Flora First Christian Church - Flora, IN

Nov. 25, 2007

Jonah 1:17-2:1-10

Youth Minister Calls 911

Every once in a while there’s a newspaper story that really is “stranger than fiction.” It’s so weird that you think: “This HAS to be made up.” A few years ago, a story appeared about a bomb threat against a Western Kentucky church.
On this particular Sunday evening at 6:30 p.m. the church was evacuated, and the service canceled after the local 911 phone call. The church staff was questioned after the church was checked out. Then the youth minister confessed he made the call, and that there was no bomb. In the two years the youth minister had been at the church, he had preached on occasion, but this time he was not at all prepared and he panicked. (Lexington Herald-Leader, August 8, 1996, p. C1.)
When I first read that article my reaction was: HE DID WHAT? There have been times as a minister that I have not been as prepared as I wanted to be, but that was awfully drastic. And it was illegal. That stunt put a lot of people in danger. My guess is that every teacher and leader who isn’t prepared has had the desire to get out of the commitment and even . . . run! Some unprepared persons go to desperate extremes.

Jonah Went to Extreme Measures

Jonah’s story is a familiar one. He’s another guy who went to extreme measures, to get out of something he didn’t want to do. JONAH’S PROBLEM WAS HE REALLY DIDN’T WANT TO DO WHAT GOD WANTED HIM TO DO. Surely all of us have had that gnawing at our spirits.

God wanted Jonah to preach to the people of Nineveh. God wanted them to turn away from their wild, unspiritual, unscrupulous lives and turn to Him. But Jonah didn’t like those people. They were the enemies of the Jews. He didn’t want God to forgive them, and he didn’t want God to make them equals with his people. There was no way he wanted to go Nineveh and spend time with them. He wanted God to make these people suffer and wipe them off the face of the earth. Tell them to turn to God? I don’t think so! So . . . he ran. He headed west on a ship to Tarshish instead of heading to the east to Nineveh.

There was a huge storm, and the ship was about to break apart. The sailors were frantic. Jonah was asleep! The sailors woke Jonah up, and told him to pray to his God for help. Then they cast lots to see who was responsible for their dilemma. The lot fell upon Jonah. He told them to throw him into the sea, and the storm would stop. Those sailors didn’t do it - they rowed as hard as they could toward land. The storm got worse. Then the sailors cried to God to not blame them for following Jonah’s order. They took up Jonah, and threw him into the sea. The sea immediately became quiet.

Jonah expected death when he was thrown overboard. He thought he was going to drown. God had other plans for his disobedient prophet. A great fish gulped Jonah down, and he found himself alive inside its stomach.

The fish didn’t just happen to swallow Jonah! God sent the fish as a sign of His grace, and a way of getting his prophet back on his mission.

About That FISH

A word about the fish! The Bible only says it was a “great fish.” Many critics can’t swallow the story of Jonah because they say the fish couldn’t have swallowed a man. Some say that the story is only a parable, an analogy. Oh, but it could happen. An average sperm whale has a mouth 20 feet long, 15 feet high and 9 feet wide, and is the biggest mammal on the planet. It could easily swallow a person.

Man Swallowed by Whale

In February 1891, a whaling ship, The Star of the East, spotted a large sperm whale in the vicinity of the Falkland Islands, off the coast of Argentina. Two boats were launched, and shortly a harpooner speared the whale. The second boat attempted to get in another harpoon, but the boat was overturned in the process and one man drowned. Another man, James Bartley, disappeared and was assumed drowned. In time the whale was killed and drawn to the side of the ship where it was tied fast and the blubber removed. The following day the stomach was hoisted onto the deck. That’s where James Bartley was found, unconscious, but alive. He recovered and did his job again. [James Montgomery Boice. The Minor Prophets. Chap 32. Prayer from the Depths. Jonah 1:17-2:10 Vol I. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983) p. 229 ]

It Was Still a Miracle

Regardless of what kind of “great fish” God chose to rescue Jonah, it was a miracle. If you can’t accept the miracle of Jonah and the great fish then there are a lot of other miracles in the Bible that are going to give you trouble: such as the crossing of the Red Sea, the manna in the wilderness, a man walking on water, and the same man coming back from the dead. However, the greatest reason to believe the story of Jonah is because Jesus Christ accepted it as true and used it as a comparison as to what would happen to the son of man. (You can find Jesus talking about that in Matthew 12:38-41)

What Jonah Did?

