Into the Boat
‘Amazing Grace’. We would surely all know this famous hymn, written by John Newton in the late 1700s. But the background to this hymn may not be as well known.
Newton’s father was the captain of a ship and often away at sea. His mother had taught him to pray from a young age, but she died when Newton was only seven. After only a few years of schooling, Newton sailed with his father, the beginning of his own maritime career, in which he drifted away from God. He became involved in the slave trade industry, an immoral and inhumane enterprise built on the dehumanization, exploitation and commodification of millions of Africans, and later captained his own slave ship.
On March 10, 1748, he was sailing across the Atlantic, when a ferocious storm threatened to engulf the boat. As Newton hurried to his place at the pumps he said: “If this will not do, the Lord have mercy upon us!” His own words startled him. “Mercy!” he said to himself in astonishment, “Mercy! mercy! What mercy can there be for me?!” About six in the evening the hold was free from water and then came a gleam of hope. “I thought I saw the hand of God displayed in our favour. I began to pray. March 10, 1748, is a day much to be remembered by me; and I have never allowed it to pass unnoticed… For on that day the Lord came from on high and delivered me out of deep waters.”
Newton’s life was changed. He wrote those famous words: “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me…” and became a minister in the Church of England.
Newton’s life changing experience in the storm might remind us of the Prophet Jonah, who also had wandered far from God, and was aboard a boat in a ferocious storm.
The word of the Lord had come to Jonah, telling him to preach to the city of Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of the most feared empire in the ancient world: the Assyrians. The Ninevites had the same disregard for human life as the slave trade movement. They treated conquered peoples with horrific and ferocious barbarity. God had told Jonah: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah doesn’t want to go.
Here is the first insight into Jonah’s faith. He believes the Lord is the God of heaven who made the
sea and the dry land. Yet this belief doesn’t seem to translate to trusting this mighty Maker to be at work daily providing for his people. Jonah hasn’t understood that if the Maker of the sea and dry land has called him to go, he will be with him to provide for him and protect him.
Jonah has let what he has observed about Nineveh override God’s command. He has allowed what he sees about Nineveh to scare him into a completely different direction than God’s. In New Testament language, he is not living by faith, but sight, to determine his course of action (2 Cor 5:7).
Jonah believes the Lord is the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land, but he looks at the task ahead, and believes it is too big for God to handle. So, he looks at doing what is best for him. Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish, about as far away from Nineveh you can get—some 4000 km: further than Sydney to Perth. There are no flights available and the east-west expressway hasn’t happened yet, so Jonah’s carefully calculated travel plans take the fastest route possible—voyage by sea.
But the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. It seems God has intervened in a significant way to derail Jonah’s plans. That’s why what happens next is both profound and ironic: All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. They are Gentiles; they do not know the Lord, yet they do what Jonah should be doing himself: each of them cried out to his own god. Jonah should be going to God in prayer rather than fleeing from him.
Instead, Jonah is oblivious to the chaos, in a deep sleep below deck. 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.”
The shameful irony of an unbeliever telling one of God’s prophets to do what he should have been doing! Jonah’s slumber perhaps represents his spiritual drowsiness and ambivalence towards God. By contrast, the sailors discern there is a spiritual reality behind the storm that threatens to break their boat to pieces. Tossing the cargo overboard has not helped. They cast lots, to try to deduce who is responsible for the calamity that has befallen them, in the hope they may be able to find a way out of it.
The lot fell on Jonah, and they asked him: “…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?”
Jonah replied “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
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.)
Now Jonah says: “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord!” How could Jonah’s course of action possibly be worship? It is the Gentile sailors who show the right reaction to Jonah’s flight from God—horror! “What is this you have done?” they ask—words that might remind us of God calling to Eve in the Garden: “What is this you have done?”
What is this you have done, Jonah? What is this you have done…defying the Maker of the land and the seas? Who can really run and hide from the ever-present, all-powerful God, as the Psalmist says
“Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.” Psalm 139 (7-10)
The storm in this passage is clearly God’s response to Jonah’s attempt at settling on the far side of the sea. However, God uses the storm not to destroy Jonah, but to hold him fast—to stop him from destroying himself—which is what he will end up doing if he continues to run from God.
