Swallowed by a Fish Jonah 1:9-17
Last week we looked at a story from the Old Testament and today I want to look at another Old Testament story; Jonah. Jonah is a short book of four chapters and it takes up just two pages of my Bible. Yet for a short book there’s a lot in it so I’m just going to pick a few things out of it.
Verse 1-3,“Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah…saying arise, go to Nineveh…But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish.”
We are Christian, believing faithful people of God. So, what does that mean? We believe, accept and trust in the cross. By our faith we are saved for all eternity. But this is only the first half of being a Christian. When we accept Jesus into our hearts we are also turning our lives over to God, giving him permission to use us to do his work on earth.
You’ve heard me say the past few weeks that being Christian can be hard, it’s not always just writing a check. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister in Germany and friends helped him leave the country at the beginning of WWII. Yet he heard God call him to go back to Germany to speak against the regime and work to save his Jewish brothers and sisters in God. He was arrested on April 5, 1943 and put into prison. He was hanged on April 9, 1945in the Flossinberg concentration camp; just two weeks before United States soldiers liberated the camp. In his book “The Cost of Discipleship” he wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
Living a life devoted to God can be hard, Reverend Bonhoeffer followed God right to his death. Today, we see something else, Jonah running from God in the exact opposite direction. Reverend Bonhoeffer is a man to be admired but we are all human, we have our reservations, our fears; and they are not sin.
Jonah ran, he’s on a ship and a great storm arises. Verses 5-6; “Then the mariners were afraid…so the captain came to (Jonah) and said to him, “Arise, call out to your God, perhaps (he) will give a thought to us that we may not perish.”
These sailors were not Jewish, yet they ask for prayers to God on their behalf. I know people who say they don’t believe yet they say, “I am going through a tough time, pray for me.” It seems that people who claim no allegiance to God, still have a belief in the person of God. I believe that the knowledge of the existence of God in instinctive, what people do with that knowledge is our choice.
So we see the sailors asked for prayer, but they didn’t wait for an answer. Verse 13, “Never the less the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could not…”
We talked last week about praying for God’s help and then going it alone. Here it is again. The sailors ask for prayer then rely on their own effort.
God will sometimes just hand you the answer to your prayer, but more than likely God will point you in a direction, or send someone into your life who points you in a direction. The point is don’t just say “God’s not answering me.” Take the time and thought to see exactly how God is answering you.
Verse 15,”So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea.” Verse 17,”And Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. And as we read through it we see Jonah spent this time praying. And then in chapter 2 verse 10, “And the Lord spoke to the fish and it spat Jonah out upon dry land.”
Here is Jonah as a shadow of Jesus in the tomb, what he was doing in the tomb and even a shadow of our baptism.
Jesus was in the grave for three days and I’ve had people ask me where was he spiritually for those days? The Bible doesn’t say but I think we get an idea from Jonah. Jonah prayed from the fish for himself as a man. Jesus is God, is the Holy Spirit; separate yet all one in the mystery of the Trinity. I don’t think Jesus was silent or absent during those three days. Jesus, God, Spirit didn’t take a holiday for three days, they continued working in the hearts of men to open them to the truth and salvation even as the body of Jesus lay behind the stone.
And our baptism; Colossians 2:22, “having been buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith.” Jonah was running from God, buried in the fish for three days and spat out whole. We are sinners, buried with Christ by water, and we rise up again whole and complete.
Jonah in the fish also shows us that no matter where we are, no matter the circumstances of our lives; if we pray God will hear.
So now Jonah is on land again and he finally goes to Nineveh. Chapter 3, verse 3, “Nineveh was a great city, three days journey in size.” And in verse 4, “…forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”
Numbers have meaning; three represents the trinity or God and forty represents the time God gives us to prepare or learn. Scripture is telling us that God will come to sinners and that he will give us time to learn, understand and believe; but it is a finite amount of time.
Romans chapter one talks about people who refuse to repent and turn to God; Romans1:26, “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.” The good news is that Nineveh turned from sin and toward God.
Jonah 3:10, “When God saw…how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster ha said he would do to them and he did not do it.” Here is the good news of the Gospels in one sentence; if we turn from a sinful life and turn to God, we will not be punished for our sins.
God saves Nineveh, and Jonah gets upset that God forgave people he thought were great sinners. I’ve talked about how no one is beyond God’s ability or desire to save, Romans 3:28,” For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” Whether you are a king or a slave, a Christian or a Muslim, Hetero or LGBT, a pillar of society or in a prison cell, lived a life for God or came to believe on your death bed; God will give you his grace, mercy and salvation if you believe, repent and turn to him.
I’ve had people get very angry with me over this, but I believe I stand on scripture, Romans 8:23,
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” All, there is no list of people who are beyond the redemptive power of the cross.
Jonah wanted the Nineveh to be beyond God’s forgiveness and God shows Jonah his wrong thought pattern. God puts a huge plant next to Jonah to shield him from the sun and Jonah is happy. Then God causes the plant to wither and Jonah gets angry at it. And then we have God teaching us about his nature. Jonah 4:10-11, “And the Lord said ‘You pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow…should I not have pity on Nineveh…in which there are more than 120,000 persons…”
We are saved, yet some Christians get angry over whom else the Holy Spirit leads to faith. Before any Christian thinks someone can’t be saved because of what they did or how they live, we need to look at what we did and how we lived and realize it is only by God’s glory and grace that we are able to stand before his throne without fear.
Jonah is a short book but it’s packed with a lot of information. Doubt, fear and reservations are not sin. We can’t run from God, there is nowhere he can’t see us. Like the sailors who couldn’t row to shore, sometimes when we try to solve our problems on our own we may not accomplish our goals no matter how hard we try. Like Jonah in the fish, no matter where we are God will hear our prayers. Jesus came for all mankind and God is patient and gives us time to see the truth but it’s not an infinite amount of time, upon our death it is too late.
As Christians we need to see the reality of our situation. We are sinners saved by the grace of God through faith in Christ Jesus. We should never look at someone and think they are beyond hope, God offers his salvation to everyone born. Like Jonah did nothing to make the plant grow, we can do no amount of work to gain access to heaven. Through our faith in Jesus God welcomes us into his family, and we should be happy when he welcomes another into the family.
God bless you