5 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. 6 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.” – Jonah 1:5-6
What a curious and tragic scene! All the sailors were religious men, devout in their prayers to their gods. Yet their gods were really nothing, and could do nothing. There was one man on board who had a relationship with the true God, who knew His Word, and who worshiped Him – yet he was asleep!
How could Jonah be asleep at such a time as this? Perhaps the storm raging inside Jonah was much greater than the storm outside. Maybe Jonah wanted to die. Or, perhaps Jonah knew that if he hid in such a time, he could deflect his responsibility. The famed Charles Spurgeon once said this of Jonah sleeping:
Jonah was asleep amid all that confusion and noise; and, O Christian man, for you to be indifferent to all that is going on in such a world as this, for you to be negligent of God’s work in such a time as this is just as strange. The devil alone is making noise enough to wake all the Jonahs if they only want to awake… All around us there is tumult and storm, yet some professing Christians are able, like Jonah, to go to sleep in the sides of the ship
Under this lens, Jonah’s sleep was very similar to the sleep of many Christians today. “If I just go to church every once in a while, then I can avoid doing God’s work.” The truth is that a storm has been brewing outside the walls of the church for hundreds of years. The enlightenment brought many scientific achievements, but also deconstructed the tie between science and god, morality and God, and society and God. Each day an estimated 125,000 babies are aborted. Each year millions of people walk away from their faith. Each week a new teenager develops an addiction to pornography.
It is time for the church to wake up. Others outside of the church will turn to politics, education, etc. to quiet the storm. But we Christians, know the ONE TRUE GOD. We Christians believe in Jesus. We Christians hold the answer. How much longer shall we sleep as the world toils in the storm?