." Ambassador - the same word that is translated elsewhere in the Hungarian Bible as angel. So the wind is also, the storm is also: an angel, a messenger of God, an ambassador of God. It brings a message from God, it carries out God's will. And now this angel begins his ministry. He is covering the sky with thick, dark clouds, whipping up the waters of the sea. The waves pile up, the whole ship creaks and roars. The hearts of the sailors are shaken by the frightful danger, the fear of death. Huge waves crash over the ship's deck and wash them overboard. The storm breaks and rages madly. But now notice, brothers and sisters, how the meaning and the whole significance of this storm changes all at once, when I say that the storm is an angel. It is a grim-faced, fearsome stone, but it comes from God and brings God's message. It seeks a man fleeing from God, it seeks to shake up a lost believer, to bring him to a better understanding, to turn him back to God. How much different meaning and significance does this give to the storms of our lives, which sometimes intimidate our souls? For example, the painful storm of illness or bereavement. Or perhaps a financial difficulty in which the soul is almost submerged in the waves of worries. Or a storm of disappointment, a storm of grief, or even a storm of history. Look, they are all ambassadors of God. They are all servants of God, angels of God, for your sake.
You cannot run away from God anyway. God is catching up with Jonah, and there are always storms in our lives - whether they are historical storms, or fateful storms, or emotional storms, or any other kind of material storms, for example - because God wants to snatch us out of our path of disobedience and draw us closer to Himself. So even in that storm, whatever the storm, God's love speaks and God's love calls. I have already experienced, brothers and sisters, that God is forced to speak to us sometimes in the language of experiences that cause us terror and pain, because otherwise we, in the stubbornness of our disobedience, would not understand his word, we would not hear him; but even then, and in this too, he speaks of his love. For God does not speak with two mouths, and God does not have two kinds of speech, but only one kind of speech. And he never contradicts the love that Jesus spoke to this world through his cross on Calvary. He always says the same thing: even through the storm, He only says what He said through the cross of Calvary.
When we were children, I remember, we often pressed our ears to the telegraph pole and heard the roar of the wind up in the wires. Well, dear brother, if you listen to the roar of the storms of your life by pressing your spiritual ear to the pole of Jesus' cross, you will hear the sound of God's love in everything. And then all the painful dissonance is gone, and even the most frightening situation becomes something wonderfully beautiful. That's why Job, even while scratching his sore wounds with pots and pans, could praise God. And that is why it was possible for Paul and Silas to sing psalms in the dark night of the Philippian prison, with their hands and feet in stocks, their backs bloodied by lashes - because God's word is always and in all things the same: the word of his immeasurable love, and the love that resounds from the cross resonates from all things and all events, even from the storm. And the whole world and all of life is a great echo of the word of the cross.
Look, there are two things that show in this story that this storm was indeed an angel: one thing that shows is that these sailors are all trying to throw the precious things they have loaded the ship with into the sea. How wonderful! Everything that was so expensive to them, that they took so much care to pack ashore, that they hoped would bring them great business on the other side, that they had gone to so much trouble and spent so much money on, they are now trying to get rid of. You don't need anything when you have to save your life, you don't need anything else. What then is the earthly good and wealth and anything else, if the shadow of death is cast upon it? Indeed, brothers and sisters, in the storm man is stripped of all the allure of all that otherwise seemed so terribly important to him: his house, his car, his money, his job, his wealth, his salary, his beauty, his fame, everything that before was so glittering, that he was so anxious to have, that spurred his ambition, that he wanted to fill his "ship" with - how he can turn grey when the shadow of death is cast upon him! You know, brothers and sisters, that in the storm the scope of all that a man considers necessary for himself narrows. It narrows so much that one begins to understand what Jesus meant when he said that one thing is necessary: communion with God, who saves life through death. This! The assurance of this, the preservation of this. Let all things perish, but let this remain, this one thing, let this remain, because this one thing is the necessary thing. That is also what one learns in the storm.
Then you learn to pray in the storm. Here again, we read that "the sailors were afraid, and each cried to his own god". It may not have occurred to them to cry out to their gods until the sun was shining brightly and the ship was sailing on her way on calm waters with a fair wind, but when the sky was overcast and the sea was rough, there was really nothing left but to cry out to prayer. But many a man has learned to cling to God's helping hand in a storm! But, you know, it's always a bit suspicious when someone starts to work on a lifeboat in the middle of a storm. It's much better to have it ready when the sun is shining, so that you can sail on in the knowledge that there is shelter, there is refuge, even if a storm is coming.
I knew a man who, in the war, had a leg wound that would not heal, and he suffered a great deal because of it, and had to spend almost all his time in bed. But it was through this misery that he came close to God and learned to pray, and he was very happy. Then all at once the wound began to heal, and slowly he was completely healed. This man was completely healed, just like any other healthy person. But almost in proportion he drifted away from God again: his faith waned, he missed his prayers, and he almost completely fell out of communion with God. Then one fine day the wound opened up again. He went to bed again, and to one of his visitors, who stopped by his bedside, and, feeling sorry for him, and assuring him of his sympathy, said. Only my old friend has returned. God sent him, for it is better for me to walk with a limp on the narrow road that leads to life than with two sound legs on the broad road that leads to perdition! So he said of his illness, "my old friend". He might as well have said he was the angel of God. For is it not true? It is true.
Brothers and sisters, there is one last, very timely message for us in this story. The ship is in danger. The men are doing everything they can to save the ship, working, running, tiring. They are putting all their strength together to save their lives - including Jonah's. And of this common work, this work in the public interest, Jonah is the only one who does not take his share! He doesn't care what is going on around him, what the other Gentiles are doing, he is asleep.
Do you see, brothers and sisters, what a man of God, a child of God, a believer, can sink to when he disobeys? That ship there is a community of destiny. It is like the population of a village, a city, or a country. And we all know that today this whole world is like a ship of humanity. The whole world is one big community of destiny. And if the ship springs a leak somewhere - whether in Brazil, Vietnam or somewhere in the middle of Africa, i.e. on a completely different side of the "ship" from where we live - we are just as much at risk of sinking as those who are close to the leak. Isn't it repulsive when others are trying to save the boat and steer it out of the storm, while the believer sleeps? Can you even look on with indifference and from the outside when people of good will are doing their best to raise culture, raise living standards, build, save peace on the ship? It is a terrible, terrible sight to see a sleeping Jonah on a sinking ship.
"What have you found, you great sleeper? - the helmsman shakes the man of God awake - "Rise up, cry to your God, and see if God will think of us, and we shall not perish". If... Shall we? No, not if! Most assuredly. Just get up, Jonah! Just wake up and cry out and beg for yourself and beg for the whole ship! Let's all beg together:
Jesus, my refuge!
My faithful shelter
You alone!
My soul from the storm,
Out of sin, out of all trouble
I flee to you.
Though the earth is all ruined,
And if the horde of hell vomits daggers:
Jesus himself stands guard!
(Canto 294, verse 2)