Jonah 1:17-2:
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Broken to Restore. Surgery. Cutting to heal.
Broken to Restore. Surgery. Cutting to heal.
I amazed at what we let doctors do to us.
we let them break us, cut on us, burn us.
we allow them to go inside our body with instruments.
The next day we are often sore and hurting.
Its just amazing to me. What is it about the hospital building that promotes that type of trust?
Or maybe its not the building.
I think we do this because we trust the surgeons, we trust the doctor.
That though are bring pain to us, there ultimate goal is to bring healing and restoration.
Sometimes its necessary to go through a painful process to save our life.
The same is true with God’s discipline. He is skilled surgeon that cuts, the wounds, that breaks us in order that we would be more healthy and ultimately to save our lives.
Up until last week, Jonah was still dry.
At this point, Jonah is running from God
He had found safety, so he thought. in the hull of a ship headed to Tarshish.
But God hurled a storm.
He had tossed his boat to the point where there was no hope.
They casts lots and the lot fell on Jonah.
He then out of necessity, confessed and requested to be thrown into the sea.
We mentioned this last week, but it seems that Jonah is content to die as long as he does not have to do what God had told him to do.
Now I know, you may be wondering, “Why is Jonah so dead set against going to Nineveh?” We will get there. He has his reasons, and they may even be noble reasons in his mind , but regardless, his disobedience is not excused.
Jonah has said no to God. And perhaps now, Jonah may think that he will die in the sea and finally get away from doing God’s will. -
But Jonah has miscalculated his God.
God is not out of resources. He’s never lacking in ways to get our attention.
The sovereign God over all creation has all creation at his beckon call.
Jonah is foolish to think that he will outrun outsmart or outmaneuver God and his plans.
John Piper says this:
“There are no limits to God’s rule. This is part of what it means to be God. He is sovereign over the whole world, and everything that happens in it. He is never helpless, never frustrated, never at a loss.”
The cause of much of our troubles is our lack of sovereignty. We do not possess this divine quality of sovereignty, and therefore it would seem that we would understand that it is best for us to trust in and submit to the One who alone does possess sovereignty.
But Jonah has attempted to take control of the situation.
This is why he boards the boat. I’ll leave and I can preach to Nineveh if I’m not there.
Maybe this is even why he request to be thrown overboard. He may figures that his assignment would be given to someone else if he’s dead
But that isn’t how things work with God. We don’t control things.
God had other plans, and because God is God, he always carries his plan to completion.
In other words, Jonah’s attempt to run and even to be thrown in the ocean and perish there wouldn’t work.
Jonah is not one in charge of the numbers of his days.
Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.
God is the giver and sustainer of life, and our days are numbered by Him, and he will accomplish his will.
Jonah’s desire to drown in the sea could not overcome God’s desire for Jonah to live and to preach to Nineveh.
And this why there is a verse 17. Would it not be tragic if the story ended in verse 16? with disobedience…
No, the Lord had prepared a vehicle of grace to swallow Jonah up.
And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.
Some have argued about what kind of fish this was. That’s not really important.
The important thing is that it the Lord’s appointed fish.
Here we see again, all creation is under God’s sovereign directive. He is in control not only of the sea, but the fish that dwell in the sea. We see this with Jesus. Jesus calmed the storm and he filled the disciples boats with fish.
All creation is under his sovereign authority. He ceased the winds. He summoned the fish as creator.
All other created things in this book obey. God controls the sea and everything it contains
The winds and the waves obey. The fish obeys.
But the thing in this story, and really throughout time in general, that does not obey is the one that is made in the image of God.
Its the man.
All creation that we see daily humbly submits to God except one of his creations.
Us. Have you ever considered this?
The sun does what it is supposed to do. Every day without fail.
The moon does what it is supposed to do. Every day.
The wind does what its supposed to do. Every day.
The fish. The animals, they do what they are supposed to do. They live in humble submission to God.
But then theres us. human being, the crown jewel of creation, created in God’s image and we disobey him.
But we need to understand something. if God needs to use his obedient creation to discipline his disobedient creation. He will.
Thats what he does here with Jonah.
