Jonah finds a calm place in the storm. Jonah 3
As I read the account of Jonah I can’t help but wonder exactly what happened that day. I mean it almost seems from what the scripture says that the second Jonah hit the waters the raging sea became as calm as glass. It doesn’t tell us if the sailors watched as he threaded water until the fish came and swallowed him. We don’t even if Jonah was conscious when he was swallowed. All we know is that they threw him in the raging water and it became calm and then he was swallowed by a great fish. As the sailors stood on the deck of their ship they must have thought that was the last that they or anyone else for that matter had ever seen of Jonah.
I also can’t help but wonder what was going through Jonah’s mind when he realized that he was in the belly of the fish at the bottom of the sea. I mean when you’re sitting in the belly of a fish at the bottom of the sea there’s one thing you’re sure of and that’s that you know that you are going to die. That’s a given.
In his situation Jonah would be like many people who face a terminal disease. They know that their time is very limited and they have plenty of time to think. As a matter of fact for some people laying on a hospital bed in the ICU is the first time they really stop and think. Most of us grow through life with our brains in neutral until we realize that our lives are almost over.
Its during times like this many people take stock of what they’ve done with their lives. They evaluate their past and then they determine how they will spend what little the time they have left. The last thing they want to do is waste any more time. Time is like money, the less we have the more conscious we become of our need to take care of it and use it wisely.
Most people are worriers by nature. Knowing that they’re facing a certain death causes them to become preoccupied with their failures rather than the things that they have accomplished. They worry about things that have happened, things that are happening or things that might happen. I just finished a book on W. A. Criswell who has pastored First Baptist Dallas for fifty years. The writer said the secret to his longevity in ministry at the same church was his attitude. Criswell said, "Don’t reflect and don’t regret. Just keep pushing forward." In other words he didn’t spend all his energy worrying about any mistakes he made in the past he was driven by his vision of the future.
Its like someone said, "There are two things you should never worry about." One thing you don’t worry about is the things you can’t change because if you can’t do anything about them why waste time and energy worrying about them. The other thing you don’t worry about are the things you can change. If you can change them don’t worry about them, change them." I also read another variation of this thought where one man said, "Ninety per cent of the things I worried about never happened and I couldn’t do anything about the other ten per cent. So, why worry?
Some people reflect on their past and they become bitter in their final hours. Their whole life can be summed up by the words, "If only." If only I had taken this path rather than the other, things would have worked out so much better. Or if only so and so hadn’t done this, that or the other thing to me my life would have taken a completely different course and I wouldn’t have ended up where I am today. If only. Regardless of where we find ourselves in life there comes a point where we have to accept that we are where God wants us to be. Either He has had a plan for us and our problems are part of His plan or He doesn’t. If He has a plan then we are where He wants us to be and He’s using the pressures of life to mould us into the image of His Son or if we come to the conclusion that He doesn’t have a plan then what does it matter. Life is meaningless.
There are also those who find themselves facing death and after they have taken stock of their situation they use their time productively making things right and then doing the right things.
Let me ask you what would you do if you were sitting in the belly of a whale knowing that death was imminent? Or maybe the better question might be, what would you do if you knew you only had a couple of days, six months or even a year to live? Are there things you have been putting off until you have the time? You see there comes a time when we have no time. None of us lives for ever.
I remember Sally’s grandmother. She was a godly woman who spent her life serving the Lord. I remember hearing her say many times how much she had always wanted to go to Israel. As she got older she lost her eyesight. When she died she left enough money behind for the whole family to go to Israel but she never got around to it herself. Do you know why? Because the time was never right. She wanted to do it. She could afford to do it. But she never got around to it. Time is like money. If we don’t budget it we end up using it for something else.
As I was thinking about Jonah in the belly of the fish waiting for death I can’t help but wonder if Jonah didn’t spend some time thinking about how he had spent his life and how people would remember him when he was gone. He had a good ministry when he was in Israel but everyone knew that he didn’t finish well. Everyone knew that he quit when he got on that ship and headed for Tarshish. I have no doubt there would be some preacher would be more than willing to take Jonah’s funeral service and provide comfort for his family and friends by emphasizing his achievements and ignoring his failures. I mean, after all isn’t that the purpose of a funeral service? To kind of leave everyone with a good taste in their mouth? The last thing we want to hear about others or even have told about ourselves is the absolute truth about who we were. The fact is, who we are isn’t always the way we want to be remembered.
I always read obituaries. Maybe its part of having long ago watched my fortieth birthday disappear in the rear view mirror of life. I read them to see how someone’s life has been summarized.
What do we really know about these people? They all had parents and some have had children. They graduated from certain schools, then most of their lives were spent at work and one or two had a hobby or interest that kept them busy in their spare time. In reality these are nameless, faceless people who have lived, died and are now forgotten but by the few who were directly involved in their lives.
The fact is , everyone of them were people created in the image of God who will live in either heaven or hell for all of eternity but all we know about them is that they lived, they died and their service was on Tuesday at 2.
I was thinking about this and decided to work on my own obituary. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not terminally ill and I don’t have some kind of a morbid preoccupation with death. I was just wondering how my own life would be summed up in the paper. If I died during this past week you would probably read something like this in next weeks Tribune.
