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Raise your hand if you are excited to see what God’s word has for us this morning.
Praise God!
If you remember from last week, our passage was Jonah chapter one.
We saw how God told Jonah to go to Ninevah, the capital city of Jonah’s arch enemies; and instead, Jonah began to flee to the modern-day country of Spain.
But as you remember, Jonah didn’t get very far in running from God.
While Jonah and the sailors were out at sea, God hurled a storm down at them.
God revealed to the sailors that Jonah was the cause of the storm, and they reluctantly threw Jonah overboard to prevent them from being destroyed in the storm.
The main lesson for us in all of this is that you cannot run from God. Jonah thought that God was limited to the political boundaries of the nation of Israel.
And sometimes we have the mistaken notion that if you can run from the church, then you can run from God.
But Jonah learned the hard way that there is no place on earth where God is not.
But hopefully you remember that God was not done working with Jonah.
Aren’t you so glad that God doesn’t stop working with us whenever we mess up?
As Jonah was sinking deep under the water, I’m sure he imagined that his days were through.
I’m sure he thought that God was going to kill him for his rebellion.
But the last verse of Jonah chapter one tells us that God had prepared a great fish to come along and swallow Jonah.
And the Bible says that Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.
To see what happens next in the epic story of the prophet Jonah, I ask you to turn in your Bibles to Jonah chapter two, and we’ll be reading all ten verses.
Again, Jonah 2.
“Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish’s belly, and said, ‘I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and He heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.
For Thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all Thy billows and Thy waves passed over me.
Then I said, I am cast out of Thy sight; yet I will look again toward Thy holy temple.
The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.
I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me forever: yet hast Thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.
When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto Thee, into Thine holy temple.
They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.
But I will sacrifice unto Thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed.
Salvation is of the LORD.’
And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.”
Let’s pray.
The title of this morning’s sermon is “Lessons from the Belly of a Fish.”
As we look through Jonah chapter two, we are going to see six easy lessons we can use when we are in the belly of the fish.
And you might be thinking right about now, “When I’m in the belly of the fish?
Well, it looks like this one isn’t going to apply to me!” Well, maybe it does.
What we’re going to be talking about this morning is what to do when it seems like everything has gone wrong in life.
When it seems like your life has gone from the best of the best to the worst of the worst.
Is there anyone here this morning that’s ever been in the belly of the fish?
I know I have multiple times in my life.
Thankfully, the Bible speaks to those kinds of situations in our lives.
If you remember, Jonah was one of the most popular prophets in Israel’s history.
He was well respected, and people listened to what he had to say.
And yet today, we find him cruising through the ocean, inside a dark, smelly, nauseating environment.
Jonah knew what it was like to have the best of life, and now he is experiencing the worst in life.
Let’s see what lessons we can learn from this runaway prophet.
Lesson #1: God hears your cry, no matter where you are
Look at what verses one and two say about Jonah’s prayer.
“Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish’s belly, and said, ‘I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and He heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.”
In case you didn’t notice, this entire chapter is a recording of Jonah’s prayer from inside the fish.
The first lesson that Jonah learned about what to do in the belly of the fish was to pray to God.
Verse two paints a grim picture of how bad Jonah’s situation was.
In verse two, Jonah says that he was in the “belly of hell.”
And something we have to remember about Jonah is that he thought that he could get away from God as long as he left Israel.
And yet now, Jonah has learned that even in the midst of the belly of hell he can cry out to God, and God would hear his voice.
I hope that’s something that you all realize from the depths of your being.
No matter what is going on in your life, you can take it to God in prayer, and He promises that He will hear and answer your prayer.
Now, you may not always like the answer, but He will always answer your prayers.
So the first lesson from the belly of the fish is to pray, pray, pray!
And I don’t know about you, but in my life, this is one of those principles that looks really good on paper, but I always seem to forget whenever the rubber meets the road.
I know the value of the prayer, but whenever things start to get tough, I often try to handle it myself, and fail to seek God’s assistance.
Now, I eventually come to my senses, but how much additional pain did I have to go through because I failed to bring it before God’s throne?
Although, in Jonah’s position, it didn’t take a whole lot of wisdom to know that there was absolutely nothing he could do on his own.
Jonah had nowhere to look, except to God.
And before we go on to the second lesson, I want to briefly deal with a couple of practical questions about Jonah and his giant sea creature.
The first question is, “Was Jonah swallowed by a whale or by a fish?”
I mean, probably all of our Bibles say fish, but the popular idea is that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.
Why is that?
Well, in the Hebrew language, there is only one word for both big fish and whales.
Back then, they weren’t yet familiar with modern taxonomy, so they didn’t realize that whales weren’t fish.
So they just had one word for all of those big things that swam out in the ocean.
So really, we don’t know for sure if it was a whale or a fish.
Just in case you’re interested, there are two main suspects for what type of animal may have swallowed Jonah.
One is the sulphur-bottom whale, and the other is the whale shark.
The sulphur-bottom whale can measure almost 100 feet in length, and the whale shark is about 60 feet in length.
So of the two main suspects, one is a whale, and the other is a fish!
But this raises the bigger question, “Is it possible to stay alive in a fish?”
This is an argument that has been leveled against Christians for centuries.
Skeptics are very quick to say, “No one could possibly live inside of a whale for three whole days.”
And frankly, we are partially to blame for this dilemma.
I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up, and I heard the story of Jonah, I was under the impression that Jonah had his own little Ramada Inn inside that fish.
I can just imagine Jonah sitting at a little dinner table inside there, and maybe he stumbles across an oil lamp that the fish had swallowed.
And oh, what’s this?
It’s a copy of today’s newspaper!
And really, we have to get all of that out of our heads.
When Jonah was in that fish, it would have been an absolutely miserable experience.
I’ve been told that whales’ stomachs can have up to five or six compartments, and that you could survive in some of them for quite some time, but it would be an absolutely miserable experience.
And that is exactly what happened to a man in the early 1900s.
A whaling crew was attempting to harpoon a whale in the English Channel, when one of the sailors fell overboard and was swallowed by the whale.
Forty-eight hours later, the crew tracked the whale again and killed it.
When they cut open the whale, imagine their surprise when their crew mate was inside the whale alive!
Now, he was unconscious, and the whale’s stomach acid had seared off all of his hair, and his skin was a nasty yellowish-green color, but he was alive!
Also, one time a dog was swallowed by a whale, and it wound up in a big air pocket near the whale’s head.
It was alive and barking six days later when they found that whale.
But church, we cannot forget that while it is possible to survive inside of a whale, this is very much a miracle from God.
I am not trying to take away the absolute miracle that Jonah survived, I am simply trying to say that God has repeated that miracle a few other times throughout human history.
So if someone tells you that God can’t keep His prophet alive inside of a whale, gently remind them that not only can God, but He has, more than once.
So I’m sorry if that little bit bored you, but I felt like I had to address the issues that the world addresses about the book of Jonah.
But let’s move on to lesson number two.
Lesson #2: God is in control
Look at what verse three of this passage says.
“For Thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all Thy billows and Thy waves passed over me.”
In this short little verse, Jonah says three different times that God is the source of his current predicament.
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