1 From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God.
This is the first time that we actually see Jonah praying. Even the crew of the ship, made up of pagans was praying.
Doesn’t it irk you when you are the supposed to be the religious one and everyone else is more pious than you? This week, I have been reading numerous discussions of the revelations of Mother Teresa’s spiritual struggles and honest doubts.
She was in good company and she was brutally honest with God. Ultimately, she proved by her life, obedience, and devotion that she trusted God.
It has taken Jonah three days and nights in this dark, smelly, and dismal place to come to the point of prayer.
What does it take to get you to pray?
I’ll be honest. There are times I simply do not want to pray. Like Jonah, I have found myself running in the opposite direction of God, seeking to avoid Him as much as possible. Jonah knows what he will face and he will pray when he is good and ready.
Finally, he is good and ready.
Are you ready?
What storms have you already been through? From what calling or nudging have you been running? What conflict have you been avoiding? What task have you been procrastinating into oblivion?
2 He said:
"In my distress I called to the LORD,
and he answered me.
From the depths of the grave [a] I called for help,
and you listened to my cry.
There is a footnote [a] here to alert us to a textual issue. The word for “grave” is sheol. It is dark abode of the dead in Hebrew theology. It has been erroneously translated as hell, but it is not a place of final judgment. It is dark and gloomy and lonely and despairing like the bottom of the sea.
Jonah was sinking when God sent this fish and it was through the fish, a never before, never again miracle, that God rescued Jonah.
Perhaps Jonah had been praying in some way. Nothing in the record says he prayed, but he says that he called on the Lord. If so, perhaps it was without words or premeditation. Perhaps it was without voice and so feeble that even he could not be sure.
I. It happened in DISTRESS.
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.'
5 The engulfing waters threatened me, [b] (Jonah 2:5 Or waters were at my throat )
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.
7 "When my life was ebbing away …
D – Dissonance – “Lack of agreement, consistency, or harmony; conflict.” The dissonance is between Jonah and God. It is a disagreement. God has one plan; Jonah has another. That will cause you profound distress.
I – Inconsistency – There was a gap between what Jonah believed and preached and what he was doing. He proclaimed, as a prophet, the Sovereignty of God. Yet, he could not let God be sovereign over his own life. Have you ever considered the kinds of people God uses and how He must work in our lives to bridge this gap of inconsistency?
S – Separation – In the sea, Jonah is severed from everything and everyone. He has no assurances there. He has nothing to which to cling. To drown is to be surrounded by separateness. It is lonely in the depths of death. He is, according to verse 3, swept over by the waters that are separating him from life itself. He declares that he has been banished.
T – Truth – The truth can be very troubling. In his distress, Jonah sees himself for who and what he really is and he cannot escape the reality of his own inadequacies and rebellion. He is a coward and a bigot and he is dying. The truth hurts. Have you ever been so confronted by raw truth that it shook everything in your world and disturbed every self-concept you ever held dear?
R – Restricted – The word, “distress” comes from a Latin word that means, “hindered” as a person in a strait jacket. He is out of options, out of ideas, and out of time. Verse 5 says that the deep surrounded him.
E – Ebbing – Life was ebbing away from Jonah. It is a terrible feeling to lose one’s strength, vitality, and fight. He is dying slowly. One day you wake up in the waves and you there is nothing you can do about your condition. You are fading and it is a distressing feeling.
S – Surrounded – That is the word Jonah uses in verse 5. What is surrounding you? What is it that presents itself in every direction you look?
S – Sinking – Nothing was getting better. Everything was getting worse. That was Jonah’s condition of distress.
Look at some of the other descriptive words that Jonah uses to describe his distress:
Hurled – There is a note of violence as he is not gently placed in the sea. He sees God hurling him.
Swirled – The currents were swirling around him. He had no power.
Swept Over – This is neither comforting nor comfortable. It is a bad situation.
Banished from Your sight – Even God, it would seem, could not see him. But there is a glimmer of hope here … “yet I will look again toward your holy temple.” Perhaps that is when he perceived that he called out to God.
Engulfed … Threatened … Surrounded … seaweed wrapped around his head … He was not pretty sight.
Again, let us see verse 6:
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.
