Can you think of a time when you were in such a bind, such trouble, that there was just no way possible for you to get out? No way, that is, unless the Lord brought a miracle of deliverance for you. Perhaps you have faced such circumstances, but I will wager that none of us have ever faced as dire a predicament as faced by the prophet Jonah in our Scripture today. Let’s take a quick look at what happened to him.
Most of us are familiar with some of the events in the life of the prophet Jonah, but let’s briefly review them again. Jonah was a prophet of the Lord in the northern Kingdom of Israel. The Lord had called him to bring His message of repentance from sin to the people of the city of Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, and was the largest city in the world at that time. (Today the ruins of Nineveh are in the city of Mosul, in northern Iraq.) The Assyrian Empire was a major and cruel enemy to Israel, and Jonah wanted nothing to do with them, certainly not offering Yahweh’s mercy and love to them if they repented of their evil. As the Lord continued to call him to this assignment, Jonah thought he could run away, and thus escape going there. He took the first ship he could, heading out across the Mediterranean (Jonah 1). However, as we know, one can never run away from the Lord. There is nowhere on the earth, or even in the whole of the universe, where we can escape from God’s presence (Psalm 139:7-10). The Lord knew exactly where Jonah was and what he was trying to do, and He was not going to let him get away. God sent a violent storm, and Jonah was tossed overboard from the ship.
God was not going to let His servant drown and sink to the bottom of the ocean. Instead, He prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah (Jonah 1:17). Many people seem to think he was swallowed by a whale, but Scripture does not specify. It says this was a great fish, who the Lord prepared for this purpose. This is the place where we find Jonah in our Scripture. The prophet spent three days in the belly of this fish, and as we see, he was conscious. Picture for a moment being swallowed whole and alive by a giant fish, and being in its belly! Can you imagine the fear and terror that Jonah must have felt! And as we see, he knew exactly why this had happened. He knew that it was because of his disobedience to God’s orders.
As we can imagine, the first and only thing that Jonah did was to call out to Yahweh in prayer (vs. 1). In the midst of his trials, Jonah did not just get angry and curse everyone and everything. Nor did he roll over and get depressed and discouraged. Jonah prayed to God, and even from inside the fish, Jonah’s prayer was heard by the Lord. We can pray anywhere and at any time, and God will hear us. Our sin is never too great, and our predicament is never too difficult for God.
God will never turn away from a truly repentant heart (vs. 2). He often uses afflictions, not to punish us, but to bring us back to Him. While trapped inside this giant fish or sea creature, in such a terrible situation, Jonah acknowledged that his circumstances were judgment from the Lord. Sometimes it is only when we hit rock bottom that we are truly ready to repent (vs. 7).
Sometimes the storms in our life come because of our own foolish choices. They may be the harvest of what we have sown in the past. Jonah had refused to obey what God had told him to do, so He brought a corrective storm into Jonah’s life. God may disrupt our plans when we insist on going our own way instead of submitting to His will.
Our troubles should cause us to cling tightly to God, and not to attempt to bargain our way out of the pain. Jonah knew that he was in no position to vainly try to bargain with the Lord. Instead, he would repent and submit to Him (vs. 9). Crying out to the Lord is the best response in a storm. We need to humble ourselves in the midst of our circumstances. We should submit to God’s dealings with us, turn from our spirit of rebellion to one of obedience, and yield to God’s will for us.
Jonah repented, and the Lord caused the fish to spit Jonah out. The prophet heeded God’s call, and journeyed to Nineveh, where he preached a message of repentance to the people there. The people’s response and the prophet’s response are a whole other study. Right now, though, Jonah’s lesson was that he learned he could never run from God, that he needed to obey Him, and that when he prayed and repented, the Lord would hear him.
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