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Now I think we all
know the story of Jonah and the whale (don’t get hung up on what kind of
creature it was, the word translated in Jonah as fish, in the Hebrew means a
creature that moves by slashing its tail, which makes me marvel at God’s design.
Have you ever noticed that the aquatic mammals and birds wriggle their bodies
and tails vertically to swim, whereas fish and reptiles wriggle horizontally, you
can take that excerpt from Jeremy’s encyclopaedia of useless information home
for free), anyone that has ever been to Sunday school is bound to have been
told the story, or at least come across it somewhere, many children’s
television and radio programs have told the story, it’s often used in
compendiums of children’s story books or as part of school lessons. Chances are
even if, like me, you or your family never even went near a church you may have
heard the story.
Trick question,
some may get the right answer, don’t answer out loud though, what do you think
is the biggest miracle in the book of Jonah? Could it be the fact the God spoke
directly to Jonah? Or maybe the storm God hurled at the ship, and then stopped
immediately Jonah was thrown overboard? Perhaps the fact the Jonah got
swallowed by a great fish and lived for three days inside it before being spat
out. Can you think of any others? If you can’t perhaps you should read a bit
further into Jonah than most Sunday school lessons take us, How about the
repentance of the Ninevites, more than 120,000 of them. How about the plant
that grew up to shade Jonah, and then was eaten by a worm that God sent the
following day, or how about the scorching wind that made Jonah wish he was
dead? Given that list would you change your answer? I’ll admit I never even
considered the fact that the Ninevites turned from their evil ways and
repented, more than 120,000, not Jesus or his disciples or anyone else that
I’ve heard of, had that many people turn from their evil ways after just one
day of preaching.
So I think this
book deserves a better look than it often gets, before we do that let us pray.
Prayer
For those taking
notes I have some points on which to hang our thinking, I thought about alliterating
as Glen mostly does but I couldn’t find enough synonyms of the same letter to
make it work so I decided having the perfect number of points was enough of a
feat. So my seven points are as follows
Contents
1 Now the
word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and
call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the
presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.
So he paid the fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from
the presence of the LORD.
To get some
historical context we need to understand that Ninevah was the capitol city of
the Assyrians and Jonah was a prophet to Israel at this time (2 Kings 14:23-25)
23 In
the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam the son
of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one
years. 24 And he did what was evil in
the sight of the LORD. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son
of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin.
25 He restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea
of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, which he
spoke by his servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from
Gath-hepher. Israel
was free at this time, but was in rebellion to God under Jeroboam II. Jonah had
most likely been preaching unsuccessfully to Israel to repent and turn back to
God when he gets this word of the Lord to go and preach to the enemy. Some
think that Jonah was afraid of the Assyrians and that they would kill him, but
Jonah answers that himself in ch 4:2. Jonah did not want to see the Assyrians
saved, he did not want to go and speak to them, and call out against their evil.
The Assyrians were well known for their cruelty and Jonah most likely felt they
deserved punishment and that they shouldn’t even be given a chance to turn. He
convinced himself that by running away he would be bringing God’s judgement on
Ninevah to destroy them. So he runs. He heads in completely the opposite
direction hoping to get away from the presence of the Lord. He shows us how he
loved his own people more than he loved God’s glory and mercy, he shows how his
hatred of his enemies overruled his knowledge that God would do what he would
do no matter what. But he also knew that God’s promises were sure and he didn’t
like it, I think he even knew that he could not get out of God’s presence but
in his weakness he tried to convince himself that going somewhere else would
silence his feelings of guilt. Don’t we all do these things when we want to
sin, we pretend we can hide from God and try to go somewhere where we won’t
hear from him.
4 But the LORD hurled a great
wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship
threatened to break up. 5 Then the
mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo
that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone
down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast
asleep. 6 So the captain came and said
to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps
the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.”
