Praying Prophets and Puking Fish
Text: Jonah 2
How is everyone this morning? We are happy that you’ve chosen to worship with us today. We’re in the Book of Jonah, and we’re going to be reading chapter two this morning. So if you’ll take your Bibles and follow along with me as I begin in verse 1 (READ TEXT).
Alright… if you remember last time, we went through chapter one and we talked about the 3 things that anyone and everyone who runs from God encounters. We mentioned that they’ll end up in a bad place, that their lives eventually will unravel, and we talked about how people who are running from God will hurt those around them. It’s unintentional; but it happens. And if you remember; I said Jonah is a lot like all of us. There are times in all of our lives when we’ve run from God. You know… it’s not like we are openly declaring to be atheists, but it’s much more subtle. We’ve got this wrong idea that somehow if we give ourselves totally to God and follow Him and His plan then we’re going to be unhappy, or miss out on something. And so we run.
But here’s the thing that we see from the story of Jonah. If you belong to Him, God doesn’t let you keep on running. If you belong to God, eventually at some point you’re going to come face to face with the reality that you can’t run forever. God will relentlessly pursue you.
So we ended last week with Jonah being swallowed by a big fish. And at that time, Jonah still had not repented. He was like, “I’d rather die than do what God has commanded me to do.” And so just throwing him into the sea wasn’t enough. It didn’t do the trick to this hard hearted prophet. So God sends the fish and it swallows him.
Can you imagine this? How wild is this? You’re in the water, and all of a sudden the storm just stops and the next thing you see is a big, giant, fish mouth opening up. And wham! You get gulped down. How horrible would that be? He could probably feel the muscles of this fish squeezing him down. And who knows what else was in that stomach. Seaweed, half digested little fish, sea water, bile, stomach acids.
Well now that you’ve got that picture in your head, what we’re going to do this morning is look at several things... I guess you could say we’re going to be looking at God’s attitude towards those who run but then decide that they want to come back.
This chapter tells us Jonah’s prayer… and it’s a prophetic prayer… and God’s answer to that prayer. And the first thing we notice is that it took extreme measures to get Jonah to a place of repentance. And so, he’s in a fish… been there for 3 days, and he prays and God answers. That’s good news church! God hears the prayer of those who have run, but then repent. When you’ve run and run and you finally hit rock bottom and you start facing the consequences of your running, God is there waiting for you to turn to Him. You say, “Why does God wait?” Well; I’ll tell you what I think. I think it’s because we sometimes have to get to the point where we see the truth of the situation. You see; the reality is that we don’t have any leverage with God. We don’t! We don’t have any leverage when things are going well, and we don’t when things are going bad, but it’s only in those times when things are going bad that we fully realize this truth. And here’s the Biblical truth. God doesn’t owe any of us His blessings. He doesn’t owe any of us salvation. I was talking to a fellow pastor one time and he said to me, “It’s amazing that when you read through Scripture, that so few are saved.” And I said, “No, it’s amazing that any are saved. Because we all like sheep have gone astray, there are none righteous, no not one.”
And so Jonah’s in the fish, he’s suffering the consequences of his running. He realizes that he can’t blame anyone. He can’t blame God. God had made it clear what Jonah was supposed to do, and so he repents and prays. And God shows Jonah grace. Verse 2 says, “God answered”
That’s grace. There’s no other way to put it. Jonah deserves to be digested by this nasty fish. He deserves whatever befalls him. He’s rebelled against God Almighty! But God Almighty is a God of grace!
This is a great lesson for us. This shows us that if we repent, if we turn back to God, God hears us and is quick to show us grace and mercy. The New Testament counterpart to this is the story of the Prodigal Son. I love that story. The Prodigal runs off, wastes his life, and then repents and his father sees him a long ways off and runs to meet him. That’s a picture of God. God was right there for Jonah. Just like Jesus was right next to Peter when Peter started to sink after walking on water. Our God is a God of grace and He is an ever present help in times of trouble.
You know… as a pastor; sometimes people want counseling, and I’ll talk to them, and I’ll explain to them what Scripture says about certain issues, and people as a whole have a tendency to look at what God’s Word says as small in comparison to whatever problem or issue it is that they’re facing. Psalm 34:3 says we should magnify the Lord. But what we tend to do is magnify our problems. Let me explain this if I can. When you magnify something you don’t actually change the size of whatever it is you magnify, you change your perception of it, and so people tend to magnify their problems and the result is that God looks small in comparison. But when you magnify the Lord, your perception of God changes and you start to see Him for Who He is, and you start to realize that there is nothing too hard for Him. But back to what I was going to say… a few years ago I did some marriage counseling for some people and it went in one ear and out the other, and things got worse for them, and so they called me and were like, “Hey you need to fix this.” And I asked them “Did you do what I told you?” And they were like… “Uhm… what did you tell us?” And you know what I wanted to say then? Thankfully I didn’t say what I wanted… but my point is, God’s Word has clear principles, and when we obey them, things tend to work better for us… when we ignore them, or disobey them, they don’t. Thankfully God is merciful, and He understands that often times we are bone heads and He has mercy and grace!
