At church, we have Missions Month twice a year. During our Sunday morning services, we highlight our local and global missions partners, and our sermons reflect on how we can live on mission in our daily lives.

I was traveling and missed church last Sunday, so I had to catch the sermon on the podcast. But my pastor, Kurt Petersheim, preached a powerful sermon on how God’s sovereignty shows up in the book of Jonah.

“So God is sovereign,” Kurt explained. “That is the message of the Book of Jonah.” He matched a word to each expression of God’s sovereignty.

The first thing we see in Jonah is that God is sovereign over nature. That means that He is powerful. See how God commands nature, and it obeys:

And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Jonah 1:17 (ESV)

And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

Jonah 2:10 (ESV)

Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered.

Jonah 4:6-7 (ESV)

Everything in nature obeys God in the book of Jonah – except Jonah.

Related: Faith All Over the Place, Episode 8: On Mission for Jesus With Pastor Kurt Petersheim

Secondly, God is sovereign over vocation. Kurt tied this to the words calling and mission.

God is sovereign over your life, He's sovereign over my life, He's sovereign over the purpose and the calling that He's given us because He's a purposeful God.

Do you really believe that you were the one person that God just whimsically created with no thought about what your purpose would be in this world?

Did He make you and just go, "You know what? I've made eight billion other people. They all have a purpose, but this person's life, I'm just gonna— I just need another person to fill up space"? No.

You're made with a purpose, and God is sovereign over that purpose. God is sovereign over our vocation.

Jonah prophesied to King Jeroboam II, as we see in 2 Kings 14. Jonah obeyed God’s call to prophesy about the border of Judah, but he disobeyed when God called him to go and preach to Nineveh.

Yet God was sovereign even in Jonah’s disobedience. Jonah tried to travel as far away as he could from where God was calling him, and God brought him back.

Kurt also pointed out that God is sovereign over salvation, and that’s because He’s merciful. Even Jonah knew this in his disobedience. Here’s how Kurt put it:

Jonah thought when he got thrown into the ocean that would be the end of the story. That's what he wanted anyway, right?

He was running from God's face, and he got thrown into the ocean, and he thought, "Okay, good. God can't see me now."

What does Psalm 139 say? "If I make my bed in the depth of the sea, you are there." Right? We cannot go anywhere from God's presence.

And Jonah realizes this, right? And he says, "Yet I will look again toward your holy temple."

From Jonah’s prayer:

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, “I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.

Jonah 2:1-7 (ESV)

All Jonah had to preach was seven words — “forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown” — and the entire city repented and turned to the Lord. That’s because He’s sovereign.

Kurt brought it home:

That's at the heart of everything that we do as Christian people. It's a heart, it's a desire that those who don't know Jesus would know Jesus, would be saved.

And God has given us the words to speak, just like Jonah. And Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 1, like it's foolishness. Yeah, the gospel's foolishness to the world, we know that.

The cross is foolishness, it's weakness, it's stupidity to a watching world. Yet it's the power of salvation to those who believe. If we would just go, if we would just speak the words.

God is sovereign, and that should lead us to want to share His good news with others. Are you on mission? Will you share the gospel today?

Just like Jonah learned, God is sovereign over nature, over our calling, and over salvation itself. At PJ Media, we believe truth matters — and in a culture that often treats faith as “foolishness,” we boldly speak it anyway. Our mission is to shine light in the darkness, give believers courage, and tell the stories the world wants to silence.

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