So God stops Jonah
and the ship in their tracks, I’m reminded of when Balaam’s donkey saw the
angel of the Lord with sword drawn and wouldn’t proceed and rescued that errant
prophet. These were most likely seasoned seamen used to the conditions and yet
this storm was surely something they had never witnessed before, the ship was
threatening to break apart, they were afraid it was too heavy and would fill
with water and so they threw off all the cargo. The ship must really have been
tossed around and yet, Jonah is sleeping. How often do we get ourselves and
others into trouble because of our sin, and then try to hide away from the
storm of juddgement or feign ignorance of what is going on around us as if it
had nothing to do with us. Isn’t it so much easier than facing up to our
punishment, oh the mercy of God when he sends someone across our path and says
‘wake up’, do not despise the rebuke of your brothers and sisters nor even that
of those who do not know the Lord, see it as a loving fathers hand picking you
up and setting you straight again. Repent and remember even in your failure God
is using you.
7 And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may
know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the
lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to
him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your
occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what
people are you?” 9 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.” 10 Then the men were
exceedingly afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the
men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told
them. 11 Then they said to him, “What
shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea grew more
and more tempestuous. 12 He said to
them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for
you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.” 13 Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get
back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more
tempestuous against them. 14 Therefore
they called out to the LORD, “O LORD, let us not perish for this man's life,
and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O LORD, have done as it pleased
you.” 15 So they picked up Jonah and
hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. 16 Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly,
and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows. 17 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.
Is it not a great
thing to know how seemingly random events are all in God’s hand, what seems
more random to us than drawing of lots, or rolling dice, or pulling a slot
machine lever, not that I’m encouraging us to do any of these things as
guidance for our lives, but God does work our circumstances such that when we
listen to God’s word through scripture, and when we are honest with ourselves
and each other, the choices become clearer, when we have faith in God, even
when we make mistakes He brings us back to His path. Straight away Jonah knew
the answer to the survival of the mariners and the ship, he needed to get off,
beyond that he didn’t know what path lay in front of him, but he knew he had to
go. It took those seaman a while longer to come around, they were unwilling to
send him to what seemed like his death. In the end they pleaded with the Lord
for their salvation, and took the step forward, trusting Jonah’s God whom they
recognized as the one who controls all things. The confirmation of their act
washed over them as the sea immediately calmed, and they feared the Lord
exceedingly. God brought salvation to these men even through Jonah’s
disobedience and they worshipped him with sacrifices and vows.
Jonah on the other
hand was not destroyed, God’s plan for him was to continue and so he was
rescued by God’s appointed fish, and for three days and three nights he was in
its belly. Again don’t get hung up on whether this was a fish or a whale or how
Jonah survived three days in the belly of this sea creature, even when we know
that there have been cases of men surviving somehow in whales for days, this
was a work of God for whom anything is possible we don’t need scientific
explanations, or even understandable ones, one writer I know of explained this
as saying this was some sort of alien ship, something I read in my misspent
youth. And even if God did use natural things that do occur, who created those
things in the first place. Who is it that notices even the hairs falling from
your head.
Our Father works in
all and through all remember: 17 And the LORD
appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
1 Then Jonah prayed to the
LORD his God from the belly of the fish,
2 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.
3 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.
4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away
from your sight;
Yet I shall again look
upon your holy temple.’
5 The waters closed in over me to take my
life;
the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped about
my head
6 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.
7 When my life was fainting away,
I remembered the LORD
and my prayer came to you,
into your holy temple.
8 Those who pay regard to vain idols
forsake their hope of
steadfast love.
9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will
pay.
Salvation belongs to the
LORD!”
Notice that this
prayer is not a request for salvation it is thanksgiving for the salvation
received. It is a prayer that is a response to the Grace of God already shown.
It is the grace of God that he is in the belly of this fish, God could have got
Jonah onto the land without the smelly fish, but God had a lesson for Jonah in
the fish. It was a trial in which Jonah felt the distress of his guilt, he
needed to recognize the imprisonment that his sinfulness had brought him into.