"Rev. Hugh W. Davidson passed into the presence of his Lord this past Wednesday. Rev. Davidson is survived by his wife Sally, his son John and daughter Caitlin. He was a graduate of the Word of Life Bible Institute in New York, London Baptist Bible College in Ontario and Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. He had served as the Youth and Assistant Pastor of Crestwicke Baptist Church in Guelph, Ontario and then senior Pastor of the Main Street Baptist church of Sackville, NB. During his ministry he also held several positions within the regional and national cabinets of the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches of Canada. Though his body is gone his spirit lives on through the encouragement he sought to provide for others. Donations made be made to the Keith Guptill car wax fund."
What if someone actually had the nerve to write the truth in my obituary? If they did it might just read like this. "Rev. Hugh W. Davidson died last Wednesday. He will be missed by his family but they’ll get over it soon enough. Maybe now his wife will marry someone who will appreciate her for who she really is. At least his children will be able to get a decent education since he had the foresight to take out some life insurance but as Gordon Estabrooks was heard to say, "It wasn’t enough." Hugh had pastored a couple of churches but didn’t exactly set the world on fire. He also did some writing which few people ever cared to read. It was said of him that, "He encouraged a few, angered a few and will be missed by a few." The funeral service was held on Friday but it wasn’t very well attended due to rain. Those who would care to make a donation are encouraged to contribute to the Keith Guptill clothing fund."
Here’s a little project for you to try this week. Write your own obituary based on the ones you see in the paper every week and then ask yourself if there’s something missing. Ask yourself if there something you want to do that you haven’t done. Is there something that you hope to do but haven’t got around to doing? Because there’s coming a time when you will have run out of time.
As I read the story of Jonah I can’t help but ask myself the question, what is God doing here? He tells the prophet to do something and then watches as he runs away. Then He follows him out to sea, stirs up this terrible storm and through Jonah’s desire to die and the fear of the sailors has him thrown into the water and he’s swallowed by a fish.
Was God punishing Jonah for his disobedience? If this was punishment it would certainly fit the concept of cruel and unusual and we know that would contradict the nature of God. Besides, if God just wanted to punish him He could have just let him die the moment he disobeyed and threw him in hell for all of eternity. That would be punishment.
Was God playing a game of cat and mouse with him and pointing out the absurdity of Jonah’s trying to outwit or run away from Him? I don’t think so. God takes man a little more serious that.
I believe God was using every available means to get Jonah to face his sinfulness so he could turn from his evil ways and do the very thing he was created to do.
There are two things I want to point out about Jonah’s experience here. First, it says the Lord prepared a great fish. This doesn’t mean that He created this fish at the spur of the moment to snatch Jonah out of the water. It means God made the fish ready. He directed the fish to the exact spot at the precise time and made the fish hungry enough to swallow a man.
The circumstances, as horrible as they were, were under the controlling hand of God. Why? What was God doing? He was doing what the writer of the book of Hebrews talks about. He was using the situation to chastise one of His own.
Listen to what the writer of the book of Hebrews had to say about God chastening His children. Its found in Hebrews 12:5-13, "And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as sons: My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him: For whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all are partakers, then are you are illegitimate, and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but grievous: nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated; but rather let it be healed."
The author of Hebrews looks at the experience of believers in the light of the word of God and he comes to the conclusion that God allows certain things to come into our lives not to make life hard but to make us holy. Here the word discipline or chastising is used nine times in eight verses. The writer compares God’s working in us to the way our parents disciplined us. He says our parents disciplined us to help us mature, to make us self-sufficient and productive. Their focus was on time. God works on us to help us mature spiritually, to make us holy and to equip us for eternity.
What we have to understand is that the purpose of discipline is corrective and not punitive in nature. He’s not punishing Jonah but He’s using his circumstances to make him face his sin and he will turn from it and then God can redirect his behaviour. And He does the same to us. God uses our problems whatever they are to get our eyes off ourselves and back on Him where they belong.
In Hebrews 12 we see there can be a problem in the way we respond to the discipline of the Lord. It tells us in verse 5 not to despise the chastening nor be discouraged when we are rebuked by Him. If we don’t see our problems as being beneficial to us we won’t profit the way God intends us to. If we despise the chastening we will tend to become callous. Our hearts will be hardened rather than drawn toward Him. We will find ourselves complaining and questioning God’s wisdom. We will be always wondering if He knows what He is doing or questioning His justice by thinking that we deserve better treatment. Or even responding like a child who is always asking the question why. Not in the sense that we want to know the answer but asking why in the sense that we expect God to justify Himself and His actions to us. Or we can simply be careless or indifferent in our reaction and say, "Well, if that’s what the Christian life is all about then I’ll just sit on the sidelines and be a spectator." All these things are the wrong reactions to His hand on lives.
We all have problems but our problems have a purpose. In the New Testament we see that some of the brethren were having a difficult time and Peter wrote to encourage them. He said in I Peter 5:9, "Knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world." What he was saying was, you’re not the only one that these things are happening to, everyone everywhere has problems and all of our problems have a purpose.