When you go as far down as you can, and God sends something along, a fish or a line, or a person … anything … you see it as a sign of hope. In that fish, Jonah realized that God had brought him up.
So, he bided his time and considered the possibility of return. He prepared his own heart and attitude to run in the direction of God with as much fervor as he had run away in chapter 1.
II. The next step came at the point of DEATH.
Jonah was in the doorway of death when God intervened. Hear again his description of his condition:
7 "When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, LORD,
and my prayer rose to you,
to your holy temple.
In his depleted condition, Jonah can do nothing about his circumstances except let the fish swallow him. I am not even sure he could have resisted that, but he could have chosen whether or not to pray.
By choosing to pray, Jonah acknowledged his helpless condition and the death that loomed over him.
Jesus and Paul both called this dying to self and coming alive to Christ.
It was as his life was ebbing away that Jonah found something to cling to. For Jonah, the whole idea of death turned inside out.
D – Depletion – You cannot die as long as you hold out an illusion of your own self-sufficiency in your own strength to save your own life. We don’t even have enough faith. We depend on God for even that.
E – Effort – None will help even if you could exert it. You are at the end of everything.
A – Attention – Suddenly you remember something – GOD! Jonah said, “I remembered You!” How long have you actually gone without even a thought of God? It is a mini-conversion to think of Him again.
T – Talk – Now you start talking, but not to yourself or others, but to God himself. That is what prayer is. That is what Mother Teresa never stopped doing even as she experienced all of these Jonah moments and more – and she had not even run away from Nineveh.
H – Hope – One thing Jonah did seem to understand in the depths of his heart was that God really did hear him. That brought him hope. He also remembered the temple, the reminder of God dwelling with men upon earth. Somewhere between God’s call to Jonah to go to Nineveh.and his escape to Joppa his flight to Tarshish lay the one place on earth where Jonah knew he could find God. Yet, this same God had found him in the midst of the sea… And he can find you there too… at the point of death.
III. Finally, Jonah returns with determination to his DUTY. He runs to God and to his calling. It is not that he suddenly likes what it is that God wants him to do, but he realizes that he loves God and likes living.
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
And the proof of real faith is saying “yes” to God.
The word “duty” is not all that common in the Bible. It is used of responsibility to family, to pay taxes, secular duties, and often, in the Old Testament with regard to Temple service. What Jonah was running from was his duty to perform that for which he had been created and called. He owed God his service to go where he was sent and preach what he was told to preach.
Jonah continued praying:
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."
DUTY meant, for Jonah four things:
D – Despise – He had to go to a people he despised, swallow his pride, get over his hatred and bigotry, and put his own opinions aside to do God’s will. Sometimes you have to go to places you dislike among people you dislike to do something you dislike doing because you just haven’t learned to love it yet and God has called you anyway. In those cases, suck it up and do it. Jonah had to go to the very people who clung to worthless idols and forfeited grace that could be theirs. Yet, in this process of having to return to God, he had come dangerously close to becoming one of those people who put personal preference and opinion ahead of God.
U – Useful – The essence of duty is sacrifice and the essence of sacrifice is making ourselves useful to God. The sacrifice God desired most from Jonah and desires most from us was and is obedience. We were made to be used by Him in marvelous ways, but we must present ourselves before Him for that purpose.
T – Thankfulness – Jonah finds what we need: an attitude of gratitude. He does not desire for us to come and do our duty to Him with a begrudging attitude or a hateful spirit. He desires cheerful givers of themselves, their time, and their resources.
Y – YES!!!! – This is the bottom line of our duty to God, saying “yes” to Him and truly meaning it.
Yes, Lord, Yes, to Thy will and to Thy way.
Yes, Lord, Yes. I will trust You and obey.
When Your Spirit speaks to me, with my whole heart I’ll agree,
And my answer will be Yes, Lord, Yes!
- Shirley Ceasar
10 And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
It is not the most elegant conclusion to a Sunday morning sermon, nor is it the conclusion of the story, but it does point to a reality:
Before we can move on, we have to get out of the hole we are in and before we can get out of the hole, we need to prayerfully run in the direction of God. What follows is a man running alongside God and seeing amazing results.