Here’s another truth. God is not only quick to hear us when we repent… He’s also in the midst of the circumstances that will bring us to repentance. Now sometimes people don’t like to hear that. Go with me back to chapter 1 and look at verse 4 (READ), and now go on down to verse 17 (READ). Who was it that caused the storm? Who was it that appointed the big fish to swallow Jonah? Here’s the Biblical truth – those circumstances we are going through, quite often God has ordained them as a means to get us back on track. Quite often they are God ordained means to bring us to repentance! Go back to chapter two and let’s read verse 3 (READ)
So we need to understand that God will sometimes use extreme circumstances in order to get us to repent. And what this does it shows us the ultimate value that God places on this; the ultimate value of us being right with God. There is an eternal perspective here. That’s why Jesus says things like “What good is it if a man gains the whole world yet loses his own soul.” That’s why Paul says in Romans 8:18 “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” In God’s economy… or in God’s view it would be better if we suffered the entire time we are on earth if in the end we spend eternity in His presence in glory. And that’s hard for us to understand, but it’s Biblical.
So here’s what’s happening here: God is in a sense bringing judgment upon Jonah, but more importantly God isn’t so much paying Jonah back, as He is bringing him back. God knew what it would take to get him to stop running and to stop rejecting His rule and reign over his life, and so God allows… and even ordains Jonah’s suffering, in order to show Jonah how inept he really is, and to show Jonah how much he really does need God.
Jesus says, “Without Me, you can do nothing.” And we don’t see it when we’re in the middle of it. Usually it’s in hindsight that we look back and say, “Wow, God was with me through that crisis.”
The point is – God loves you enough to do what it takes to bring you back to Him.
Look at verses 4 – 5 (READ). So Jonah’s in this bad position and he starts talking about being driven from God’s sight and the temple. In Jonah’s time the temple was where communion with God took place. He’s actually lamenting not being in the presence of God. He tried to run from God, now he’s regretting that. And I want you to notice here that the words of this prayer are actually prophetic in the sense that they sort of describe Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. Even in this position; the gifts and callings of God are without repentance. Jonah was a prophet, and even in the midst of this mess he’s in, he can’t help but speak prophetically.
Now here’s the deal: How long do you think it was before Jonah repented? Do you think he repented the second he got gulped down? Or was he so stubborn that he was in there a while before he finally repented? We don’t really know. But either way you look at it there are lessons to be learned.
If Jonah repented the second he got swallowed it shows us the severity of disobeying God. People will sometimes say to me, “Don’t you think that Hell is kind of extreme? I mean… being in a lake of fire for all eternity seems kind of harsh.” And I’ll have to explain to them that it’s an eternal punishment because they have sinned against an eternal and infinite God. Think about it like this. If you come up to me after church and call me a filthy pig, spit on me and then slap me in the face – what will be the consequence of that? Well if I’m in the flesh, the consequence might be that you and I are going to get into a fight. Now think about what the consequence would be if you did that to a highway patrolman… the consequence would be a little bit more severe wouldn’t it? What if you did that to Mary Fallon, the governor of Oklahoma? What if you did it to the President of the United States? With me it might be a fight. With the highway patrolman it would be 30 days in jail… with the governor if would be a year, with the president it would up to 10 years. Now think about it. Let’s take it into the realm of sin and an infinite, eternal, almighty all powerful God, who is the maker and creator and sustainer of the universe. And this God is infinitely holy and righteous and just, and He sends His Son to die for those sins and you reject that offering. You say, “I reject the death of the sinless Son of God as an offering for myself.” What should the consequences be? An eternity in a lake of fire might actually be merciful. So if Jonah repented right away, the fact that he remained in the fish for 3 days could be showing us the severity of God’s discipline.
(Or it could be that he was in the middle of the ocean & it took 3 days to get close to the shore)
But… if Jonah was stubborn and didn’t repent right away what that teaches us is something… in my opinion, is something even more terrifying. It’s teaching us about the total depravity of man. We actually see something like this in the Book of Revelation. When all the bad things are happening and God is pouring His bowls of wrath upon the earth and we read that people still refused to repent and sought rather to die than turn to God.
This is the thing that keeps me up at night as a pastor. This is the thing that causes me a great deal of anxiety. You see I know, based on the authority of Scripture, that there are people, and they’ve heard the Word of God, and they’ve heard the commands of God, and they have an understanding of Who God is – and rather than obey, they turn and run.
Now for the good news. God will do what it takes to bring you back and get you on the right track. Look at verse 8 (READ), Jonah makes an observation about idolatry.
And what is idolatry?
It’s giving the love and affection and adoration that we should be giving to God, to something else. Jonah had been doing the same thing that the Ninevites were guilty of. You know… a lot of people judge others for the same things they are doing. They either judge them for what they are doing, or they judge them because they are doing it and the person judging wants to be able to do it as well. That’s what Romans 2:1 tells us. That’s what legalism does… the legalist says, “I don’t do this thing or that thing, but that person there does – they’re a sinner.”
And the reality is that the legalist secretly wishes that he or she could be doing it too, but they won’t, because if they did, it would cause their standard of righteousness (which is themselves) to come crashing down.
And so Jonah repents. He prays. And verse 10 tells us that God causes the fish to spit him up on dry land. We’ve got praying prophets and puking fish!
Real quickly; I want you to turn over to the next chapter… Jonah 3:1 – 3 (READ).
The Word of God comes again to Jonah and it’s the exact same thing God has told him before. Go! You see; God doesn’t change even though our circumstances do. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. His commands to us are always the same. WE say, “God I’ve got this thing going on.” And He says, “Go!” “God, I’m just a regular person.” “GO!” “God I just got swallowed by a big fish and puked up on dry land.” “GO!”
And you know what Jonah did? He was like “Yes sir! Right away God! I’m going now! I’m already headed to Nineveh!” That’s the lesson for us today. If God calls us to repent of something, it’s best to heed that call. Repent right away, and don’t delay. Obedience is better than sacrifice.
