Jonah 1:17-2:10

17 Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights. 1 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish. 2 He said, “I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the land of the dead, and Lord, you heard me! 3 You threw me into the ocean depths, and I sank down to the heart of the sea. The mighty waters engulfed me; I was buried beneath your wild and stormy waves. 4 Then I said, ‘O Lord, you have driven me from your presence. Yet I will look once more toward your holy Temple.’ 5 “I sank beneath the waves, and the waters closed over me. Seaweed wrapped itself around my head. 6 I sank down to the very roots of the mountains. I was imprisoned in the earth, whose gates lock shut forever. But you, O Lord my God,     snatched me from the jaws of death! 7 As my life was slipping away, I remembered the Lord. And my earnest prayer went out to you in your holy Temple. 8 Those who worship false gods turn their backs on all God’s mercies. 9 But I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows.    For my salvation comes from the Lord alone.” 10 Then the Lord ordered the fish to spit Jonah out onto the beach.”

After running from God and refusing to repent we see the pouting prophet pitched into the sea and swallowed by a fish. It took more than just having his ship swamped by a storm for this hard hearted prophet to surrender, God had to send a fish to swallow him. It is here in the belly of the fish that Jonah stops pouting and starts praying. Sometimes the Master has to take extreme measures to bring us to our senses, a truth that prosperity preachers tend to avoid teaching. The reality is that God is often in the midst of our circumstances of misery, moving to bring us to repentance. You may not like to hear that and you may even want to disagree, but go back to chapter 1 and read verse 4: “But the Lord hurled a powerful wind over the sea, causing a violent storm that threatened to break the ship apart.” Then verse 17: “Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights.” Who was it that caused the storm? Who was it that sent the fish to swallow Jonah? Here’s the Biblical truth, sometimes those difficult and dark circumstances are God ordained to get you back on track. Now look at chapter 2 verse 3: “You threw me into the ocean depths, and I sank down to the heart of the sea. The mighty waters engulfed me; I was buried beneath your wild and stormy waves.” notice the words “You” & “Your”. Jonah knows that it wasn’t chance, or blind fate that caused his dilemma. He doesn’t blame the sailors for they were merely God’s instruments, His means of discipline and restoration. The Master is ok with His disobedient kids experiencing some misery because He knows just how miserable the path of rebellion really is in the end. A father who loves his kids doesn’t turn his back when they are disobedient but disciplines them. God’s heavy hand of discipline is actually evidence of His love for us. But how do you respond to His correction, do you whine or submit to His way? This story of suffering actually shows us the ultimate value that God places on us being in a right relationship with Him. God brings judgment upon Jonah not to pay him back but to bring him back. God knew exactly what it would take for Jonah to stop running and rejecting His rule and reign over his life. I also want you to see that when God brings a trial into our lives, He gives us time to contemplate the lessons He is teaching. Jonah had 3 days in the bowels of the fish to figure things out. God’s means of taking us out are actually not mean, they are an act of mercy, because you will never reflect on where you really are when you are still on the run. Today you may feel swallowed up by your circumstances, but you have the assurance that what God brings into your life is more than just a lesson; it’s for your good and His glory. It’s only when you’ve run and run and you finally hit rock bottom and are forced to face the consequences of your running that you realize that you don’t have any leverage with God. You don’t have any leverage when things are going good or bad, but it’s only in those times when things are going bad that we fully realize this truth. Here in lies the Biblical truth that for many Christians tastes like a bitter pill, God doesn’t owe any of us His blessings.  As Jonah is in the fish suffering the consequences of his running he realizes that he can’t blame anyone. God had made it perfectly clear what He had called Jonah to do and Jonah chose to rebel. It is here that we finally see Jonah repent and pray and instead of guilt God shows him grace. Verse 2 says, “God answered” that’s grace, Jonah deserved to be digested, he had rebelled against a righteous and mighty God. But Jonah finds a God of grace, willing to forgive. Go ahead call on God and confess, He is there waiting for you to turn to Him.  The gift of grace is that God hears the prayer of those who have run, but then repent. Even when we spiritually sink as deep as Jonah did in verse 6: “I sank down to the very roots of the mountains” God will not abandon us. Jonah was thrown out of a ship, but not out of the sight and grace of God. Jonah’s deliverance was directed by the Hand of God, the One who rules His creation. The fierce wind, surging sea and fearsome fish are there to faithfully serve the Father. God was willing to chase and redirect creation which caused Jonah to repent and return to a right relationship with Him. One of the evidences of true repentance is that our pouting turns to praise. Not only does Jonah sing songs of praise but he vows to sacrifice and serve God. It is interesting to note that both chapters one and two end with sacrifice and vows. Jonah the prophet is now at the same place that the Gentile sailors are, he may be out of the boat but he is on board with serving God. God’s children should be known as people of praise, and despite the misery we may be in we can magnify the Lord. Psalm 34:3 says: “Come, let us tell of the Lord’s greatness; let us exalt his name together.” But often instead of magnifying the Master we tend to magnify our problems. Now when you magnify something you don’t actually change the size of whatever it is you magnify, you actually change your perception of it. So when people magnify their problems the result is that God looks small in comparison. But when you magnify the Lord, your perception of Him changes, you gain a proper perspective, and you start to see His power over the problems. As Jonah concludes his prayer he states that “Salvation comes from the Lord” this is the theme of the entire Bible, salvation is a gift, and God isn’t obligated to limit it to only those that we think deserve it. Jonah’s sour attitude in chapter one centered on his not wanting to be a part of God saving the Ninevites so he refused God’s call and ran, until he ran into the saving arms of the Almighty. God reaches out to us because we can’t reach Him. The grace of God is that He accepts and entitles the undeserving. God loves us not because of who we are and what we have done, but because of who He is and what He had done. The most terrifying aspect of Jonah’s plight is when he realizes that God could have given him what he wanted, to be free from God. Jonah wanted to run from God but it’s the results of running that bring Jonah to repentance. Jonah started out being unwilling to say “Thy will be done” but in the middle of the Mediterranean he realized the awful significance of hearing the Almighty say “All right then, your will be done.” When we try to run from His righteousness, God may grant our wish for a while, but what we think we want will be our ruin. The belly of a fish isn’t what I would call a pleasant place to live, but it can be a good place to learn. You may not like where your life is right now but the lessons you learn will change your life.

