Jonah 2
Praying in the Belly of a Fish
Three ministers were talking about prayer in general and the appropriate and effective positions for prayer. As they were talking, a telephone repairman was working on the phone system in the background. One minister shared that he felt the key was in the hands. He always held his hands together and pointed them upward as a form of symbolic worship. The second suggested that real prayer was conducted on your knees. The third suggested that they both had it wrong--the only position worth its salt was to pray while stretched out flat on your face.
By this time the phone man couldn’t stay out of the conversation any longer. He interjected, "I found that the most powerful prayer I ever made was while I was dangling upside down by my heels from a power pole, suspended forty feet above the ground."
I think that the most powerful prayer that Jonah ever prayed was in the belly of a fish.
How did he get there?
Jonah was a prophet of God, and God came to him one day and said “go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” Jonah saw the command as a death sentence because Nineveh was so evil and powerful, so he ran as far as he could away from Nineveh. He hoped a boat to Tarshish which was probably in Spain. He himself said that he was running from God. But God ran after him and sent a huge storm that threatened to rip the boat apart. When the Sailors discover that the storm has come because of Jonah, they ask him what they should do, and he says, “Throw me overboard.” They don’t weant to, but the storm is so great that they throw Jonah overboard into the raging sea. And the storm stops and the sea becomes calm. The sailors are safe. But Jonah is not! He is sinking to the depths of the sea, about to expire. But God sends a fish that swallows him and saves him from death.
Jonah is in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. And while he is there he prays.
He prays the Psalms.
Everything that Jonah prays has reference in the psalms
Look at verse 2 and listen to Psalm 18:4-6
4 The cords of death entangled me;
the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
5 The cords of the grave [2] coiled around me;
the snares of death confronted me.
6 In my distress I called to the Lord ;
I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;
my cry came before him, into his ears
Look at verse 3 and listen to Psalm 42:7
7 Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
Look at verse 4 and listen to Psalm 31:22
22 In my alarm I said,
"I am cut off from your sight!"
Yet you heard my cry for mercy
when I called to you for help.
You could do the same thing with each of these verses in Chapter 2. The reason that Jonah prays the Psalms is that he knew them. The psalms were the prayer book of the Jewish people – and they continue to be. Jonah would have prayed and sang the psalms from an early age. When you are in the belly of the fish, you don’t have much mental energy to make up your own prayers, so you go with what you know. Jonah knew the psalms.
Some of you might feel as if you are in the same situation as Jonah. Whether you were running from God or not, you have been taken through a storm, and maybe even thrown overboard into the raging sea. You may feel like you’ve been saved from the storm only to be swallowed by a fish – “out of the frying pan into the fire,” so to say. It is hard to pray in any of these stormy situations. That is why it is good to have the psalms. When we can’t find the words, they give us the words
Pray the Psalms.
Athanasius – “Most of scripture speaks to us, but the Psalms speak for us”
William Stringfellow was a Christian lawyer and lay theologian who had a disease that gave him debilitating pain. He refused to take pain killers because they dulled his mind, but he did look for things to distract himself from the pain. TV was useless and music didn’t help, but reading provided some comfort. This is what he writes:
Reading proved more effective in providing diverting intervals from the pain. My span of concentration became too brief to read a book, though more than adequate for the Providence Journal. The New York Times, on Sunday, was just too formidable. The two things to which I most often turned to read, for my purpose, were the Psalter and the Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog. I had not previously had occasion to do more than scan either, though I had frequently been in circumstances where each would be cited as authority. Now 1 found comfort in both. They are remarkably similar volumes. With their marvelous diversity, a man with a little diligence can shop through their pages virtually certain of locating something to suit a desire or need or other disposition of the moment.
It is amazing the things that you can find in the psalms – we most often read praise psalms in church, but there are complaint psalms, despair psalms, indignant psalms, and even “Lord, get my enemy” psalms.
But don’t wait until you are in these situations to read the psalms – you might end up some place like the belly of the fish where you can’t read your Bible, and you’ll have to go from memory. Read a psalm a day – if you break up the long ones, there are enough to get through the psalms in a year. Memorize the ones that strike your heart, so you have them at the ready when you need them most.
Pam loves to pray the Psalms – I’m going to ask her to come now and present a way to do that, and then we are going to try it.
