Learning In The Belly Of The Fish

Amen. Please remain standing as we will go into the reading of God's Word. The message is going to be a little bit different than what's in your bulletin. Pastor Conley, obviously, is not here this afternoon.

He's not well, and so I'm taking his spot, and instead of going through Isaiah, I thought it'd be good for us to take a quick detour, so I'd like for you to turn to the book of Jonah. It's in the 12 Minor Prophets, right before the New Testament.

It's a short, four-chapter book, and turn to Jonah chapter 1, starting verse 17 and then into chapter 2. Hear you this afternoon the word of the Lord. The Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, I called out to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me. And out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.

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. Then I said, I am driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.

And the waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me, and weeds were wrapped about my head. At the roots of the mountains I went down to the land whose bars closed up upon me forever.

Yet you brought me up my life from the pit, O Lord my God, where my life was fainting away. And I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love, but I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you.

What I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord. And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Father, we do come before you this afternoon praying that you would help us again by the power of your spirit to understand and discern what is right and what is true.

Father, lead our discussion, our time together this afternoon as we turn our hearts to prayer for your people, prayer for your glory, prayer for the things that are before us. And we ask God that you'd grant us power from your spirit on high to do all these things and more for the glory of your name's sake, amen.

Jonah’s Call and Flight to Tarshish

So this will be a fairly quick sermon, and the reason is because, of course, Pastor Conley at the last minute wasn't able to do so, and I didn't have a prepared sermon, but I felt like this would be an appropriate text for us to examine this afternoon.

And the reason being is because doesn't it feel at times maybe you're in a season of life where you feel like you're in the belly of the fish, where you feel like you're surrounded, you have nowhere to go, you feel like you're being closed in upon, and your options are running thin.

This is what we find ourselves hearing in God's word in Jonah chapter 1. What's interesting and what's of note is I know that previous years, a couple years ago, this church went through the book of Jonah, so the story may be familiar to many of you, and many are familiar with the basics of this story.

There's a guy named Jonah, he gets eaten by a big fish. Pretty self-explanatory, right? A couple years ago I also went through this book and I preached through it, and I remember preaching through that very fact, the part where he gets eaten by the fish, and he survives.

He's in the belly of the fish for three days. And the question that was brought up immediately, there was a guy who was visiting for the first time, and he asked me, do you believe that literally happened?

And I said, yes, I do. I never saw the guy again. And the reason was because a friend of his who had invited him, he told me afterwards that he could not believe that we believed that that story was true.

Well, here we are. God's word is true. Is it not, brothers and sisters? We take God's word for what it says, and we believe that this story is true, and it's authenticated by the Lord Jesus Christ himself in Matthew chapter 12, where he authenticates the story of Jonah.

What's remarkable about the story of Jonah is how little we actually know about the story and the circumstance that led Jonah to the belly of the fish. And what's also remarkable is how much we can learn from this story today.

When you look at Jonah chapter one, for instance, you don't have a whole lot of context. Here's what we know. In verse one, now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Ammonite, saying, arise and go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come upon me.

God calls Jonah. Jonah's the prophet. He says, Jonah, I got a mission for you. I want you to go to Nineveh. Now here's what you may not know about the context surrounding this story. Jonah obviously is an Israelite, and he is called to go to a place called Nineveh, which is not in Israel, not even close, and in fact it was a city known for its wickedness in those days.

So much so, it's kind of like maybe how a lot of people think of maybe a modern wicked site today, if we think of evil cities across the world. I'm not just talking about the United States, I'm talking about wicked places where there's lawlessness and there's chaos.

I'm not talking about San Francisco, but I'm talking about other cities around the world, maybe third world countries where it's just absolutely destitute. And you probably wouldn't mind or it wouldn't come to your mind to maybe pray for the salvation of a city like that.

You'd say, well, they've gone to hell already. They are reaping the reward of their wickedness. And yet God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, this great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come upon me, Jehovah says to his servant.