With the proper perspective on discipline comes a sense of reassurance. The scripture tells us that when we are disciplined we are reminded us that God loves us and that we are His children. Because God loves us everything He does to us or allows to happen to us is an expression of His love. If He didn’t care for Jonah He would have either killed him or ignored him. God went to great extremes to get Jonah in a place where He could get his attention. He did this because He loved him.
The writer of Hebrews also tells us that the discipline of God is also proof of our sonship. I care about how other peoples children act because their actions affect my life. I care about how my children act because of my personal responsibility. If your children are disobedient for the most part that’s your problem but if its my children then its my problem. The relationship determines the degree of responsibility. And God’s responsibility to make sure His children live right.
This says God scourges every son He receives. A scourge was a short whip made of leather thongs with bits of metal and glass on the ends. No matter how you look at it scourging someone is painful. This tells me that there are times when God will go to extremes to get our attention and change our behaviour. And He does this for our benefit and not for Himself. After all, what does it matter to God if you or I are obedient or disobedient. He is neither the better nor the worse for our behaviour.
Notice in verse 11 it says, "Discipline seems not to be joyful." It isn’t meant to be enjoyed. Its meant to be endured. If it were enjoyable it would have no corrective value. When your child is being disobedient you don’t hand him a chocolate bar and say, "Stop that." Its much more effective to apply the board of education to the seat of learning.
Regardless of what we have to go through in life it always helps if we remind ourselves that God has a purpose for everything that happens. Someone has written,
"And what do I say? I say let the rains of disappointment come,
If they water the plants of spiritual grace.
Let the winds of adversity blow,
If they serve to root more securely the trees that God has planted.
I say, let the sun of prosperity be eclipsed,
If that brings me closer to the true light of life.
Welcome, sweet discipline, discipline designed for my joy,
Discipline designed to make me what God wants me to be."
So, Jonah was where he was because God put him there and he was there for a very good reason. God was going to use the situation to redirect his life.
The second thing I want you to see is how Jonah characterises his experience when he was in this fish at the bottom of the sea. He says in verse 2 that he was in the belly of hell. There are times when people use the word hell to be dramatic or to emphasize a point. Its what’s known as a shock word. I don’t think with all his other faults Jonah has a problem with vulgarity. He isn’t just being over-dramatic.
Hell describes what it means to be totally separated from God. People in hell have no hope and no one to turn to. The time for them to experience the grace and mercy of God is long past. They’ve turned their backs on God and now they’re suffering for that choice. And that was the way Jonah felt. He basically told God that he wanted nothing more to do with Him and now he felt as though God wouldn’t have anything to do with him. He thought that God would treat him the way he treated God. What he didn’t know was that God would never leave him nor forsake him no matter what he had done. As a matter of fact he was where he was because he was the special focus of God’s attention.
Listen to what Jesus said in Matthew 18:12-13, "How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoices more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray." It isn’t that He loves the one that strayed more but the one that strays becomes the special object of His affection.
I think there are experiences in life that each of us will go through that are as unique as Jonah being swallowed by the whale. Knowing our personalities, strengths and weaknesses God prepares and allows specific situations to develop that will cause us to face our sinfulness, our inadequacies and redirect our erroneous goals and sinful desires. Just as each of us is a unique creation each of us God deals with each of us in our own way. He created us and He knows each of our strengths and weaknesses and He customizes our circumstances accordingly. This shows us not only our uniqueness but also the greatness of who God is.
Looking death square in the face Jonah had to face his past and determine whether the problems he had were caused by God or were the result of his rebellion against the will of God.
Conclusion
1. Most of the lessons we have learned in life we learn the hard way and they don’t always have to be the most difficult times either. I remember seeing a plaque somewhere that said, "Its not the visions of the mountains ahead that wear us down its the grain of sand in our shoe."
2. Our faith no matter how weak it might be the rest of the time becomes the very thing we turn to when the tough times come. I’ve seen some of the hardest people I’ve ever met become very sensitive to the things of God when the walls of life come crashing down.
3. Regardless of how bad we are God never lets go. As Romans 5:8 says, "But God commends (or demonstrates) His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." If He provided salvation for us when we wanted nothing to do with Him would He turn His back on us when we demonstrate the same attitude.
4. We can never stop being amazed at the resourcefulness of God. He will pull out every stop and go to any extreme to first bring us to Himself and then He goes to any extreme to mould us into the image of His Son. The fact is, He knows that we will never experience any kind of contentment in this life until we are doing the very things He created us to do. And so He does everything He can to fulfil His purposes in our lives.
5. Just last week I read an interesting quote. It said, "Imagine how good you would feel if you lost everything you had and then got it all back again." And that’s exactly what happened to Jonah. He lost it all and then he had the chance to get it all back again. It appeared as though his time was up but God in His mercy decided to give him another chance.
Imagine how good you would feel if you thought your life was gone and you had a chance to live it all over again. In a sense we do. The scripture calls it being born again. When we acknowledge our sin and receive the forgiveness of God based on the sacrifice of His Son on the cross for our sin we begin our lives all over again in the sight of God. Its as though we have never sinned.