Pam
Why Pray the Psalms? Because they teach us about God.
What Does Jonah’s Prayer teach us about God?
When you read this prayer, keep in mind that when Jonah refers to the distress of the past he means the time he spent in the water, not the time he spent in the fish. The water is the threat of death. The fish is the refuge of salvation. The cry of distress is past tense (in the water!); the voice of confidence and thanks is present (in the fish). Let’s look at the prayer.
First, God answers us in spite of our guilt. (2)
God didn’t rescue Jonah because he was good – Jonah was running from God. When the sailors ask him what they should do, he doesn’t say “turn around and drop me off so I can go to Nineveh.” No he says “Throw me overboard.”
Jonah recounts in his prayer:
"In my distress I called to the Lord ,
and he answered me.
From the depths of the grave [1] I called for help,
and you listened to my cry.
Psalm 107:10-15
10 Some sat in darkness and the deepest gloom,
prisoners suffering in iron chains,
11 for they had rebelled against the words of God
and despised the counsel of the Most High.
12 So he subjected them to bitter labor;
they stumbled, and there was no one to help.
13 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he saved them from their distress.
14 He brought them out of darkness and the deepest gloom
and broke away their chains.
15 Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love
and his wonderful deeds for men,
16 for he breaks down gates of bronze
and cuts through bars of iron.
God Loves us even when we rebel
“Jesus loves me when I’m good
When I do the things I should
Jesus loves me when I’m bad
Though it makes Him very sad”
Second, God answers us in spite of his judgment. (3-4)
“3 You hurled me into the deep,
into the very heart of the seas,
and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
swept over me.
4 I said, ’I have been banished
from your sight;
yet I will look again
toward your holy temple.’”
Even when God is displeased with us he never brings us into affliction merely for the sake of punishment. His purposes always include redemption. He is giving us “harsh grace” to draw us back to Him.
Job 36:15 says, "God delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity."
Third, God answers us and delivers us from impossible circumstances. (5-6)
5 The engulfing waters threatened me, [2]
the deep surrounded me;
seaweed was wrapped around my head.
6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you brought my life up from the pit,
O Lord my God.
Have you ever come close to drowning? – you go swimming in rough waters, get pulled under by the under-tow, when you get up for air another wave slaps you in the face? Now just imagine Jonah, thrown overboard into the storm of the century. He went down to the very bottom – to the roots of the mountains.
No matter how bad the storms of our life get – even when we get so low we have to look up to see down, God is able to deliver us.
Fourth, God answers us in the nick of time. (7)
7 "When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, Lord ,
and my prayer rose to you,
to your holy temple.
"As I was losing consciousness I remembered the Lord."
God can be the king of suspense – he waits to the last moment to save us so that we know that it was him.
Jonah gives us courage to be unrelenting in our prayer, to keep on crying out to God even as we go unconscious, and to believe that God will answer in the nick of time.
Fifth, God answers us in stages, not all of which are comfortable.
God takes Jonah from the depths of the ocean, not to the dry land, but to the belly of a fish. He is alive, but he is not in the nicest of situations.
There are times that if God rescued us completely, we would immediately forget him and go back to our old ways. Jonah needed a “time out” to contemplete the goodness and the severity of the Lord, in order to come around to obediance.
Don’t disregard the partial works of God. If he chooses to save and to heal by stages he has his good purposes, and we ought to be grateful for any improvement in our condition. A fish’s belly is better than weeds at the bottom of the sea, even if it is not yet our nice dry living room.
Finally, God answers us in order to win our undivided loyalty and thanks. (8-9)
8 "Those who cling to worthless idols
forfeit the grace that could be theirs.
9 But I, with a song of thanksgiving,
will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
Salvation comes from the Lord ."
Jonah, the one who tried to run from God has come around to realize that those who forsake God and run after idols also leave his mercy and grace behind. The storm and the fish have had their appropriate affect – he now gives thaks and promises to fulfill the vows that he has made.
God answers our prayers so that our thanksgiving will bring him glory.
Psalm 50:15, "Call upon me in the day of trouble; and I will deliver you and you shall glorify me."
Conclusion
What do you do in the belly of the fish?
You pray!
Pray the psalms
Pray because God is good even when we are not.
Pray because God is powerful enough to pull us out of anything
Pray because prayer will change you for the better.