Yes it was trouble but it was good trouble. Jonah had been confused, he was a
prophet and he knew he couldn’t run from God, but he had tried. He realized
that he had turned his eyes away from God, but was in the process of turning
back, he wasn’t there yet, but he knew he would again look towards God. He had
had the touch of the feeling of the end, he had had the weeds entangling and
suffocating him, and he had been rescued, he felt the ‘bars of the land’ close
upon him, he felt the imprisonment, he felt his life ebbing away, and, then, he
remembered. He realizes there is nowhere else to run, there is no other
solution to our problems, and there is no other thing that can rescue us from
ourselves other than God. Jonah realizes that the biggest problem in his life
is not the things that come from outside but the things that come from self, he
realizes he is his own greatest problem. Oh what a confession when we realize
“I am my greatest problem, and there is only one solution”.
This prayer is not
only Jonah’s prayer it is a prayer that we all need to be praying so often,
when we find ourselves running our own way, trying to build up our own egos,
trying to turn God’s providence into our own wealth. We make ourselves, our
jobs, our families, our possessions into our idols, and so often it’s only in
distress when we face the end of despair that we turn and can pray this prayer.
This prayer reminds us that all these idols are worthless, we need to confess
our sin, how many of you have lived a sinless week, how about this weekend, how
about today, how about the last few hours. Do you think you are any better than
Jonah?, the moment we think we are better we stop looking for God’s grace and
that of others, we think ourselves as more righteous and we put ourselves on a
pedestal and point away from ourselves instead of humbling ourselves and
thanking God for His great mercy and forgiveness.
We may never see
the inside of the belly of a fish, but we so need to put ourselves in Jonah’s
place, seeing our deserved punishment and giving thanks to God for his rescue
plan.
It is highly likely
that parts of Jonah’s prayer are direct quotes from the Psalms, I don’t think
there is a better place to learn how to pray than the Psalms, over and over we
see God’s people praying and being honest about what is in their hearts and as
they pray they are reminded of God’s grace and mercy, they are reminded that
the troubles they find themselves in the midst of are not insurmountable with
God’s grace and strength, whether those troubles came from self or from
outside, God wants us to look beyond our circumstances to the heavenly glory,
and find joy and encouragement in our destination not in our current pain. He
wants us to see His glory above our current pain.
As many of you know
I cycle as a pastime and considering that I weigh 100Kg (actually slightly more
at the moment) getting up hills is not easy, one of the tips that is helpful is
called ‘the magic elastic’ what it refers to is a methodology for continuing on
even though your legs are burning, your heart is pumping so heard you feel it
all over your body, you just want to stop. What you do is you look forward a
short distance and pick a point just far enough that if it were the finish line
you could make it, then when you get there you do the same thing again. It’s a psychological
trick in which focussing your eye on the goal line makes all those ‘give up’
signals fade into the background. In the same way when we look to God’s
promises of the eternal rewards, when we realize that this life is only short
in light of eternity, all those circumstances which tax us fade into
unimportance.
10 And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it
vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
Jonah’s prayer was
prayed whilst he was still in the belly, he knew he had already been saved, it
wasn’t that he was looking to be back on dry land, that did not matter, his
life no longer mattered, only God’s glory and grace mattered. When we surrender
ourselves to God’s plan, even when we don’t even know the destination, he shines
the light on the next piece of the path, only then do we get spat out of the
fish, only then are we ready for the next step. God uses us best when we
crucify all of ourselves by faith and surrender to His will.
1 Then the
word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and
call out against it the message that I tell you.” 3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according
to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days'
journey in breadth. 4 Jonah began to go
into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and
Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
God’s plan never
changes, whatever we do, no matter how we fail him he always brings us back to
the place where our disobedience started. We will see shortly that Jonah still
didn’t want to do this work, but he also knew there was no running away, there was
no hiding, there was no sleeping to be had, and so reluctantly this time he
obeys God’s command. It should not be hard to understand how quickly Jonah
forgets the lesson he learned in the belly when we look at our own lives and
see how we constantly fall back to our own bad habits.
