Jonah: week 2

LAST WEEK Jonah Chapter 1

Last week we examined Jonah chapter 1. We looked at how Jonah repeats a pattern found throughout scripture of “Rise - Fall - Redemption” of humanity.

It usually starts with God’s Eden Ideal, where God created us to rule and reign with Him. This idea is often repeated in scripture with people searching for or trying to create their own “Eden Ideal”, or a pseudo-Eden. Jonah was fleeing to Tarshish. He was attempting to create his own pseudo-Eden. Fleeing to a place known for it’s wealth and opportunities. He saw something, it looked good, so he decided to take it. Then sin is introduced.

When sin comes in, it separates us from God and his Eden Ideal. God warned Cain that sin crouches at the door, waiting to devour you. But Cain disobeyed God’s wishes in pursuit of his own desires. Jonah disobeyed God as well. And he continued to disobey and put others in danger. But that wouldn’t stop God from rescuing him anyway.

God rescued Jonah and the sailors. He made a way for them to be saved, but wasn’t because of anything they could do. In fact, they tried to turn the boat around and save themselves, but they couldn’t. Instead, they had to make a sacrifice. God provided that sacrifice.

God provided someone to intercede on their behalf. Jonah became a living picture of the scapegoat, carrying the confessions of the people out into the wilderness.

Then we see the sailors make a covenant with God. They made vows.

This is a pattern that is repeated throughout scripture, and Jonah’s story falls perfectly into this pattern in less than 20 verses. We also talked about some life application lessons from chapter 1. Jonah showed us a lot of things that we should NOT do. 1: We saw that God will often ask us to do things we really don’t want to do. (Pray, read my bible, serve, forgive, love someone) 2: When we don’t want to do what God asks of us, it is very easy to find a boat sailing in the wrong direction. 3: Sometimes God will splash us with cold water to get our attention. My Aunt says that when there are struggles in her life the first thing she does is ask, “What lessons am I supposed to learn here?” 4: Even though we think, “This is my problem. It’s not hurting anyone else.” that is often not the case. Our disobedience does affect others. It costs others. 5: No matter how disobedient we have been, the time to realize it and let go of it is now because God wants us to experience his love and mercy. His mercy chases us. We may feel like he is chasing us because he is mad at us, but he chases us because he loves us and never wants to be far from us. And that is where we will pick up the story of Jonah today.

And Jonah Prayed… Finally…

Throughout chapter 1, Jonah’s prayer life is nonexistent. The first sentence is Yahweh speaking to Jonah, but Jonah doesn’t say a word to Yahweh. His only response was to get up and run away. To flee from the presence of Yahweh. Then trouble strikes and Jonah still refuses to pray to Yahweh. The sailors, who weren’t Israelites, even started praying to Yahweh. Jonah tells them to throw him overboard but he still refuses to pray. It wasn’t until after Jonah was in the belly of the sea monster that he finally speaks to Yahweh. Jonah is a prophet! A man of God! Who refuses to pray to God!

Unfortunately, Jonah isn’t the only person who does this. Jonah is a lot like believers today who claim to believe in God, but their prayer life is almost nonexistent. It’s almost as if Jonah reaches a point where he says, “Well, I’ve tried running, I’ve tried hiding, I’ve even tried to die. There’s no getting out of this, so ALL I CAN DO NOW IS PRAY.” Why do we do this? I can’t speak for all of you, but in the past I have certainly treated God like he was my last resort. Most of the time I don’t even realize that is what I am doing.

It is a lot like the story of a small-town church. The pastor of this church was pretty upset because a bar opened up close to the church. The pastor said, “We’re not going to have a bar in this town. We are going to pray them out of business.” So they had several prayer meetings. And for several hours at a time they would meet and pray, “God, get rid of this bar. Run them out of business.” Sure enough, after several of these prayer meetings the bar was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. The bar owner found out about the prayer meetings and sued the church. The judge listened to their testimonies and the bar owner said, “It’s their fault! They were praying and because of their prayers God struck my place with lightning.” The pastor said, “No! No, those were just harmless little prayers. We were just doing our church meetings. It’s not our fault God did this.” Then the judge looked at them both and said, “This is very interesting. Here we have a bar owner that believes in the power of prayer and a pastor who does not.”

