Sermon Tone Analysis
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INTRO
I remember as a kid going out deep sea fishing with my dad and looking over the edge of the boat and seeing that deep water
Now because the ocean floor and all the sand is so far down, the water is actually really clear, you can actually see pretty far down
But especially through my eyes as a child you realize it’s basically black and you get this impression of the abyss, the depths of the ocean
As kids my brother and I would regularly get seasick from the big waves and my dad would say “just get the water and it’ll make you feel better”
I can tell you that even though I couldn’t see anything and hadn’t watched Jaws yet there was still a sense of fear of the deep
As we continue the story of Jonah today that’s where we are going, into the deep
SET UP TEXT
Before we go there let’s do a quick recap on what has happened so far in Jonah
God tells Jonah, an Israelite prophet, to go declare judgement on the people of Ninevah
Jonah decides that he doesn’t want to do that and pays his way onto a large boat headed in the literal opposite direction
God, not fooled by this bold move, sends a storm to basically attack this one ship
When the storm hits, Jonah is enjoying a deep, blissfully ignorant nap below deck as chaos ensues among the sailors
The sailors are praying to anyone and everyone and throwing things overboard before they finally discover Jonah is to root cause of this thing
Per Jonah’s own suggestion, they toss him overboard, into the deep, black, storm-tossed ocean
And now we pick up the story in Jonah, chapter 1 verse 17
TEXT
- A Great Fish Swallows Jonah
[17] And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
- Jonah's Prayer
[1] Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, [2] saying,
“I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
and you heard my voice.
[3] For you cast me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas,
and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows
passed over me.
[4] Then I said, ‘I am driven away
from your sight;
yet I shall again look
upon your holy temple.’
[5] The waters closed in over me to take my life;
the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped about my head
[6] at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land
whose bars closed upon me forever;
yet you brought up my life from the pit,
O LORD my God.
[7] When my life was fainting away,
I remembered the LORD,
and my prayer came to you,
into your holy temple.
[8] Those who pay regard to vain idols
forsake their hope of steadfast love.
[9] But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
Salvation belongs to the LORD!”
[10] And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
(ESV)
PRAYER
CONTEXT + BARRIERS
So what happened in what we just read
Here’s the basic summary
God sends a fish to swallow Jonah
Jonah is miraculously kept alive inside this fish for 3 days and nights
Sometime in there he prays
God tells the fish to return Jonah to dry land
But there’s something else that if you grew up hearing this story in church or somewhere else, you and I are probably missing
Growing up I was always taught or just assumed that the fish immediately swallowed Jonah
Like there’s a this giant fish just waiting beneath the surface and when he hits the water BOOM there’s a fish to gulp him up
But reading this and studying this that’s clearly not what happened
In Jonah’s prayer it’s clear that he was sinking
He wasn’t treading water, he wasn’t keeping his head out, he wasn’t doggy paddling, and he wasn’t immediately swallowed
There is a delay before the arrival of the fish that is essential to understanding Jonah’s response
So the correct sequence of events is actually
Jonah thrown into the sea
Jonah sinking...sinking…sinking to the point of almost death
And in that moment God sends a fish to save his life
So we need to be wary of what we think we already know about this story
THE DISNEY BIAS
We tend to package things in the prettiest almost romanticized way but we’re not always careful about keeping the focus in the correct places
But we also need to be wary of our tendency to disbelieve
I came upon a plethora of different theories trying to explain how this event could actually happen
My favorite was one that states that Jonah was shipwrecked and spend 3 days recovering at an inn called “The Fish”
Come on!
That is putting in some really creative energy to avoid accepting that the God of the universe, the God who spoke life into existence
Even labeling the fish a whale can actually be an attempt to make this easier to understand but it reduces the weight of the miracle
Remember in week 1 Justin said this: “If we can believe in the miracle of resurrection, the fact that God could send the fish to swallow a man is kind of small potatoes.”
What’s tragic is that the fish is actually the least important character in the story and yet we’ve given it all the attention so much that its probably the first image you see when you even hear Jonah’s name
With those things in mind let’s walk through this text and see 3 things?
Jonah didn’t SURVIVE inside the fish
Jonah was KEPT ALIVE BY GOD inside the fish
MAIN POINTS
God will orchestrate some crazy things in order to get our attention.
In Jonah’s world, God sent a storm that almost killed him and a fish that ended up saving him
God appointed the fish to swallow him and commanded it to spit him back out
God was the one controlling EVERYTHING in Jonah’s story and he controls EVERYTHING in our story
Jonah didn’t SURVIVE inside the fish, he was KEPT ALIVE by God inside the fish
Evidence of God’s sovereign deployment of crazy things to fulfill his purpose
VERSE 17: “And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.”
VERSE 3: “You cast me into the deep” and “All your waves and your billows passed over me”
The sovereignty of God is emphasized here
It’s not the sailors who threw Jonah down
VERSE 10: “And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
We live in the most distracted time in history
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