“So 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.”
So he said to them,
Jonah replied to the sailors’ questions about whom he is and what he stands for with a clear-cut confession.
‘I am a Hebrew;
Jonah answered the sailors’ question of his race by, “I am a Hebrew” (racial name).
and I fear the Lord,
Jonah claimed to “fear the LORD.” I imagine the sailors saying, “You do?!!” The sailors were facing a strange person who claimed to be a prophet but rejected the message of the prophet.
the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land’
Jonah said that he feared the God who made the raging sea that caused the sailors’ predicament. He also feared the God who made the “dry land” (where the sailors hoped to land!) Jonah was saying that it was the God who created the sea that was giving them so much trouble: “My God caused this storm.” Jonah leveled with the sailors.
PRINCIPLE:
It is futile to hazard our hope on some empty expectation.
APPLICATION:
We can get ourselves into quite a jam in carnality. We bring great trouble to ourselves by stepping out of fellowship with God. Carnality will make us miserable, cantankerous, and unfruitful.
We can hazard our future on some false hope only to find that that hope is a desperate situation. It falls on an empty expectation.
