Sermon Series: JONAH
Sermon Number: Five in series
Sermon Title: The Way of the Lord (Pt. 2)
Sermon Text: Jonah 1:17-2:10
Sermon’s Author: Louis Bartet
Date: 06-20-04 AM
JONAH 1:17-2:10
17And the LORD appointed a great fish [masculine noun dag] to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in [Hebrew term meceh for the “inward parts”, which is a synonym of rehem meaning “womb”] the belly of the fish [masculine noun dag] three days and three nights.
1Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish [feminine noun dagah],
2and he said, “I called out of my distress [“in my distress” translates sarah, a word that is specifically used of the “travail” of childbirth] to the LORD, and He answered me. I cried for help from the depth [the Hebrew here is beten, womb or belly] of Sheol; You heard my voice.
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.
4“So I said, ‘I have been expelled from Your sight. Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy temple.’
5“Water encompassed me to the point of death [to my throat]. The great deep engulfed me, weeds were wrapped around my head.
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.
7“While I was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to You, into Your holy temple.
8“Those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness,
9But I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation is from the LORD.”
10Then the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land.
CLARIFICATION OF MY POSITION: It is not necessary for you to agree with me, but it is important we all begin with the same orientation or in the same place. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Chapter Two begins with verse seventeen of Chapter One. Verse seventeen is synoptic; it is a one sentence summary of that which is expanded in Chapter Two. Likewise, Chapter Two is not a verbatim quote of Jonah’s prayer, but it too is a synopsis of his experience and the prayer that he prayed after being tossed from the ship.
REVIEW: In Chapter One, Jonah acknowledged that he was the cause of the storm threatening the ship and its crew (See 1:12.), but his heart was still set against God’s will. The storm sent by God had no affect upon him. In short, he would rather die in the sea than obey God and go to Nineveh. What stubbornness! What rebellion! What arrogance! What insolence and disrespect this selfish little man expresses toward God.
Frankly, we could not find fault with God if He had let Jonah drown, but mystery of mysteries HE doesn’t.
TRANS: We do not face the threat of a literal stormy sea or of being swallowed by a great fish, but Jonah’s experience does offer us a valuable lesson in The Way of the Lord. The great storm, the deep, and the great fish are crucibles used by God to deal with Jonah. The events may not be exactly the same, but the experiences are. We will deal with three of them.
1. The Descent
2. The Distress
3. The Deliverance
4. The Deposit
I. The Descent – What we have in these verses is a summary of Jonah’s experience in the sea.
PERSONAL NOTE FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION: Scripture tells us that before Jesus ascended he first descended into the lower parts of the earth. (See Ephesians 4:9.) The ascent of Jesus, as described by Paul, has to do with Christ’s ascension from earth to heaven, where the Victor over death, hell and the grave forever reigns with His Father. The descent referred to here encompasses Christ’s incarnation, death, and burial. The term “lower parts of the earth” do not refer to a specific place, but to the great depth of His descent. This includes His incarnation, His crucifixion and His death and subsequent burial. In Matthew 12:40, Jesus declared, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Jesus’ three days and nights stay in the grave is likened to Jonah’s stay in the belly of the great fish. Thus it would be safe to assume that Jonah’s descent to the bottom of the sea is descriptive of a descent into death, be it physical death, emotional death, or spiritual death. It may well be a verbal graphic that describes the unbeliever’s descent into death and hell, and the death Jesus experiences for the sinner.
Jonah’s experience in the sea can be divided into two parts. First, there is his surface experience of being on the sea and then there is his submerged experience of being in the sea.
• His Surface Experience (on the sea) - “…You have hurled me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me. All Your breakers and billows passed over me” (2:3).
o It was Encircling. You have hurled me into the deep, the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me. Jonah is here swallowed up, not by the great fish, but by the vast expanse of the sea. No matter which way he looks, he sees water. He is completely encircled by water with…
no place to stand,
nothing to hold onto
nothing to keep him afloat and
no way to support himself.
In verse three, he states that his dilemma is God’s doing--“You hurled me into the deep.”
o It was Extreme. All your breakers and billows passed over me. God seems to be using the sea like a weapon. While Jonah is fighting to keep his nose above water God keeps pouring waves of water over his bobbing head. Again, he acknowledges that this is God’s doing when he says, “All YOUR breakers and billows passed over me.”