Did you notice what Jonah did after being swallowed up by the fish? HE PRAYED. You might say: “Duh, a crisis generally does cause us to pray.” Prayer is exactly what we need in a crisis. We pray not out of desperation, but out of trust and faith. Praying tells us that we believe that we are not alone.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.” In such times that is exactly where we should be headed too.

Belly of Fish: Place to Learn

R. T. Kendall said, “The belly of the fish is not a happy place to LIVE, but it is a good place to LEARN”. Jonah had a lot to LEARN…For three days in that smelly, dark fish belly he pondered his situation. He did a lot of soul-searching. He eventually saw the foolishness of his actions. He saw his need for God and then he prayed again the prayer that makes up the second chapter of the book of Jonah.. And his prayer is one of the most noted in the Old Testament.
God Had His Attention

These words can easily be guidelines for prayer when we have not been faithful, when we are bound up in life’s muckiness, like slimy, entangled seaweed in the bottom of the sea. Jonah’s prayer gives us direction of what to pray when we find ourselves separated from God. Jonah’s prayer also shows us the progression of his relationship with God.
We can divide Jonah’s prayer in the seaweed into three stages.
I. Thanksgiving
When he first began to pray, he said to God, “The waters surrounded me, even to my soul; the deep has closed around me; weeds were wrapped around my head. Yet God, you have brought up my life from the pit.” (Jonah 2: 5, 6b)

What was really going on in Jonah’s heart? If you jumped on a ship going the opposite direction of where you were supposed to go, lived through a storm at sea, but were thrown overboard instead, then got swallowed by a whale but YOU ARE STILL ALIVE, would you not be thankful? Of course you would!

Not Cry for Help: Prayer of Thanksgiving

Instead of a cry for help, Jonah’s prayed with thanksgiving, imagine that! The prayer expresses Jonah’s thanks for God’s deliverance. He was aware of God’s guiding, rescuing presence, even as he was running from God. In the middle of the gunk in our lives when we are ignoring or running away from God, we CAN open our eyes and see God’s hold on us. And we can be thankful!

The Voice of Thanksgiving

God heard his cry from the depths of the ocean. As Jonah gave thanks, the whale spat him onto the shore. The great fish is not the principal item in the story. Jonah’s response to God is the principle item. Jonah quit running away, and was now a different man willing to do something else. He was willing to do what God wanted in the first place.
In our prayers, thanksgiving becomes that expression that we have a source to which to be thankful.
Repentance.
Some Bible scholars tell us that the attitude of Jonah’s heart in verses 7 & 8 were of Contrition: C-O-N-T-R-I-T-I-O-N. What’s that? Let’s take a look at what Jonah prayed: “When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer went up to you, into your holy temple’ (Jonah 2: 7-8)

What is Contrition

Contrition is another way of saying Jonah REPENTED. Repentance IS THE SURE SIGN that we have moved from rebellion to becoming connected to God once again.
This requires honesty regarding our sins. It is possible to be honest about our sin, even acknowledge what happened and still be unrepentant about it.
Becoming repentant leads to the next step of allowing God to take charge.

Jonah’s Confession was True

We know that Jonah’s confession was true because he acknowledged that it was his own fault. Jonah did not ask for anything for himself which leads us to our third progression.
Rededication (v. 9)
The third focus of Jonah’s prayer proved that he really had turned the corner, and wasn’t the same man in spirit who had boarded that boat in Joppa.

He concludes his prayer saying: “But I will sacrifice to You With the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.

Jonah made the commitment to make a sacrifice to God. Rededication took place. NOW, God could use him in spite of his disobedience in the beginning. THEN the LORD spoke to the fish, and it spat Jonah onto dry land. Jonah made his way to Nineveh, where God wasn’t done with him.

No Matter How Far You Get—A Way Back

A sidelight here is that no matter how far you get from God, there is always a way back. The way back may not be a beautiful emotional experience. Jonah left on a ship bound for Spain, but he did not return the same way. He spent three days and three nights in the digestive system of a great fish only to be puked out on the seashore. We must never delude ourselves into thinking that we can walk away from God without cost. There is hope in knowing that no matter how much we mess up, no matter how far away we get from the Lord, there is always a way back. I believe that Jonah was a changed man because of his experience in the deep. 1) Through thankfulness for his deliverance, 2) through repentance for his own rebellion, and 3) re-dedication that he might be used–God still wasn’t done with him.