Let’s put ourselves in Jonah’s shoes for just a second. What may have been going through his mind? Can you think of a time when you had a near death experience? Or maybe just a really bad one? What went through your mind? What did you think about? They say your life flashes before your eyes, maybe Jonah was thinking about growing up as a kid. Maybe he was remembering the prophecies he WANTED to share. Maybe he was starting to regret his decisions. Every situation I’ve ever been in that could be described as life or death only pumped me full of adrenaline and made everything seem to slow down. Almost like I had an extra half of a second to realize what I needed to do to get out of the situation and then act on it. Then again, Jonah was squished in the stomach of this creature, maybe he felt panicked or claustrophobic.

Let’s look at Jonah 2. We are going to bounce around the chapter so, if you haven’t read it, when you get home today you should read it start to finish while it will still be fresh on your mind. When it comes to irony in the book of Jonah, his prayer in chapter 2 is no different. Jonah is in the middle of this life or death moment and he prays a prayer of thanksgiving. He was just thrown into the ocean and then swallowed by a sea monster! He is still in the belly of the fish, not fully out of danger. His situation calls for a lament (a confession of sin or cry of distress punctuated by a hope in God’s future deliverance). Instead of asking God to forgive him or even acknowledging that he messed up, Jonah just says, “Oh, yeah, well this is what happened then God saved me. Thanks God!”

Most of what Jonah says in his prayer quotes several Psalms. We have connections to Psalms 3, 18, 16, 30, 31, 42, 50, 69, 120, and many more. Much of these connections are direct quotes. As we read Jonah’s prayer, it begins to paint a picture of Jonah’s human nature and God’s mercy. There are multiple layers of mirrored images in this chapter, or what is known as chiasm. Essentially, that is where we move forward from one thought to another until a certain point, then move backwards through those thoughts again. You could look at it as if you were climbing a pyramid and each level represents a specific thought. Once you reach the top and come down the other side you pass through those same thoughts, but in reverse order. I believe these thought pairings are known as couplings. (A, B, C, C, B, A; A & A coupled, etc.) One way this stands out is that, in a way, the first and last verses put this chapter in brackets. This type of writing doesn’t always fall on a verse to verse progression, but this one just happens to be neatly organized by verse for us.

1 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish… (Jonah 2:1 ESV)

10 And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land. (Jonah 2:10 ESV)

This way of thinking about scripture and following these thoughts may not be earth shaking to you or completely change your life, but it will help us focus in on specific thoughts about this passage. You may even notice other things that we don’t talk about today. There are many things we can learn from this passage, but we are going to progress through these 4 different thoughts and look at 2 aspects of each thought. This may seem like it goes to fast and raise more questions than answers, but that is good.

Thanks, God! I Promise I won’t do it again.

As we look at these 2 verses the first thing that stands out to me is Jonah’s change in heart and God’s consistent heart of salvation. We’ll talk more about this later, but no matter where we are, God is listening and wants to save Jonah. But for now let’s focus on Jonah and his change in heart.

2 He said: “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry. (Jonah 2:2 NIV)

9 But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’” (Jonah 2:9 NIV)

The first thing you may notice is Jonah’s change of heart. In the second verse Jonah finally speaks to Yahweh. He calls from his distress and cries for help and God hears his voice. In the 9th verse he says that he will sacrifice to God with a voice of thanksgiving and do everything he promised. He’s in trouble, he cries out for help, God saves him, and now he is thankful. This is good. Now Jonah vows to fulfill his obligation and he acknowledges that it is Yahweh who saves. This is good. For you and me, this is an image of those times when we find ourselves in a really bad situation and so we turn to God for help.