The Lord appointed a fish. He swallowed Jonah.
And Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.
Jonah doesn’t get what he wished for. He desired to drown to death in the Mediterranean Sea.
In fact, he even recounts in the next few verses that he was at the point of death:
The water encompassed me. He says- The great deep engulfed me.
Weeds were wrapped around my head.
Jonah was sure of his death.
Instead of him dying, God preserves his life in the belly of the fish. Its miraculous. Many people try to wrap their minds around this by appealing to science to try and explain what is going on here as far as a man being able to live in the belly of the fish for three days.. But this is beyond naturalistic explanation. Its supernatural. This is God at work.
This is God disciplining one of his own.
Here is where we see God would bring Jonah low in order to raise him up.
God would use this unpleasant circumstance to bring about his desired response.
And somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea in the stomach of the fish, God......breaks.......Jonah.
How do we know?
Because chapter 2 begins with Jonah in prayer.
Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish, and he said, “I called out of my distress to the Lord, And He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; You heard my voice. “For You had cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the current engulfed me. All Your breakers and billows passed over me.
Jonah recounts his experience in the Sea after having been thrown overboard.
Jonah is in distress. The picture in verses 1-3 is clear. He is drowning. He is to the point of death and He cries to His God.
This is amazing to me. Jonah had ran away from God’s command. He had defied God. And yet, THE LORD is still his God.
Here we see, in the most unlikely of places, in the belly of a fish, God is still pursuing Jonah. With discipline, but he is still pursuing.
From this discipline of Jonah, we learn that its God’s gracious purpose that he lose none of His followers to unrepentant sin. .
He disciplines His own, and he always does so for restoration, and its painful, but it is for our ultimate and final good.
If you sin and continue in sin without the disciplining hand of God, that is when you must evaluate the legitimacy of your sonship.
But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
Every genuine believer is disciplined by God. This is what it means in this moment for God to be Jonah’s God. Its for Jonah to be discipline by God.
So when he cries to his God he understand that He is crying to the author of his distress.
God is the one who has brought this upon Jonah because Jonah has disobeyed.
And finally Jonah prays to God.
You should know, there is no mention of Jonah praying while aboard the ship when the captain in his own distress calls upon Jonah to pray to his God. The Scripture gives no account of Jonah praying until now.
I believe the reason was at that point on the ship he was not yet broken over his sin. He was not ready to pray to God for repentance.
I think we can all relate here.
In our times of disobedience, we are so busy running away from God that prayer is not the first thing on our minds. Why would we want to talk to the one that we are defying?
I have found this to be the case with my own daughters.
Abi and Evan Grace, when they sin, and they do, when they disobey and they do, they tend to cower away from me. They don’t want to talk to me. I can remember this from my own childhood.
Bringing notes home from the teacher that my parents had to sign that explained my actions of the day. I can remember dreading the sound of my father driving up in the driveway, because I knew he would be disappointed. I also knew what surely awaited me.
We tend to avoid the ones we defy.
I also know all too well the feeling of hindered worship and a lack of desire to sing praises, to pray, or even to preach because of sin.
But thankfully, God’s disciplining hand overcomes our sinful avoidance of him.
This is how we know that Our ways and means of avoiding him and disobeying him pale in comparison to his means and his ways in disciplining us.
God has a way of disciplining us so that we fall to our knees in repentance and when not if, but when we find mercy and grace, our worship is all the more sweet.
Jonah is to this point. He’s broken.
He cries out to God and God, in his mercy and grace, hears him and answers him.
In verse 2, it says He cries out from the depth of Sheol.
Now this word is a very important word in the Old Testament.
When you read “Sheol” in the Old Testament, it can refer to two thing. It can means death itself, or it refers to the realm of the dead, the grave.
Jonah is poetically saying he was about to die.
and he said, “I called out of my distress to the Lord, And He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; You heard my voice. “For You had cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the current engulfed me. All Your breakers and billows passed over me.
Jonah is drowning. But his greatest fear in this moment is not that he would drown.
Jonah in the middle of strife and distress that he is in, is not concerned so much with death, as he is of dying in rebellion to God. Look what he says here in verse 4.
