Inside The Whale's Belly

Thus the great fish—and I am going to use the word whale because it is the more familiar term—the whale becomes the focal point of our story and I am using it to represent the place in our life of a severe test, a great trial of our faith. It is a place of testing our commitment to the Word of God. It is a place of testing our resolve to serve the Lord despite hardships, disappointments, and adversities.

Inside the whale’s belly is the place that tests our testimony and confession that God is really good; that God really does love us; that He really cares about us; that He will not put more upon us than we can bear. Inside the Whale’s belly tests all that.

It’s the boat ride from hell that introduces the story. It’s the sudden appearance of a mighty storm out of a clear blue sky that does that. It’s the waves crashing over your boat, crashing over your hopes and dreams, crashing so loud and so long that you know all is about lost. It’s the “throw me overboard into the raging, snarling, and gaping mouth of an angry sea with no hope of rescue in sight” that does that.

Welcome to the inside of the Whale’s belly.

The most honest thing you can say when you land inside the belly of the whale is, “It stinks!” Life stinks. What has happened to me stinks. What people did to me to make this happen stinks. The situation I am now in stinks. And to add insult to injury no one takes me seriously when I try to tell them how I feel. No one feels sorry for me. No one sympathizes with me. No one cares. It stinks!

Finding oneself inside the belly of the whale raises lots of questions. You start with, “Wow! Where did this come from?” I didn’t do anything wrong and I get clobbered. Then, once you sorta get focused you think, “How do I get out of here?”

And the really good news is: there is a way out! This is one of the major themes of the story. As bad as the situation for Jonah was; as great as the fear it produced; (I’m surprised he didn’t have a heart attack); as horrible as it was to feel himself slipping and sliding down into a slimy, inky, darkness with all sorts of creatures and other unknown elements sloshing around and over him; as absolutely hopeless as the situation was compounded by enormous dread and fear Jonah was exactly where the Lord wanted him to be at that particular time.

Why do I say that? Because the Bible says, “Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah” (1:17 KJV). Jonah’s slimy grave experience; his truly near death experience; his “never would I want to do it again in ten lifetimes experience” was prepared by the Lord.

Don’t lose sight of that: it was prepared. It was prepared by an all-wise, all-loving, all-caring God. Now get this. That which devoured Jonah was transformed into Jonah’s preserver.

In chapter 2:2 Jonah described himself as in the “belly of hell.” How dark, how despairing, how distressed that feeling must be. But a writer of Psalm 139:8 said, “If I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there.” God is where you are right now. He is in your situation. He is in your circumstance. He is in your "bed in hell."