Now here's what we can see come forward from the story. Verse three, but Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish and he paid the fare and went down to it to go with them to Tarshish away from the presence of the Lord.

So Jehovah says, Jonah, you're my guy. I want you to go to Nineveh. And what does Jonah do? He flees. He flees the call of God. And how does it go for him? Does it go well or does it go terribly wrong?

Well, in this instance, things begin to turn upside down for Jonah. You know the rest of the story. He goes to the ship. Storms begin to encompass the ship as they're going away. And the people on the ship become suspicious and say, who has sinned here?

Who has done wrong here to now bring forth this wrath upon us? And all eyes go upon Jonah. Have you ever been in a circumstance like that? Probably not quite like this one, but where things are constantly going wrong and you're just asking yourself, what did I do wrong?

What has gone wrong in my life? What did I do wrong? Who's done wrong against me? What's going on here? And we begin to try to find a reason for the evil or the calamity that is coming upon us. Here's the moral of the story of the first couple of verses of Jonah.

You see, Jonah was called by God to live among a people, not his own. And that call, at least on the surface, felt like it was too big for Jonah. Jonah did not feel prepared. Jonah did not want to walk by faith.

Jonah did not want to obey the call, the command of his father, of his God. Instead, Jonah went the way of flesh and decided to allow himself to be ruled by fear and not by obedience to his heavenly father.

And so Jonah was called to live among a people, not his own, and he was called to a people who looked different, with a different culture, a different language, and a different set of customs than his own.

You can see how that could be a challenging call, and also because of the fact that Nineveh was known for its great evil. How could God call me to Nineveh? Of all people, why would you call me, Jehovah, to this great call?

Why would you use me to go to these people? They're probably going to kill me. And yet, Jonah decided not to walk by faith, but to walk by the flesh, and he fled the call. You see, Jonah had written off this people and fled his calling to them, and no wonder he later finds himself thrown overboard where he has an encounter with a big fish.

Again, you know the rest of the story. He gets tossed over into the ocean, into the sea, and he's encountered by a big fish. Now, people will speculate, what kind of fish was it? All we know is that it was big.

We don't know if it was a whale or a shark, probably not a shark, a shark probably would have enjoyed him a little too well. Probably a whale of some sort, and it consumes him, but yet he doesn't perish.

Notice, again, what it says at the end of Jonah 1, verse 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. It was in this state, after disobeying the call of God, after being found disobedient to the master's call, he finds himself encountering this big fish that consumes him.

The Belly of Sheol and the Prayer of Repentance

Now, not to draw too much parallels here, but I think it is appropriate to draw some. I think it's appropriate for us sometimes to draw this parallel where we find ourselves in the belly of a beast due to our own failures, to see past our own prejudices, our preconceived notions, our comfort zones, and especially the call of God on our lives.

You see, God's calling may seem daunting. In fact, it usually is. God's call upon our lives is usually bigger than us. It's usually bigger than one person. Therefore, it is of such great importance that we recognize and realize this, that God's call in our lives is bigger than us because God is bigger than our hearts, it says in 1 John.

God is bigger than our hearts. God is bigger than you. Therefore, what he will call you to will often be bigger than yourself. We have to sometimes look past our failures, look past our prejudices, look past our preconceived notions, look past our comfort zones, and there we find the power of God's call.

Especially now living in the era of COVID -19 and diseases and inflation and all these things that we're confronted with, whether it be personal, family challenges, as we cope through these difficult times, Jonah couldn't see past his own sense of identity.

Even though God was asking him to be and to think bigger than himself. Friends, it's no wonder we live in divided times, and divided times where we're driven by partisan lines, cultural lines, racial lines, and sometimes even county lines.

But division is actually nothing new. You see, it is human nature to find distinction and to divide based upon our distinctiveness. Jonah as he looked at this call to Nineveh, he probably started to point out all the differences between him, an Israelite, a Jew, a worshiper of Yahweh, and all these other people.