But have you ever done that (gone through a bad situation, asked God for help, come out the other side) and then looked back on the experience and realized that you did the same as Jonah. He gets into trouble, cries for help, then he says that he will sacrifice to God with a voice of thanksgiving and do everything he promised. In other words, “God, if you will just get me out of this, I will never do it again! I’ll do anything you want.” Get me out of this ticket, I’ll never speed again! Make the pain go away, I’ll never fall to that temptation again! Make this stomach go away, I’ll never eat Mexican food again!Completely ignored God through most of the day, week, year, maybe most of your life, and then when everything got out of control you treated God like a last resort. One commentary describes Jonah’s actions like this...

“While Jonah appears thankful that the fish has saved him, he doesn’t actually acknowledge his sin or explicitly repent of his actions. He is only thankful that he did not drown.”

The narrator is using some interesting techniques here to make us doubt Jonah. At this point in the story, we don’t know what Jonah is going to do from here. If he is saved, he says he will do what he vowed and we can assume that means he will preach to Nineveh, but we don’t know that will happen. In fact, if we skip ahead we find that he does go to Nineveh, but puts absolutely zero effort into it and even gets mad that God shows the Ninevites mercy. In other words, we find out later that we have good reason to doubt Jonah in chapter 2. There are some key words and thoughts in chapter 2 that connect and compare Jonah to the sailors in chapter 1. For example, Jonah said, “I called” and the same Hebrew word was used to describe the sailors crying out to God in chapter 1. The sailors also offered a sacrifice and made vows to Yahweh. In chapter 2, Jonah says that he WILL SACRIFICE and FULFILL HIS VOW. You may remember from chapter 1 that Jonah’s words didn’t match his actions, but the sailors actually acted. The sailors “feared Yahweh” and Jonah claimed to “fear Yahweh”.

I am chasing rabbits now, but the point is that Jonah represents that part of us that treats God as the emergency button. Claiming to be Christ followers or worship Yahweh, but only falling back on him rather than making him the most important part of our lives. Now, that is the setup for chapter 2. The rest of this chapter gives us insight into how God responds to us. What does God do with Jonah? On the surface it looks like God attacks Jonah for being disobedient, but that isn’t the case at all.

GOD HAS LOYAL LOVE

The next two verses show us two separate levels of meaning as well. Another layer of irony, if you will. I call it “God showing loyal love” but you really have to ponder it for a moment to get there. On the surface it looks like the opposite. It looks like abandonment.

3 You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. (Jonah 2:3 NIV)

8 “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. (Jonah 2:8 NIV)

It LOOKS like God abandoned Jonah just like “those who cling to worthless idols” abandon God. But remember, God didn’t throw Jonah into the sea. Jonah told the sailors to do it! Jonah abandoned God. Jonah turned away from God’s love. Now, I have 2 puns in one sentence for you. Here is the irony that shifts the thought. Hang on tight, here we go… The DEEPER you ponder this thought, the more begins to TURN AROUND. Jonah may have thrown himself into the sea, but in a way, God did throw Jonah into the deep, the heart of the sea. As this chaos surrounds Jonah, God let Jonah’s actions take him further and further into his own desires until he was all alone and all that was left for him was to turn to God and call on him. Jonah got himself into this mess, God used Jonah’s predicament as an opportunity to get him alone with him and let him realize how much he needed God.

God’s loyal love is that no matter how far we try to run from him, he will always be there waiting for us to turn around.

GOD IS FAITHFUL

In the next pair of thoughts show how God is completely devoted to his people. Nothing could ever separate one of God’s own from him and nothing could prevent a sincere prayer from being heard by God.