I want to quickly
point out the size of Ninevah ‘three days journey in breadth’ is a little
nondescript and doesn’t explain all that well, excavations in the last century
have revealed a wall which is about 12km in circumference comprising an area of
about 7.5Km2 now for those who do a bit of exercise you may know
that we normally walk at about 3-5km/h which doesn’t really calculate to three
days breadth, but considering Jonah here was probably referring to walking
through each neighbourhood stopping to preach, it very well might have taken
three days to make his way through the breadth of the city. Also I don’t think he went a day’s journey in
and only then started to call out, it is more likely he was calling out as he
went along.
In the last verse
of this book we are told that there were more than 120,000 who didn’t know
their left hand from their right hand, some have taken this as to refer to
young children and then multiplied the number of people in Ninevah to a much
larger number however I think it is more likely that this had reference to the
spiritual state of the people of Ninevah, they didn’t have a clue, they were
spiritually and morally directionless. Apart from that, external sources also
estimate the population at this time to have been between 100,000-150,000, and
anyway it wasn’t usual to count peoples by the number of illiterate children,
although sometimes the number of adult males was used.
Keep in mind the
enmity between Israel and the Assyrians, this would not have been easy, there
was very likely a fair amount of resistance from the Ninevites to Jonah’s
message, at least initially, but it certainly didn’t last long. What we need to
see is that though almost everything in him resisted his calling, his reluctance
and his dislike of this people, Jonah nevertheless obeyed.
5 And the
people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth,
from the greatest of them to the least of them.6 The word reached the king of
Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with
sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 And he
issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king
and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let
them not feed or drink water, 8 but let
man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God.
Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his
hands. 9 Who knows? God may turn and
relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”
10 When God saw what they did, how they
turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he
would do to them, and he did not do it.
4:1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and
he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the
LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country?
That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a
gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and
relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore
now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than
to live.”
Fear struck the
Ninevites they believed God, by the end of the first day of Jonah’s crying out,
a fast was called, the king down to the least of them took off their beautiful
clothing and dressed in sackcloth, they sat in ashes, not only did the people
fast but they made all their livestock fast, and put sackcloth over them also.
God saw, and God
relented. So many will point to scriptures such as this to point out how God is
changeable, how we as men can change the plan of God by our prayers, by our
repentance and asking for forgiveness but that just shows a lack of
understanding for the way God communicates and relates to us. He gives us
object lessons, he teaches us through experience. Apart from that God’s nature
has always been one where faith in Him and his plan of redemption results in
grace and mercy through forgiveness. God’s declarations of action are nearly
always implicitly based on the actions of those to be acted on, then again
without getting too tied up in knots, the actions of people are always directed
by God to the ends he desires, so they are not really conditional at all in his
eyes, only in our finite eyes do we perceive God’s changing of mind.
Jonah had probably
preached to his own people for years and all his prophesies had fallen on deaf
ears, that is what he was used to, but here in the land of the Gentiles, in a people
who were cruel enemies and who probably despised him as much as he did them,
the people took his message to heart. This was a message that planted fear in
their hearts, 40 days he said, 40 days and they would be overthrown, as will be
clear shortly, Jonah hoped it would come true, but as we see in Ch 4:1-3 he
knew the Lord’s grace and mercy, Jonah wanted his preaching to be fruitless but
he just knew God would bless his obedience. Now it’s clear from ensuing
circumstances that this repentance was only temporary it was probably only a
few decades later that Assyria captured Israel and made them subject to their
rule, the cruelty that had been present before Jonah went there returned, I’m
sure there was a remnant who still feared the Lord, but for most it was
probably short lived. This was all of course part of God’s plan to punish His
people and bring them into bondage, see the similarity to Jonah’s experience in
the belly of the fish, that in their bondage they would again turn to God and
seek forgiveness and for a while live in obedience to him.