It's easy to draw distinction. It's easy to cast others as just that, others. But it's difficult to look past oneself and to the call of God upon our lives. What's not entirely unlike us as human beings is when we find things that we find in common with others, we tend to stick with those people, don't we?

Here as a church, we're a very distinctive church. We have very distinctive beliefs and distinctive practices, and there's a comfort when we come around each other and we do the things that we are growing accustomed to.

But isn't it interesting when God calls us outside of our comfort zones, when God calls us to be called to a different people group, a different community, a different church maybe, a different job, a different set of people?

How will we do when the occasion arises for us to reach out to the others? Can I tell you this, church? God is on a mission to find the others. Those who have been written off, those who have been forgotten of, those who have been left behind, God is seeking and searching for such individuals.

And do you know who he uses to reach such lost ones? You and I, the church. The church is the modern day Jonah. We are called by God to a distinct people, not our own, to a people that is different from us, a people who have sinned against a great and terrible God.

This is our calling, brothers and sisters. And so what lessons is there to learn in the belly of the fish? It is in the belly of the fish that Jonah recognizes his sin, recognizes his error for not following the commands of Yahweh.

And he says this in Jonah chapter 2 verse 1,. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, I called out to the Lord out of my distress. He answered me, out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.

Jonah found himself, what he calls, in the belly of Sheol. This is literally in the belly of the beast. Sheol is kind of another way of saying the grave or the place of death, the realm of the dead. And he says, out of the belly of Sheol, out of death itself I cried and you heard my voice.

You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me and all your waves and your billows passed over me. You know, the sea is a beautiful thing. Water is a beautiful thing.

You've been to the ocean or to a deep lake, and maybe on the, as you're on the beach, you can see, like Lake Tahoe, for instance, how many people have been to Lake Tahoe before? A couple of you? I think everyone should go, it's beautiful, isn't it?

And you go on Lake Tahoe and you put your feet in the water, and maybe you're waist deep, and you can see right to the bottom, can't you? Isn't it incredible? Isn't it beautiful, pristine, clean? But if you go further and further and further into the middle of Lake Tahoe, it is pitch dark, very dark hue, very dark blue.

You can't even see to the bottom anymore. It is deep, it is dark, it is billowy, it is scary. It's like looking into the depths of the deep of hell itself, of Sheol itself, which is why, appropriately, Jonah uses this language.

Obviously, he's literally in the belly of the beast, in the belly of the fish. He's literally in the midst of the sea, and he uses this language to describe death itself, to describe the state of the dead.

For he cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me, and all your ways and your billows passed over me. This is a description, not just of literally what's happening around him in the belly of the fish, but also a description of death itself, and that state of separation from God.

Then I said, I am driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look upon your holy temple. The waters closed in over me to take my life, deep surrounded me, the weeds are wrapped about my head. Interesting, a lot of information here that's actually hearkening to Christ himself.

Notice how long Jonah was in the belly of the fish, three days and three nights, foreshadowing the coming burial of God's own son, Jesus Christ, who was in the belly of the earth for three days. Likewise, as Jonah is, in a sense, alive in the belly of the fish, so Christ will also be alive, in a sense, as he goes into the center of the world.

And as he is praying out of distress to the Lord in the midst of his being drawn into the depths of the belly of the fish, so also Christ, in Matthew's gospel, cries out to the Lord upon his crucifixion, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?

So also, as it says here in verse five, that weeds were wrapped about my head, also foreshadowing the future king who would be crucified with a crown of thorns. You see, the difference between Jonah and Christ is that when Christ was called to a people not his own, when Christ was called to be selfless and to go down into the world that he created, to take upon himself human flesh, take upon himself the servanthood and also the form of servant and the form of the slave, he came down and he accomplished the will of his father.