Jonah 1:5-16

“5 Fearing for their lives, the desperate sailors shouted to their gods for help and threw the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. But all this time Jonah was sound asleep down in the hold. 6 So the captain went down after him. “How can you sleep at a time like this?” he shouted. “Get up and pray to your god! Maybe he will pay attention to us and spare our lives.” 7 Then the crew cast lots to see which of them had offended the gods and caused the terrible storm. When they did this, the lots identified Jonah as the culprit. 8 “Why has this awful storm come down on us?” they demanded. “Who are you? What is your line of work? What country are you from? What is your nationality?” 9 Jonah answered, “I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.” 10 The sailors were terrified when they heard this, for he had already told them he was running away from the Lord. “Oh, why did you do it?” they groaned. 11 And since the storm was getting worse all the time, they asked him, “What should we do to you to stop this storm?” 12 “Throw me into the sea,” Jonah said, “and it will become calm again. I know that this terrible storm is all my fault.” 13 Instead, the sailors rowed even harder to get the ship to the land. But the stormy sea was too violent for them, and they couldn’t make it. 14 Then they cried out to the Lord, Jonah’s God. “O Lord,” they pleaded, “don’t make us die for this man’s sin. And don’t hold us responsible for his death. O Lord, you have sent this storm upon him for your own good reasons.” 15 Then the sailors picked Jonah up and threw him into the raging sea, and the storm stopped at once! 16 The sailors were awestruck by the Lord’s great power, and they offered him a sacrifice and vowed to serve him.”

One of the repercussions of rebellion is that Jonah ended up expending lots of energy running from God, disobedience is exhausting. Following our way over His Will leaves us worn and weary because we not only end up doing things in our own strength but we waste time and energy fighting the Father. It is here that we see the rest of the results of a rebellious heart:

• Without prayer we are powerless

 “Fearing for their lives, the desperate sailors shouted to their gods for help and threw the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. But all this time Jonah was sound asleep down in the hold. 6 So the captain went down after him. “How can you sleep at a time like this?” he shouted. “Get up and pray to your god! Maybe he will pay attention to us and spare our lives.” Notice that everyone was praying except the prophet Jonah. As far as we can tell Jonah was the only believer on board, yet he was the only one not praying. It is a sad day when the only ones praying are the pagans and not the people of God. Why was Jonah not calling on God, I mean there was a storm raging and everyone else was fearful for their lives? I don’t think his lack of prayer was just the result of a stubborn heart; no this was the result of sin. Instead of walking by faith Jonah had forsaken God and fled, this was more of a case of he couldn’t than wouldn’t. When we live in open rebellion, refusing to repent, we ruin our relationship with God. Unconfessed sin corrupts and costs us communication with God, when we settling for sin our prayer life suffers. One of the telltale signs that you may be running from God is that you don’t pray anymore. Are you running to a relationship with God or from it? Disobedience always wants to direct us away from God and create distance in our relationship with Him. It might be that you are mad at God, Jonah felt justified to judge God and thus dismiss and distance himself from God’s Will.  Rather than seeking to serve he sought sleep, because sin always saps our strength. May be you just don’t want to surrender your sin, you have gotten comfortable catering to it and you want to cling on to and coddle it. It’s easy to rationalized rebellion and buy into the belief that it’s not that bad.  Is there any area in your life where you are cultivating sin instead of confessing it?  Is there any area where you are trading His Will for your wants? Regardless of the reason for rebellion the result is always ruin. Disobedience leaves us powerless in the face of sudden and severe storms and fourth:

