Jonah Week 4

Pray
Read Jonah 1:17-2:10

v.17 - Here is where things get interesting. We could spend some time here talking through verse 17 and how God appointed a great fish to be precisely where Jonah was getting tossed overboard at the exact time it was going to happen, or how a human being could survive inside the stomach of a whale for 3 days and 3 nights. These are miracles that only could be orchestrated by God. But the text doesn’t spend much time addressing these miracles. Perhaps it is precisely because we could easily talk about the miracle of the fish and focus on that and forget about where the story really goes, it isn’t about Jonah’s physical survival, but about His spiritual revival and the renewal of his relationship with God.

v.1 - When we come to the end of ourselves and there is nowhere left for us to turn, that is when most us turn to God. I think we can safely say that Jonah is at the end of himself. He got thrown of a boat in the middle of the worst storm he had ever seen and is began sinking to the bottom of the ocean only to be swallowed by a great fish. Jonah is finished, done. So like many in scripture, he turned to God and prays. Like David - (Psalm 34:6), like Hannah - (1 Samuel 1:10), like Jeremiah - (Lamentations 3:54-56), and like Jesus - (Luke 22:44).

Jonah begins his prayer and if you look closely you will see that it resembles some older scripture that Jonah would have been familiar with being a Hebrew and a prophet of God. Jonah’s prayer is in the fashion of the Psalms of David, in fact we will see some great parallels between Jonah’s prayer and many of David’s prayers in the book of Psalms. Jonah shows us that he knows God’s word and that he returned to it and embraced it even after he ran from God. I can’t stress enough how much we need to be in the Word and KNOW the Word. It will be what you cling to in times of trouble, when things are bad. The more you familiarize yourself with the Word the more you will be able to draw on its truths to comfort you in those times, just like Jonah, who probably forgot his copy of the scriptures on the boat, recalled those same scriptures which then inspired him to turn to God and pray.

v.2 - We notice a pattern here that Jonah describes his troubles and Gods response. Jonah doesn’t simply dwell on his troubles and say “oh poor, poor pitiful me. “ He sees his circumstances and instead of seeing the bad, he sees how God has delivered him from death.

v.3-4 - In these verses Jonah describes his thoughts, and his hope to be restored. Jonah is under no pretentions about who it was that is responsible for him being thrown in to the sea, it was God. Jonah doesn’t run from this point, he embraces it and this is where his hope comes from. He sees this as God’s provision rather than His punishment. We should look at our valleys in life and examine them and see if it is God pushing us to Him through a storm, which if we are His children there is a good chance that is what is happening. God is in control in the midst of our storms.

v.5-7 - Jonah gets graphic with his description of what happened. Drowning is a scary thought. Being pulled down to your death, waves crashing over you have to be terrifying. But God saved Jonah and God pulls us out of the depths of our despair when we feel that we are drowning under the pressure of all that life throws at us. In verse 7 Jonah summarizes his situation. There is something that happens when we realize that we have nowhere to turn but to God. God uses storms in our lives to give us a clearer vision of our circumstances. When we see all that God has done for us it changes our perspective on things. We see this in the book of Genesis. Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed, he prayed to the Lord, “Deliver me” (Genesis 32:7-11) and that very night he encountered God as never before. When we are at our end and we turn to God and see that we must rely on Him only for all of our needs to be met then He can really move in us.

v.8-9 - Jonah now thinks of those he left behind, the sailors, maybe even the Ninehvites as he speaks of those who worship idols because they have no hope in the steadfast love that those who follow God have. This “steadfast love” is the Hebrew word hesed, the ancient covenant term for God’s unfailing mercy and lovingkindess. Then he brings it back to God and his commitment to serving God again. He ends his prayer by saying something that was controversial then and is still controversial today, “Salvation belongs to the Lord!” Jonah here isn’t simply referring to his salvation from the waves by the whale but we now see so much more in these words. Jonah is saying that there is no other way to have salvation than through the Lord, the God of Israel. For us today that means one thing. We have no hope of salvation except through the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is no other way, not many roads to God, only one, Christ.

v.10 - Even if you didn’t know this story from Sunday school in 1st grade you had to know this was coming. God can’t just leave this guy in the whale; he has had a change of heart and is back on God’s mission. So he gets vomited out of the great fish onto dry land. After 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of the whale, Jonah is given a new life. Sound familiar?? Jesus, in Matthew 12:40 says this, “For just 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.” You see even here, in this story of a disobedient prophet, we are being pointed to Christ, our hope and salvation. We can have new life too, a new birth given to us by faith in Christ.

**This is not an exhaustive study on these verses. these are just my notes for the talk that I gave this past Wednesday night to the students in my ministry. If you have questions or comments or would like to discuss what I have posted feel free, in fact I encourage it. thanks for taking the time to stop by my blog!!**