Jonah week 2

- We left of looking at Jonah chapter 1

Re-cap last chapter

Who is Jonah? A Northern Israelite Prophet, He was sent to a place called Nineveh which was this big important city where clearly there was tons of things going on that displeased the Lord. We read out of Nahum 3 where we see Nineveh being described and there was sexual immorality and He calls it a bloody city which implies its danger.

There are all kinds of ideas of why Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh , could have been fear of what could happen or maybe Jonah didn’t want God to have mercy on them and he didn’t want to give them a chance to repent because he knew God was a merciful God.

So Jonah decided to leave from the Port city of Joppa which was approx. 500 miles away and he set sail to a place called Tarshish approx. 2500 miles away. Then a storm came upon them and the sailors woke Jonah up to ask him who he was and Jonah replied “I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who mad the sea and the land”

The sailors asked Jonah what to do and He told them to throw him into the sea and they refused to throw him overboard and they rowed even harder but the storm grew even worse and finally they began to cry out to the Lord and finally they threw Jonah into the raging sea and the storm stop immediatly.

The Lord had arranged for a large fish to swallow Jonah where he stayed for three days and three nights.

Chapter 2 Jonahs prayer

It is unknown as to exactly what type of fish swallowed Jonah and some say it makes since that it would have been a whale due to its frequent trips to the surface for air. But nobody 100% knows for sure.

Verse 1-3 , Jonah was a rebellious , resistant, believer, God was not finished with him yet so he preserved his life.

God gave Jonah a second chance , he showed him mercy and grace even when he was disobeying .

Read verse 4-10

Jonahs story is a a showcase of Gods sovereignty and what happens when God wants a person to do something and that person doesn’t want to do it. This story shows that God has a way of bringing us to the places he wants us to go.

Jonah realized pretty soon that it wasn’t the sailors who cast him in the sea but it was Gods himself who aloud that to happen.

Jonah would then at that moment understand that he could not run from the Lord, in other words you can run but you cannot hide.

Jonah was a man of faith and he new the psalms and we know this because he never forgot about God in the belly of this fish.

Jonah realized that by him resisting God, and running from him, was like being an idolater, someone who worships idols.

How often are we like Jonah ? How often are we resisting the Lords instructions due to fear or our own plans ? How often do we make some silly attempt to flee from the presence of the Lord?

Truth is Psalm 139:7-12