“So I said, ‘I have been expelled from Your sight. Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy temple.’
Jonah knows that his sin had created a barrier for the communion with God.
Jonah understand the God he serves is holy.
He understand what the prophet Habakkuk understood.
Habakkuk 1:13- Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and you can not look on wickedness with favor.
Jonah understands that he cannot possibly commune with God and sin at the same time.
Its a two person table. You commune with God or you commune with sin.
I don’t think Jonah is confident here. I think he is longing for the communion with God he previously enjoyed when he was faithful.
The RSV actually translates this as a question:
How will I again look to your holy temple?
I believe in verse 4 Jonah here is longing to return to the temple for worship and communion with God.
The wonderful part here is that God is faithful and God disciplines in order that he may restore.
“Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me, Weeds were wrapped around my head. “I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever, But You have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.
Verse 6 is key here.
In the middle of Jonah’s distress God answered and brought Jonah up. Keep in mind Jonah is writing this after the fact so he is recounting what happened.
Don’t miss the sequence of events here.
God called.
Jonah ran.
God disciplined. He brought pain.
Jonah cried out to God.
God delivered.
And again we see in that sequence of events that God had disciplined Jonah for this purpose.
To bring him to submission and restoration and to a place where he is ready to obey God.
God’s goal in discipline is not merely to make you feel bad about your sin.
God’s goal in disciplining us is to bring us to a place of obedience.
It would not be enough for Jonah just to show up back at the temple a couple of times and think he has been restored.
No, Jonah must go to Nineveh. Jonah must do what God had commanded him to do in the first place.
Too often, believers show back up to church thinking that all is well.
They go a couple of Sundays and feel a little bit better about themselves and then return right back to the sin they were in previously.
That’s not repentance. That’s self righteousness. Self help.
When the Lord restores one out of the pit, he expects us to from from the pit and head towards Him without ever looking back.
And those who God is disciplining, this will happen.
Jonah contrasts the believer and the unbelievers response to God.
“While I was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, And my prayer came to You, Into Your holy temple. “Those who regard vain idols Forsake their faithfulness, But I will sacrifice to You With the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation is from the Lord.”
Jonah responds rightly. now it took him a whale.. I mean a while....
But Jonah finally responds to the Lord’s discipline
1. with a desire to please the Lord, he desires to bring a sacrifice.
2. He comes with thanksgiving to the God who has broken him.
3. He comes with a heart ready to obey.
That which I have vowed I will pay.
Jonah has learned.
Whenever he least deserved God’s mercy, and grace, God had given it.
God was the author of his distress. verses 1-5
God delivered His life. Verse 6
God is the author of his salvation. 7-9
Don’t miss that line of his prayer.
Salvation is from the Lord.
Jonah had come to grips with the fact that God is the gracious distributor of salvation to those who he pleases even the most undeserving. And he learned this through personal experience.
Jonah cries to and acknowledges that the Lord is the author of our salvation.
Salvation is from the Lord.
God has proven this in saving the idolatrous sailors aboard the ship with Jonah.
Salvation is from the Lord
God has now proven this in pursing Jonah to the depths and then bringing him out it to walk in righteousness.
Salvation is from the Lord.
God will prove this by saving the entire wicked city of Nineveh through the preaching of Jonah.
Salvation is from the Lord.
God has proven this in my life. He is the Lord of salvation.
He has accomplished this by giving us His son, Jesus.
Which by the way, the name Jesus means “The Lord’s salvation”
It is through Christ that any one is saved.
May we say along with Jonah as we repent and reflect on what God has done for us, “Salvation is from the Lord.”
My encouragement to you today in light of this passage is found in Isaiah 55:6-7
Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the Lord, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.
Let me ask you today believer?
Are you being disciplined by God?
Proper repentance
1. with a desire to be clean through the blood of Christ. Whenever we may doubt His love for us, look to Christ and thank God that Christ has died. He is our sacrifice.
2. Repentance comes with thanksgiving to the God who has broken us.
3. Repentance comes with a heart ready to obey.
That which I have vowed I will pay.
Even when we are brought low and sink to the depths, isn’t it wonderful that God can hear us there.