Themes in the Book of Jonah: The Sovereignty of God

Shamu answers to God! We see that clearly from the book of Jonah where God appoints a great fish to swallow up Jonah and then later to spit him out. But the book reveals more than just God’s control over aquatic beasts. In fact one of the major themes running throughout the entirety of the book of Jonah is God’s sovereignty over all things.

God demonstrates to Jonah pretty quickly just how far-reaching is His rule. Jonah fled from the presence of God perhaps in hope that God would leave him alone, but instead God summons a great storm to harass the ship. God controls the wind and waves. In the ancient world the sea was thought to be the seat of chaos. No one could tame the oceans. But God can and Jonah knows it. He says to the pagan sailors:

And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” (Jonah 1:9)

The Bible from beginning to end paints us a picture of the God who controls the seas. He hovers over the face of the waters, he parts seas, he causes waves to crash over his enemies. He even has the power to turn the sea into dry land (Psalm 66:6); God can literally make the sea no more if he so chooses. Psalm 89:9 assures us that God rules over the raging of the sea, and when its wave rises He stills them. This is, of course, precisely what Jesus does in the New Testament. He stills the raging sea as a testimony to who He really is: the sovereign God of the universe (see Mark 4:39-41).

But God’s control is not simply over the waters of nature, it is over all of nature. For God controls a great fish and a small worm (4:7). He can control the mightiest of creatures and the smallest of invertebrates. He controls all living things, including plants (4:6). He makes them grow at his command, so that the plant that he gives to Jonah “springs up overnight.” God doesn’t even need to obey the so-called laws of the universe. He is above them all. None of the living things on earth can stay his hand, as King Nebuchadnezzar testified (Daniel 4:35). Not even Jonah can thwart God’s plan by running away. God will have his task accomplished whether Jonah likes it or not (and, of course Jonah doesn’t like it).

God also controls the weather. He makes the sun to shine and the wind to blow. God controls even the details of the climate. This is surely an all-encompassing sovereignty. What is there that God does not control? And yet, we often doubt his control or flatly deny it. Jonah certainly knew the truth about God, but he sought to suppress the truth of God’s control with his sinfulness (Romans 1:18). We can be like that. We think that ultimately we should be the Lord’s of our lives and the judges of our morals. We demand, like Adam and Eve, to take God’s place as sovereign one. We like Jonah run from his Lordship and try to flee it, but we are more than just incredulous when we do this. We are knowingly sinning against the Ruler of the Universe. A scary place to be, as Jonah knew well.

At other times we simply doubt God’s control. Maybe as faithful Christians we might not say that we doubt it, but we act like it. We live with anxiety and fear. We tremble at the thought of an unknown future, we stress about finances and family. We worry about jobs and security. But in the midst of all the necessary responsible steps we must ask: how am I trusting God in this moment? The book of Jonah gives us every reason to believe that God can handle our problems. He moved an entire series of events to bring Jonah to Nineveh and to see a city saved?

God is sovereign in the book of Jonah. But we must see beyond this book too, that God is sovereign in our own stories.