INTRODUCTION
In the movie Pinocchio a kindly woodcutter named Geppetto is swallowed by a whale named Monstro. Inside the dark, damp belly of the whale, Geppetto sits for what seems like an eternity. Then one day the whale violently coughs, and the woodcutter is expelled from his watery grave.
Sound familiar? Every Sunday-school child would recognize this retelling of the story of Jonah. But unlike the Disney movie, Jonah’s incredible adventure is not fantasy but fact.
We talked about what the liberal critics say. In chapter 2 we could debate whether a person could live in the belly of the fish for three days.
There is a documented case from 1891 of a person (James Bartley) that had a similar but shorter ordeal in a whale and survived.
We need to remember that the whole ordeal of Jonah in the fish is a miracle and if we believe that God can create the heavens and earth from nothing, He can make sure a person can do what Jonah is recorded as doing.
Last week I asked, “Why did God give us a book about the life of a prophet?”
The answer is that there are lessons that we can learn from the life of Jonah.
Last week we left Jonah being tossed overboard.
Today we will study Jonah 2, THE FISH THAT WENT MANNING!
Jonah was given a job to do by God and he decided he was going to try to run from God.
Oh how many times to we do the same or how many people do you know who are running from God?
I know a lot of people. What will it take to get them back on the right track?
Sometimes it will take something drastic to happen in their life, they may need to be swallowed by a great fish.
SERMON
1:17 And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.
1. It is good to notice that Jonah was in the stomach of the fish for three days before he decided that it was about time to turn back to his Lord.
a. It took three days of climbing stomach walls. It took seaweed constantly tripping him up and wrapping around his head. v. 5—“The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head.” It took a sense of complete failure and helplessness, before he finally said yes. 4b—"I will look again toward your holy temple.”
b. When we are on the run from God, it usually takes something drastic to get our attention.
c. For Jonah, even when it looks to the rest of us that his situation was bad; at first it still was not bad enough to bring him to his knees.
d. C. S. Lewis said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks into our conscience, but shouts in our pain.” There are times God wants to show us dreams, but cannot, because our eyes are filled with our own dreams. There are times God wants to place something in our hands, but they are full (e.g., Jesus had to open His hands to receive the nails).
e. Pain comes and shouts to us: “Hey, remember your God,” or, “Hey, that’s the wrong way.”
2. Our situations can look bad to other people, but until we realize how bad things are, we will not turn to God. After three days it was time for Jonah to turn to God.
2:1 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish, 2:2 and he said, "I called out of my distress to the Lord, And He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; You heard my voice.
1. Trials dispel the notion that all is well.
a. Out his distress Jonah cries out to the Lord for help.
b. Sometimes we live in a dream world, unaware of where our life is going, or what we are doing to others. We may even think it doesn’t matter what we do, because there doesn’t seem to be any consequences to our sins. Pain and trials dispels that notion and gets our attention.
c. Warren Wiersbe says concerning Jonah’s prayer. “His prayer was born out of affliction, not affection. He cried out to God because he was in danger, not because he delighted in the Lord. But better that he should pray compelled by any motive than not to pray at all. It’s doubtful whether any believer always prays with pure and holy motives, for our desires and God’s directions sometimes conflict.
d. However, in spite of the fact that he prayed, Jonah still wasn’t happy with the will of God. In chapter 1, he was afraid of the will of God and rebelled against it, but now he wants God’s will simply because it’s the only way out of his dangerous plight. Like too many people today, Jonah saw the will of God as something to turn to in an emergency, not something to live by every day of one’s life.”(Wiersbe -Be Amazed, Jonah Commentary)
3. Have you ever looked at other people and wonder what they are waiting for?
• It seemed to take Jonah a long time to come around.
4. Jonah starts to feel the despair of running from God.
2:3 “For You had cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the current engulfed me. All Your breakers and billows passed over me. 2:4 "So I said, ’I have been expelled from Your sight. Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy temple.’ 2:5 "Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me, Weeds were wrapped around my head. 2:6 "I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever, But You have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.
a. Jonah feels alone. Verse 4.
b. Jonah feels helpless and broken.
c. Sometimes we have to feel broken, lonely and helpless before we will reach back out to God.
d. Life is falling apart around Jonah and he knows that God is his only hope.
e. A person who is running from God will not return in most cases until they are broken.