He was the perfect Jonah. He did not disobey his father. He was indeed that perfect prophet who went to a people not his own to save a people from their sins. And as the waters surround Jonah, it says in verse six, at the roots of the mountains, talking about the mountains of the deep of the ocean, and I went down to the land whose bars closed up upon me forever, yet you brought up my life from the pit, oh Lord, my God, also foreshadowing the future resurrection of Christ.

You see, Jonah in this moment could reason, it's all done. My life is over. I will die here in this pit. Yet he knew something. And what he knew is that though he had sinned, though he had erred, though he did not obey the voice of the Lord his God, he knew there was salvation.

And where would that salvation come from? He says in verse seven, when my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.

But with the voice of thanksgiving, I will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay. And he declares this word, salvation belongs to the Lord. You know what's interesting of this text is that he confesses that salvation is from God and God alone.

But in the Hebrew in which this was originally written, there's an astonishing declaration here in verse nine, in the belly of the fish, he declares a Hebrew word. Now the name Jesus has a significance and it has power as we all believe and know.

The name of Jesus has power to save. But the name Jesus itself, in the Greek, Jesus, in the Hebrew, Yeshua, it literally means Jehovah, Yahweh, the Lord is my salvation. And this is the same exact word used here in the Hebrew.

The words that he cried out in the belly of the fish was, Yehoshua, salvation belongs to the Lord. Out of the belly of the fish, Jonah proclaims the name that saves. The only hope for humanity, the only hope for mankind, the name of Jesus.

And what he vowed, he repaid, that salvation belongs to the Lord. Salvation is found only in Jesus. Therefore, brothers and sisters, consider this. In times that we're living in that are so divided, where we even as Christians sometimes feel like we cannot step out of our own comfort zones to reach a people not our own, I want you to have God's missionary heart towards all people.

In a few moments, we're going to be praying for nations, and we want to pray with this heart in mind that we pray for people not our own who are different, who speak a different language, different culture, different backgrounds, different beliefs, different religions, and yet we are called to find even such ones for the kingdom of God.

At the conclusion of the book of Jonah, God demonstrates mercy to the outsiders. So again, many of you know how the story ends. The belly, after this prayer, in verse 10 of chapter 2 of Jonah, it says the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

And so Jonah now goes forward into Nineveh. He preaches a message to them. Even at this state, he preaches to them begrudgingly. And to his surprise and even to Jonah's dismay, the people of Nineveh repent and turn to Yahweh.

At the conclusion of the book of Jonah, God demonstrates mercy to the outsiders whom Jonah had originally written off. In order for a people to start healing some of the divisions that we face as a people, we should remember God's heart for those who we consider the others or the outsiders.

Jesus often uses the outsiders and the rejects of society to put to shame the arrogance of our prejudices and to remind us that true unity is not the surrender of our distinctions but rather in the embrace of love for God and our neighbors.

And that, friends, is the story of Jonah. To love and obey God and to love our neighbors, even those who are a little further off, even those who are a little bit different, even those of a different custom, different culture, different background, we're called to love the outsiders and reach them for the kingdom of God.

Jonah, the Outsiders, and God’s Missionary Heart

Let me pray. Father, when you give us a missionary heart to reach those who are different, to reach those who are outside the camp, to reach those who are in the city of sin, and help us, Lord, not to come to conclusions like Jonah did, where he begrudgingly preached the message and did not rejoice in their salvation, but rather, Lord, let us look to Jesus, the true and perfect Jonah, the true and perfect prophet of God's people, who rejoices over the sinner who finds repentance.

Lord, help us to preach this message of repentance to the city of sin in which we are in, here in the Bay Area. Lord, help us, Father, to reach all people of all nations, of all backgrounds, even in this place, in our neighborhood, in our communities.

Father, help us, Lord, to bring forth the Lord's compassion upon a people who do not yet know you. And Lord, help us also, Father, to put these things into practice in our own lives, not to come to conclusions that would be ungodly, but rather, to have your heart and patience.

We pray, God, that you would relent upon the disaster that will come upon this place, should the people here repent. And we pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.