Jonah was displeased,
some have speculated many reasons why Jonah initially ran away and was now angry
after God saved the Ninevites, but why speculate when the answer is right here
in v2: “2 And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O
LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made
haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster”
He was angry because he had known God would show mercy, he knew God would not
destroy the city, he knew this people would be saved. He had obeyed but he was
still sulking. As we shall see shortly he still hoped that Ninevah would be overturned.
He was not happy but he did do something right ‘And he prayed’. He prayed about his displeasure he was sulking
and upset but he prayed. It seems to me the main object of his bad mood was God
himself but he still realized that God was the one to speak to about it, he
didn’t go complaining to everyone else, he went directly to the source of his
frustration. It is always the right thing to do to take our worries and our
fears, to present our real feelings at the throne of God, we cannot put on
masks with God, and it is pointless pretending we can.
4 And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?”
5 Jonah went out of the city and
sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it
in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. 6 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. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God
appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God appointed a
scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was
faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die
than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah,
“Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be
angry, angry enough to die.” 10 And the
LORD said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make
it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should not I pity Nineveh, that great
city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right
hand from their left, and also much cattle?”
God’s answer to Jonah came in the form of a question ‘Do you
well to be angry’ we’ve already seen that he was angry that the Ninevites
weren’t destroyed, Jonah probably also felt he had reason to be embarrassed
because his prophecy of their destruction would not come to pass. God’s
question is reminiscent of a similar question to Job, the absence of a response
from Jonah though is glaring, he probably knows the answer is ‘no he does not
do well’ he probably knows he has no reason to be angry at God, but his
selfishness and pride still hold him down. Instead of praising God for his
grace and mercy to the Ninevites he goes outside the city to wait hoping it
will still be destroyed. So God brings another lesson, Jonah’s booth cannot
have been much because he clearly got no shade from it, God caused a plant to
grow to provide shade and then the next day provided a worm to attack the
plant, causing it to wither. Look at this God is stirring, he is trying to rub
in the lesson to Jonah, Jonah is even angrier and wants to die, perhaps he
feels his reputation and his ministry has been destroyed, but more than that he
is now angry that the plant has died. He couldn’t care if the whole city full
of people and animals were destroyed, but he cares about this insignificant
plant and perhaps his own comfort. God wants Jonah to see that he had laboured
long and hard over the city, it’s people and cattle, he wanted Jonah to see
this was the work of his hands, Jonah should have been praising God, but Jonah
only became angry at his own discomfort.
This last lesson from God also goes unanswered by Jonah, in
all likelihood Jonah himself wrote this book, does it not seem important that
he doesn’t even attempt to justify himself, we don’t know whether he remained
in this anger, but one imagines that if he didn’t he would have said something
about his repentance when scribing this book.
I have the distinct impression that what I understood of the
primary school version of Jonah and the Whale left a lot to be desired, it pretty
much ended with Jonah being spat out on the beach, and the other two chapters
being glossed over especially chapter 4, Sure it showed something of the power
of God, it showed his grace and forgiveness but that is not the whole story.
Jonah was not a good example of how we should be, even to
the end we see his obstinacy, it’s as if he knows his guilt and sin and won’t face
up to it. God worked anyway but Jonah could not share in the glory of God
because his selfish heart could not get past his prejudice towards the
Ninevites. We need to take encouragement that even when we are at our worst,
when our doubts assail us, if we do what he commands, God works His best
through us nevertheless. However we miss out on the joy of serving when we
allow our pride and prejudice (book title there?) to get in the mix, we need to
humble our hearts, recognise our equality with all men, poor or rich, red, blue
or black or maybe orange, educated or uneducated, not one of us is deserving of
God’s grace and yet he dispenses it according to his perfect will to all
peoples.
Let us look at Jonah as an example of what not to be and to
willingly live in obedience to God that we may share in His glory and joy in
praise and thanksgiving. We don’t have to wait for eternity to taste God’s joy
and peace, we can have it now despite our circumstances we can find peace in
knowing we are a work in progress in the hands of a loving father.