• His Submerged Experience (in the sea)
o Surrounded - “Water encompassed me to the point of death [lit., to my throat]. The great deep engulfed me, weeds were wrapped around my head” (2:5). Again, Jonah is not swallowed up the great fish, but by the sea. He is no longer just encircled by water, he is enveloped or surrounded by water and unable to breath. Jonah’s environment is inhospitable and hostile. Where his surface experience made it hard to breath, his submerged experience made it impossible to breath. On the surface there was hope that his efforts would make a difference, but once submerged nothing he did made a difference. The seaweed invalidated his struggle.
o Separated – “So I said, ‘I have been expelled from Thy sight....’” (2:4). His circumstances were taking away his options. God had not banished him, he had chosen to flee from the presence of the Lord. Now, choose as he may he could not longer act out his choice.
o Sinking - “I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever” (2:6). Finally, he comes to rest on the ocean floor. He was about to be imprisoned forever in a grave of sand.
TRANS: Please note with me that Jonah has not yet been swallowed by the great fish. What he has described to this point is his experience of drowning.
II. The Distress - “I called out of my distress to the Lord....I cried for help from the belly of Sheol…” (2:2).
The term “distress” conveys the idea of intense inner turmoil engendered by the harassment and torment of an enemy or situation. Jonah’s circumstances definitely produced mental agony and emotional suffering. He was being overwhelmed by fear, a sense of helplessness and intense anxiety. He was struggling to endure the unbearable. Although exhausted by his circumstances and his struggle, Jonah was unbroken and resistant. He says in verse seven, “While I was fainting away [when my life was ebbing away], I remembered the Lord…” (2:7).
We are so religiously desperate for heroes and for life to end with “And they all lived happily ever after,” that we read this story through optimistic glasses that distort and are resistant to its reality.
Jonah’s mental agony and emotional suffering isn’t sourced in remorse for his rebellion against the Word of the Lord. There is not one word of repentance in his prayer. To the contrary, Chapter Four will reveal that his heart is unchanged. No, his distress is the product of his struggle to survive his ordeal with the sea and the great fish.
The prodigal son had lost everything he brought into the far country. He had lost…
• his wealth,
• his dignity,
• his family,
• his home, and
• his “so called” friends.
Penniless and alone, he continues his resistant struggle by joining himself to a citizen of that country who sent him into the field to feed pigs. (See 15:16, 17.) He is about to become a pig himself when he comes to his senses and remembers that his father’s servants have it better than he does. Only then does he begin his journey back home. His reason isn’t remorse for his sin, but food to eat and a place to sleep.
Hey, before we go pointing fingers at the prodigal prophet and the prodigal son, we need to remember that we are more like them than we would like to admit. Some of us could teach survival tactics to members of the Army’s Special Forces. We know how to prolong our stay in the far country. We’ll do whatever we have to do to keep from allowing the circumstances God hurled us into to change us.
• We deny that God would throw us into the sea, so we rebuke the devil.
• We blame our problem on our lack of faith, so we double our efforts at impressing ourselves and God with carnal attempts at imitating faith.
o This is not water and I am not drowning.
o This is not a problem, it is an opportunity
• Like the elder brother, we point out the failings of others while simultaneously pointing to our years of faithful service. (See Luke 15:28-30.)
• Rather than admit our point of failure, we self-righteously cling to our refusal to smoke or drink or run with those who do. (See Jonah 2:8, 9.)
No, Jonah isn’t distressed over his stubborn rebellion; he is agonizing over drowning in the sea and suffocating in the confinement of the fish’s belly. It wasn’t until he had been in the stomach of the fish for three days and nights that he broke and called out to the Lord.
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 should be conducted on one’s 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 prayed occurred while I was dangling upside down by my heels from a power pole, suspended one-hundred feet above the ground."
Jonah’s prayer was a desperate cry for “help,” not a confession of sin. Even so, God heard him.
2:2 – “I called out of my distress to the Lord, and He answered me.”
2:2 – “I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; You heard my voice.”
A lady was complaining to her pastor that God never heard her prayers. More specifically, she indicated that God didn’t even listen to her when she prayed.
After listening to her complaint the pastor asked her, “Do you know any curse words?”
“I use to curse a blue streak before I became a Christian,” was her reply.
“Well,” said the pastor, “I want to you to let go and give God a blue streak cursing, right now!”