In human thinking, the storms in life are things to avoid. Yet could such storms be occasions not of God’s abandonment of us, but the very way he is at work in our lives? Might they be occasions that he is bringing a stop to the course we have charted for our life? As storms that lash against a vine growing on a tree serve to push the vine closer to the trunk on which it grows, could the storms in our life be occasions where God is bringing us closer to him? Has there been occasions in your life where, like Jonah, you have struggled to align the direction of the inner being with the outward confession of faith? Do we gladly confess the Lord is the Maker of the sea and the dry land yet find it difficult to trust that he is bigger than the biggest problems we are faced with, that he is with us and would work through us in what he calls us to? Are we slow in seeking his will, taking a nap from praying? Like Jonah, do we confess the Lord is the Maker of the sea and dry land, yet inwardly avoid him while we live by sight?
In tonight’s text we see where Jonah’s heart is with God. But I think we also see where God’s heart is for Jonah. We see that God’s heartfelt intentions is to bring change in people’s hearts to align with his will, so that we do not end up destroying ourselves but receive God’s blessings. We see this with Jonah, but we also see this with those to whom God called Jonah to preach. God would have been well justified to wipe the Ninevites from the face of the earth. He could have easily rained fire down from heaven. But instead, he calls Jonah to go and preach to them. This is for good reason: “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” (Hebrews 4:12-13). Nothing can change wicked hearts other than God powerfully speaking into them.
That is God’s heart for all people. That is why God sent a better Jonah. Jesus is our better Jonah, who also was confronted by a great storm while in a seafaring voyage of his own. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
Jesus got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” (Mark 4:37-41). Jesus shows his power and authority over all things by speaking to the wind and the waves to bring order out of chaos, save the disciples from destruction, and give them peace.
The disciples were afraid because they had eyes only on the foreboding doom at hand and had forgotten that Jesus was with them. Jonah was afraid because he had eyes only on the foreboding doom at hand in going to the barbaric Ninevites, and forgot God would be with him. When are the times you are afraid? Do you have eyes only on the magnitude of the problem at hand…or on the unsurpassable greatness and power of God to bless and save?
Tonight’s text is replete with allusions to the unsurpassable greatness and power of God to bless
and save in the better Jonah God has sent into the world. God did not send a rebellious prophet, but a faithful Son, who wholeheartedly followed his Father’s will even to the point of death. As Jonah snoozed in the boat, Jesus’ disciples were too tired to stay awake and keep watch with him in the Garden of Gethsemane. As the sailors cast lots to discern who was responsible for the calamity that befell them, the soldiers cast lots for Jesus’ garment. As the sailors questioned Jonah as to his work and place of origin, so too Jesus was questioned by Pilate as he stood before him: “Are you the king of the Jews? What is it you have done?”
God has sent his Son to bring saving help to the world and make all things new, including you and me. The same grace God brought to John Newton, he has brought to us. Grace is not a concept but a lived reality as God brings change to our hearts to not flee, but follow, even as Newton confessed:
“This is my testimony. This is my confession of faith. This is my hope –
It is certain that I am not what I ought to be. But, blessed be God, I am not what I once was. God has mercifully brought me up out of the deep miry clay and set my feet upon the Rock, Christ Jesus. He has saved my soul. And now it is my heart’s desire to extol and honour his matchless, free, sovereign and distinguishing grace, because ‘By the grace of God I am what I am.’ It is my heart’s great joy to ascribe my salvation entirely to the grace of God. 1 Cor.15:10
This is so because Jesus laid aside his power and submitted to his Father’s authority, perfectly obeyed his will, humbled himself to death, even death on a Cross, for you. Do you see it? Instead of putting to death the wicked, God has his own Son crucified. Everyone is worth saving to God. Everyone is created in his image. Everyone is loved by him, and redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus. Whereas the world would flee from God, you are among those he has gathered into his holy communion of saints, to have hearts changed by his grace to follow, not to flee. Amen.
Pastor Tim Ebbs
St Paul’s Lutheran Church, Glenelg
Lent, 2026