5. How do we respond to discipline?
a. Despise it? Jonah did for the first three days.
b. Refuse to confess and repent?
c. Give up?
d. How we respond to discipline determines how much benefit we receive from it. READ HEBREWS 12:5-11 According to Hebrews 12:5-11, we have several options: we can despise God’s discipline and fight (v. 5); we can be discouraged and faint (v. 5); we can resist discipline and invite stronger discipline, possibly even death (v. 9)1-11; or we can submit to the Father and mature in faith and love (v. 7). Discipline is to the believer what exercise and training are to the athlete (v. 11); it enables us to run the race with endurance and reach the assigned goal (vv. 1-2).
e. Endure the trial, confess our sin (if we are the cause), trust God to work everything out for His glory. Jonah finally submits, prays, repents and trusts God who forgave him.
2:7 "While I was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, And my prayer came to You, Into Your holy temple.
1. Jonah’s trail made Him remember His God.
a. The purpose of the discipline was to get Jonah’s attention.
b. Jonah felt that he lost the presence of the Lord.
c. Jonah was ready to be back in the presence of the Lord again!
2:8 "Those who regard vain idols Forsake their faithfulness,
1. Trials and pain shatters the illusion that what we have is our own, and that we can cling to whatever and whoever we like.—v. 8. God’s resources and our idols cannot be held simultaneously. "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.” We forget where our resources come from until they are taken away or put in jeopardy. We also take God’s grace for granted. In pain, however, we realize we have been forfeiting the grace He has for us because of our devotion to idols.
a. How many times do we live out our lives putting everything ahead of God? Jonah in the midst of his trial sees what is truly important in live as Solomon does at the end of the book of Ecclesiastes.
b. Jesus in MATTHEW 6:21 tells us for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
2:9 But I will sacrifice to You With the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation is from the Lord."
1. Pain opens our eyes to the need to thank the Lord for who He is and what He has done. We forget who gave us what we have, and pain reminds us to give thanks, to praise Him. This prayer contained in Jonah 2 is really a prayer of thanksgiving.
2. Pain helps us see the need to pray and to evaluate our situation from God’s perspective. Jonah was in a very painful place when He finally began to pray, crying out in v. 3—“You hurled me into the deep...” Who threw him overboard, anyway? The sailors, right? Yes, but ultimately Jonah sees God behind his circumstances. That’s looking at life from God’s point of view.
a. Such insightful perspective and wisdom in trials comes only through the light of prayer. In the context of trials, James writes in v. 5, "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”
b. Sometimes it’s difficult to see God’s hand stirring the storm. Certainly at times we are thrown overboard and fail to recognize that He is doing the tossing. There are times, too, when we are swallowed by monstrous circumstances and held captive (Jonah 2:6), failing to understand that the great fish/whale was “appointed” by God. Prayer is what gives us three-dimensional perspective to see God at work in our lives, and the strength to obey the Lord’s command.
3. Pain is designed to turn us from our sin, and repentance is the proof that we have responded properly to God’s work in our lives. —“But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the LORD.”(v9) Jonah now promises he will do God’s will and go to Nineveh.
4. A word of caution regarding prayers made in distress. Don’t promise what you do not plan to do!
2:10 Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land.
1. God sees that Jonah wanted to repent, so God ended His ordeal in the belly of the fish.
2. Jonah’s ordeal is over, or is it?
3. Next week we will look at Jonah 3.
CONCLUSION
The life of Jonah shows us how bad we sometimes have to let things get before we wake up and listen to God.
We need to understand that God does not cause all of our trials to happen; sometimes He allows them (see JOB 1-2) to happen.
Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh because he knew that God’s grace could save the city that Jonah wanted to see destroyed, yet Jonah in his distress was thankful for God’s grace in his life.
What do you do when you are in the belly of the fish?
Curse God?
Run further?
Fix it yourself?
Run to God?
Jonah finally realized that he needed God, when will you?
Today we give you the opportunity to come forward and accept Jesus.
Are you in the belly of the fish today? Come to Jesus and let Him rescue you.
