LifeWay Explore the Bible Series for Dec. 7: A fish tale: When the grace of God spat_112403

Posted: 11/24/03

LifeWay Explore the Bible Series for Dec. 7

A fish tale: When the grace of God spat

Jonah 1:1-2:9

By John Duncan

Lakeside Baptist Church, Granbury

God's call to serve comes to every Christian. The book of Jonah relays the message of God's call, one man's journey through disobedience and obedience, and God's gracious hand at work on a wide sea of trouble.

God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh to preach the gospel. Nineveh, in the common language of Eugene Peterson, was not a “tall-steeple church with a cheesecake congregation,” but it was a place where wickedness reigned and where God's grace longed to transform hearts. Jonah fled like a runaway to Tarshish “from the presence of the Lord” (1:3). Think of Nineveh as God's call, plan, service and will. Think of Tarshish as man or woman's quest to please the self and an odyssey of “storm trouble” (Peterson). Trouble comes when we flee from God.

Cry out in the deep and dark

Jonah prayed to God in his storm trouble (2:1). Jonah had run from God's presence, or literally, “from God's face.” Jonah flees on a ship to Tarshish, a storms erupts, Jonah is thrown overboard and fights for his survival on a deep and dark sea. The power of the storm is described as broken up (1:4), swelling (v. 11, “tempestuous”) and raging like a man in a flash of red-hot anger (v. 15).

The sailors ask Jonah for help. They ask him “Why?” They draw straws to see if Jonah is the reason for the tossing ship on the sea and then throw him into the crashing waves of water (vv. 4-15). The storm calms, the sailors on the ship find relief and turn to God with a sacrifice and vows (v. 16). In the process of God seeking to get Jonah's attention, he got the attention of the sailors.

A large fish, possibly a whale, swallows Jonah whole (2:1). Jonah finds himself sucking seaweed and surviving in the bone-lined fish's belly on a wide sea in a tight space where darkness reigns. All Jonah knows to do is pray (v. 2).

P.T. Forsyth once said, “Prayer, true prayer, does not allow us to deceive ourselves. It relaxes the tension of our self-inflation. It produces clearness of spiritual vision.” Jonah prayed by confessing his anguish, his darkness, his condition, and his need for God's light and rescue (vv. 2-4).

Saint John of the Cross, a 16th century poet and mystic, once described his own anguish as a “dark night of the soul … as an inner sense of exile.” Jonah was exiled in the darkness of a fish's belly for three days and nights. In darkness Jonah feels pressure (literally, “affliction”).

Is God listening?

Jonah knew his choices entangled and imprisoned his life in a web of seaweed (v. 5). He acknowledged what his eyes before had rejected–that he needed to look to God and his presence again (v. 4). Worship in the darkness gives pause to reflect on God's light. Jonah's worship led him to confess his own sin (v. 6). Jonah described his life on the run against God's call as a move from God's mountain (of grace) to a fall to a low place on earth (“baseness,” referred to as the base of a mountain, v. 6). Jonah professed his need for God, as one who could deliver (literally, “overpower”) his life from the pit of destruction, sin and death. Jonah knew his life was “cut off” from God.

Jonah again described his condition as faint or weary in the darkness (literally, “to swoon,” v. 7). He remembered God's call, plan and will for himself and Nineveh. God's will never moves in isolation. It always includes God's light, spiritual eyes to see, spiritual ears to hear and service to others in God's name. Jonah reveals his need for God's presence, described as his inner, holy presence filling the temple (v. 7). Jonah contrasts the filling of God with the emptiness of idols, a reference to things that are breathless or without life. True, abundant life is found in God's mercy. Jonah admits that the people who worship idols, those who run from God and those who flee God's call, forsake their own mercy (v. 8). It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed (Lamentations 3:22-23). God's mercy spits Jonah on the shore (Jonah 2:10). Darkness surrenders to the light. God hears Jonah's cry from the deep and dark.

A reversal

Jonah experiences a reversal of fortune by God's grace. Amid seaweed and vomit, sand and a shore, God renews Jonah in an act of worshipful sacrifice (v. 9). The great reversal in Jonah's life occurs in confession and repentance. Jonah sacrifices to God and thanks God. He renews his vow to follow God's call, plan and will. He aims to see God's vision for himself and for Nineveh. He longs to hear God's voice and respond as God's servant. He acknowledges that salvation, both for him in a raging, dark sea of trouble and for the wicked Ninevites, comes through God (v. 9).

The preacher and commentator Charles Spurgeon said, “Jonah learned this sentence of theology in a strange college.” Jonah attended the school of hard knocks, running feet, raging seas and a dark night of life and soul, but through it all God's mercy spit Jonah onto the shores of God's service.

Questions for discussion

Has running from God ever brought you to a dark, smelly place you didn't want to be?