The woman gasped and replied, “Why, I can’t do that.”
“Why not,” asked the pastor.
“Well,” said the woman, “God…”
The pastor smiled and turned the sentence the woman had been unable to complete into a question, “God would hear you? Why is it you believe God won’t hear your prayers, but He’ll hear you cursing?”
III. The Deliverance
The Means of Deliverance. the word prepared in 1:17 is a translation of the verb mana. It communicates the idea of being appointed or ordained. Twice in Daniel (Dan 1:5, 10) and four times in Jonah (Jonah 1:17; Jonah 4:6-8), inanimate things such as Daniel’s food, Jonah’s fish, the gourd, worm, and hot wind are under the control of God. The issue would seem to be one of appointed responsibility given to an existing creature, rather than the formation of a non-existent creature. God commanded or gave the great fish the responsibility of delivering Jonah from the great deep. The great fish was God’s means of delivering Jonah.
This presents us with a new question, which is, at what time or when did God assign the great fish to swallow Jonah?
The Moment of Deliverance. What we have in verses 3-6 of Chapter Two is a description of Jonah’s drowning experience. He is not in the belly of the great fish, but in the sea.
NOTE: In 2:3, he is swallowed up by the current, not the great fish. Again, in 2:5, he is swallowed up by the great deep, not the great fish.
It is my belief that Jonah was not swallowed up by the great fish until he reached the great depths of the great deep. The moment of his deliverance occurred in the later part of the space found between the comma and the gone in the statement, “going, going, going, gone.” In other words, he was delivered at the very last micro moment. When he had gone as far as he could go without being totally gone, in that moment God sent the great fish to his rescue. This was the moment of his deliverance from the sea and the beginning of his deliverance from himself.
The Method of Deliverance. It was during his three days and nights in the belly of the great fish that Jonah prayed to the Lord. According to Jesus, the belly of the whale is a symbol of burial. (See Mt. 12:40.) Jonah called it the belly of Sheol or the womb of hell. It was in the place which is symbolic of burial that Jonah “remembered the Lord” (7), and “called out…to the Lord,” and “cried for help.”
NOTE: The terminology used by Jonah demands attention. In 1:17, the Hebrew noun for fish, dag, is masculine, but in 1:1, it is feminine (dagah). In 2:3, the term “distress” is a word often used to communicate the idea of the “travail” of childbirth, and the word “depth” is the Hebrew term beten, which is translated both womb and belly. The word picture portrayed is that of gestation, travail and birthing. Jonah is carried about in the belly of the whale like a baby in its mother’s womb waiting to be birthed, which brings us to our fourth and final point, The Deposit.
IV. The Deposit – “Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land” (10).
While still in the belly of hell, Jonah not only prayed but praised God for sparing his life, “…Thou hast brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God” (6). In addition to this he acknowledged that “deliverance is from the Lord” (9). The “Then” of verse 10 seems connected to the “Then” of verse one—“Then Jonah prayed…Then the Lord commanded.”
It’s amazing that everything from winds and fish instantly obey His commands, everything that is but the creatures He died to save.
The man birthed on the beach is not the same man that we first met in Chapter One. The man deposited on the beach is ready to do God’s will even though he still disagrees with God’s plan. Now, instead of being a rebellious prophet, he is a reluctant prophet.
In Chapter Three, the word of the Lord will come to Jonah a second time. This time, instead of going to Tarshish, Jonah will arise and go to Nineveh and cry against it.
CONCLUSION
Obedience doesn’t require us to agree with God’s will. Obedience means that we comply with His will; we do it whether we find it acceptable or not. Jonah never comes into agreement with God’s desire to save the people of Nineveh, but he does comply with God’s will for him to go and preach to Nineveh. Rebellion is a sin! Reluctance is a thief! Those who do God’s will reluctantly will be able to say they have obeyed God, but they will not experience the joy of doing God’s will from their heart. Jonah was no longer a rebellious prophet, he was a reluctant prophet. For all he had gone through, the best he could give God was reluctant obedience--"I will keep my vow."
(C) 2004, by louis bartet
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This sermon is like lumber that is ready to be built into a great vessel. I merely cut the trees, sawed the timber, and piled it for the craftsman so he/she can take it and do something with it. Please share the fruit of your labors with me!
Thanks,
lou
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