Jonah 2-3
Notes
Transcript
Verse 17
Verse 17
There have been many attempts over the years to guess as to what type of fish this was, and that attempt is also the reason that so many scholars want to dismiss this as an allegory, but as we saw last week this was not allegory since Jesus Himself quoted this event in reference to His own time in the tomb which we know was most definitely not an allegory, but the beautiful literal reality of what happened to prove that all He said and did was true...
38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.”
39 But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves a sign; and so no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet;
40 for just as Jonah was in the stomach of the sea monster for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.
41 The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Verses 1-2
Verses 1-2
You will notice that this prayer reads very much like a Psalm.
Because the prayer of Jonah uses so many quotes and figures of speech found in the Psalms some have noted that Jonah was a man who read, memorized and knew the scriptures. Especially when you consider that Jonah wasn’t in any position to be able to read the Scriptures from inside the stomach of that great fish that swallowed him.
Look at how similar his prayer is to the Psalms...
In verse 2 it sounds very similar to...
6 In my distress I called upon the Lord, And cried to my God for help; He heard my voice from His temple, And my cry for help before Him came into His ears.
In verse 3 it sounds very similar to...
7 Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls; All Your breakers and Your waves have passed over me.
In verse 4 it sounds similar to...
22 As for me, I said in my alarm, “I am cut off from Your eyes”; Nevertheless You heard the sound of my pleadings When I called to You for help.
The whole prayer is full of references to various Psalms.
Verses 3-7
Verses 3-7
Verses 8-9
Verses 8-9
Verse 10
Verse 10
The LORD commanded the fish...
The fish didn’t need time to think about whether it was going to be obedient like Jonah and sometimes like us. It was immediately obedient just as it should be.
....and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land...
I’m sure Jonah would have preferred a different way for this to happen and yet I’m also sure that he was grateful to finally be out of the stomach of that fish.
Please take note though that Jonah wasn’t able to get out of that fish’s belly until he first repented.
In a similar way, you and I won’t be delivered from certain things (consequences) in our lives until we have repented before God. Sometimes God has to discipline us and when He does it is always with our repentance and restoration in mind.
Just for reference Ninevah is about 375 miles from the Mediterranean Sea so we know the fish didn’t vomit Jonah out an Ninevah.
Jonah was still going to have to be truly repentant and obedient to God’s command and call on his life.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Verses 1-2
Verses 1-2
the second time - Thank God that He is gracious and merciful toward us.
Side note - When we stray away from the LORD, He will do what is necessary to draw us back to Him and when we do repent and return to Him He often times picks up where we left off with Him instead of making us start all over again.
We should not be surprised by that since we know that God has a plan for our lives and will knows how to bring our lives into subjection to His will when we repent and follow Him faithfully again.
Now that God has Jonah’s attention and his heart again an interesting thing occurs that is different from chapter 1.
In chapter 1 God told Jonah...
2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry out against it, because their wickedness has come up before Me.”
But here God says to Jonah...
2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you.”
In chapter 1 God told Jonah to cry against Ninevah and that made Jonah flee in the other direction, but here God tells Jonah to simply go to Ninevah and once he gets there God will give him a message to preach or proclaim to Ninevah.
Verses 3-4
Verses 3-4
So Jonah got up and went…
a three days walk - the idea is either that it would take 3 days to walk through Ninevah and its suburbs (the metro area) or that Ninevah was so large that it would take 3 days to walk around the outside perimeter of the city.
Overthrown - The idea of overthrown is a destruction that occurs because of the judgement of God. as in the way God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah...
25 and He overthrew those cities, and all the surrounding area, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.
6 For the wrongdoing of the daughter of my people Is greater than the sin of Sodom, Which was overthrown as in a moment, And no hands were turned toward her.
11 “I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, And you were like a log snatched from a fire; Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the Lord.
While the recorded prophetic message that Jonah preached is only 8 words long, it is possible that those 8 words are recorded to show the emphasis of the overall message that God gave Jonah to preach.
Verses 5-9
Verses 5-9
This is repentance in action!
They believed, fasted, put on sackcloth, and called on God to forgive them of their sin, hoping or trusting that God would be gracious to them.
vehemently = earnestly, mightily, with force of passion
Notice that they believed in God - This is the first step in getting your life on track with God isn’t it? You must first believe in the God before whom you are repenting.
But let’s not forget what caused them to believe in God.
The faithful preaching of God’s word by Jonah gave them something to believe in.
This is of course the issue that the Apostle Paul brings up for the world today in regards to Christ...
8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching,
9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;
10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.
11 For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him will not be Put to shame.”
12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him;
13 for “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
14 How then are they to call on Him in whom they have not believed? How are they to believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?
15 But how are they to preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!”
16 However, they did not all heed the good news; for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our report?”
17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.
You see God hasn’t changed the method of bringing people to a saving faith. Just as it was in Jonah’s day, so it was in Paul’s day, and so it is today.
Verse 10
Verse 10
This response from God is in line with His character...
7 At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot it, to tear it down, or to destroy it;
8 if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I planned to bring on it.
For those of you who were really hoping that God would judge Ninevah for their sin like Jonah was… If you read Nahum you will see that God does judge Ninevah for their sin against Him in about 150 years later after they return to their wickedness and refuse to repent before God.
Sadly we can too often be like the “older brother“ in the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15) who is more concerned with judgement than repentance because we’ve been doing the right thing and others haven’t.