4 I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’ (Jonah 2:4 NIV) 7 “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. (Jonah 2:7 NIV)

These verses are a direct reference to King Solomon’s prayer dedicating to Yahweh the temple he built. We aren’t going to get into that today, but if you want to follow that rabbit hole, write down 1 Kings 8: 35, 38. Jonah has painted this picture of being banished, or as he describes it in the next verses, sent to the depths of the grave. Below the foundations of the earth to Sheol. Translated as the underworld or hell and described as being this prison from which no one could return and the only way to reach it is through death. Jonah portrayed himself as sinking below the foundations of the earth to this place and caught in it’s grasp, yet just before he reached the point of no return he remembered God and God heard his prayer and delivered him from this place of hopelessness.

Jonah is essentially saying that even though we feel separated from God, alone, trapped in a prison with no way out, God is still waiting for us to look to him. Still waiting for us to ask him for help. What does Jonah mean when he says that he “remembered Yahweh”? How could he forget God? Wasn’t he trying to run away from him this whole time? Didn’t he just say that God threw him in the heart of the sea?

There are days when we all need to remember God. “Okay, Chad. Except that I never forgot Him.” Are you sure? We don’t have to run from God to forget Him. We don’t have to forget God to forget Him. Sometimes we put Him on a shelf and say, “I’m gonna put you right here in my life and go do my thing real quick.” God doesn’t want to wait on a shelf for us to get home. He wants to go EVERYWHERE we go. Then one day, like Jonah we will realize, “I’ve basically been doing life WITHOUT the power of God. I remember my God.”

God is full of loyal love, he is faithful, and…

GOD RESCUES

Has anyone ever almost drowned? I have not. I have started running out of breath under water and then panicked and kicked and swam as hard as I could to get to the surface, but never almost drowned. I would imagine it would be the most horrible feeling. In verse 7, when Jonah said his “LIFE was ebbing away from him”, the word he used is translated as breath, life, soul, being. He uses the same word in verse 5 and it normally gets translated as “neck” or “throat” and the NIV just says “threatened me”, but it is the same word...

5 The waters closed in over me to take my life (my breath, my soul); the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head. (Jonah 2:5 ESV) 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. (Jonah 2:6 ESV)

This chaos was choking me. Killing me. All around me. I couldn’t take the stress. Stuck in the prison beneath the earth, that we talked about earlier, Sheol. This is as close as Jonah gets to any kind of confession. This guy clearly dealt with royalty on a regular basis, because he talks like a politician. Never admits to anything, but describes in great detail all of the horrible things he had to go through. If nothing else, Jonah proves that God does love politicians too.

Earlier I asked if you have ever almost drowned. Has anyone ever felt like you were drowning? Not in the water. In paperwork? In debt? In responsibilities? In expectations? In failure? The weeds wrapped around your head where you feel trapped and helpless? Not just buried in whatever it is, but imprisoned by it? If so, God wants you to ponder this verse today.

Realize something with me… Sure, Jonah may not have acknowledged he screwed up, but at the moment he prayed this prayer of thanksgiving we need to realize what is going on. Jonah was sinking in the ocean, running out of air and the light of his life was blinking out. At that moment, WHAM! He was eaten by a SEA MONSTER! We already know the whole story so we naturally think, “Oh, he’s saved!” But as far as Jonah knew he WAS about to drown, but now he is about to DISSOLVE in some creature. But he praises God anyway.

As far as we know, the only thing telling Jonah that it wasn’t over yet was the fact that God had something for him to do. Jump back down to verse 9 and to me Jonah’s words are saying, “God, thank you! You know what, I’m yours. Whatever you need, I’ll do it. Even if it eats me up on the inside and I am forced to swallow my pride because I don’t fully understand why on earth you would want to do something so insane as to SHOW LOVE to the people who WANT TO DESTROY US. It isn’t mine to decide. Look what I did and you saved me. Deliverance, salvation, belongs to You, Lord.”

God has LOYAL LOVE for us, He is FAITHFUL to us, and He RESCUES us.