• Sin always surfaces

“Then the crew cast lots to see which of them had offended the gods and caused the terrible storm. When they did this, the lots identified Jonah as the culprit.” Sin will always cause you to draw the short straw, you can’t live a disobedient life and it not show. We may think that we can sin and no one will know but sin has a strange way of surfacing, and this is one of those times when the sinner gets seen. It is interesting to see how the heathens determine who is disobedient, they seem to turn to chance for an answer, and many people may think that such things are determined by chance or “Lady Luck” but scripture shows us that God is in control of what happens. Proverbs 16:33 says: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” The bottom line is that you can’t hide your sin from a holy God in the hull of a ship. Jonah is found out, the sin surfaces and the prophet is identified as the cause of the problems. So the sailors ask Jonah a series of questions, I picture them yelling at the top of their lungs, trying to be heard over the sound of the storm “Why has this awful storm come down on us?” they demanded. “Who are you? What is your line of work? What country are you from? What is your nationality?” 9 Jonah answered, “I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.” 10 The sailors were terrified when they heard this, for he had already told them he was running away from the Lord. “Oh, why did you do it?” they groaned.” Notice that when the men found out that Jonah worship the true God they were terrified. These veteran sailors were more afraid of this news than the storm. The irony here is that Jonah tells them he is trying to run from the one who made the sea using a ship! The truth about Jonah’s rebellion creates terror because word of Gods wonders had been heard all over the world. These sailors had heard stories of this God’s strength. For  this was the God who had brought his power to bear on the once great nation of Egypt. This was the God who had pounded them with plagues, parted the Red Sea and then drowned Pharaoh’s army.  This was the God who had brought down the walls of Jericho and caused the sun to stand still for Joshua. This great and powerful God was the same one who was pursuing and punishing Jonah, no wonder the sailors worried. The sailor’s questioning should cause us to ask ourselves some serious questions:  1. If you really fear God then why do you disobey Him? The sad reality is that these unbelievers feared God more than the man of God. 2. If He is the God Of heaven, then why would you want to run from Him? Why do we as Christians say that we long to spend eternity in God’s presence yet run from pursuing Him in the present? 3. Why did you involve us in your sin? What you do has the potential to harm those you say you love and who love you. As the sailors seek to find out how to stop the storm Jonah speaks up and tells them: “Throw me into the sea,” Jonah said, “and it will become calm again. I know that this terrible storm is all my fault.” It is here in Jonah’s response that his hard heart is revealed. Jonah could have responded to the question, What should we do to make the sea calm by saying “It is obvious what we must do, God wants me to go to Nineveh so turn the ship around and go back.” Yet instead of repenting and renouncing his rebellion he responds: “Throw me into the sea,” Jonah said, “and it will become calm again. I know that this terrible storm is all my fault.” Jonah would rather die than do God’s will, yet the sailors are not willing to help him commit suicide for verse 13 says: “Instead, the sailors rowed even harder to get the ship to the land. But the stormy sea was too violent for them, and they couldn’t make it.” They tried, but man’s strength is not enough to overcome sin, and just like them we too will discover our limits. So they cried out to the Lord, Jonah’s God. “O Lord,” they pleaded, “don’t make us die for this man’s sin. And don’t hold us responsible for his death. O Lord, you have sent this storm upon him for your own good reasons.” Then the sailors picked Jonah up and threw him into the raging sea, and the storm stopped at once!” Why do we try to wage war against the winds and the waves, why do we fight against the Father? It is the silencing of the storm that speaks to the sailors, so they offered God a sacrifice and vowed to serve him. Had the sailors made their vows to serve God prior to the end of the storm, it would not have been nearly so impressive. Today there are many who claim that they will surrender and serve prior to the calming of the storm. We have all witnessed people making vows when they were in trouble yet as soon as the emergency passes they forgot all about the vows and forge ahead with their own plans. But not these sailors, they made their vows after the danger had passed and in an ironic twist, we see God purposes fulfilled in spite of the prophet’s stubborn rebellion. God’s purpose will be fulfilled with or without you, but He would prefer to have you with Him. His desire is not to drown you but to redirect you away from disobedience. How far are you willing to run from God? Just like Jonah God will pursue you with power. May be today you find yourself tossed about in a storm of sin, remember you are not the only one suffering. It’s time to stop trying to hid from the holiness of God confess and come clean. But this is more than just admitting your rebellion it’s repenting from it.