Book of Jonah - Ch. 1, Vs. 17-Ch. 2, Vs. 10 (06/18/2000)

Jonah in the Fish and God’s Sovereign Preparation

Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Yes, yes, absolutely. That's right. Was in the right place at the right time.

Had prepared past tense. So, Joy, I wonder how this fish knew to be right there. You mean God has power over animal world? Seems as though they may have just thrown him straight into the jaws of this mammal.

Jonah leaves Israel and arrives at his destination, the belly of a fish. So many of our troubles are God dragging us. Which would cease if we would but stand up and walk where he wants us to go. Does this have any bearing on the fact that no matter how we struggle and try to escape our duty, we cannot?

After we've run through all of the briar patches and scratched ourselves all over, we find we still arrive at the very place at which we're supposed to go. But even the briar patches were but preparing us for the place which we're supposed to go.

Remember this, folks, there is not one moment without duty. It's always there. Now, last week, I asked you this week to think about the appearance of Jonah after he arrived in Nineveh. I know some of you have been thinking about it.

Did anyone write out anything? Debbie did. Would you pass it up here, please? Did anyone else? Let me read some of this to you, at least. As Jonah arrived or entered Nineveh, he must have been quite a sight, thrown overboard without his things.

I never thought of that. He would be without a change of clothes, no money to buy any more. I imagine his clothes were pretty ragged from the stomach juices of the fish. And the fact that he was vomited out of that fish, his hair was probably in such a bad shape, unless he stopped along the way to wash it.

His skin must have had sores and ulcers all over from the acid and the long walk in the sun. His countenance was probably a bit on the broken side, rather downcast in a pitiful way. His heart was not in his mission, even if he was obeying it.

Then we have something on Noah, which we'll get to later. All right, let me hear some thoughts from somebody else now about the appearance of Jonah. I think we can all agree on that. Wasn't he partially digested?

Well, yes, he was. Now, anyone else on the appearance of Jonah? He was what? He had no hair on his body of any kind. Eyebrows, eyelashes, everything. All of the hair was gone. He was bleached white with ugly yellow streaked spots and stripes all over him.

His fingernails had started to be deteriorated, toenails. His sandals were gone. His appearance was such that it would frighten a person. There has never been anyone look like him since then. Now, think, if you will, all of this was ordained of God.

Seems strange to us, but this made him a more efficient, a more striking witness to these people. And we'll get over into that in a moment. But when that fish spit him up, I like to use the word vomit, but I just did, didn't I?

Jonah hit the ground running and he didn't stop till he got to the end of it. Boy, he knew all the time where he was. So the book of Jonah is not a fish story. Now, we have him in the belly of the whale.

Jonah’s Prayer from the Fish’s Belly

Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord, his God, out of the fish's belly. Let me ask you a question. Do you have your emergency prayer all ready and memorized? Have you practiced it over and over so you'll be able to recite it in any circumstance?

If you think Jonah waited to pray until he hit the bottom, you're wrong. I think he began to pray when he saw the fish open his mouth. Do you think Jonah said, oh, I'm in real trouble now? I believe he's already on line with God.

You know how sometimes it takes you a long time to get your email to come up on screen. I think he was already there immediately. He was already connected. I think he prayed from his heart without knowing what he was going to say, but he said it.

This is what he said as far as the scripture is concerned. I think it was on his way down. He said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me out of the belly of hell, cried I, and thou heardest my voice, for thou hast cast.

The word cast means to throw with violence. Thou hast cast me into the deep, the deep, dark dungeon of the depth of the sea. Try to put yourself right inside of Jonah. You have asked them in to throw you overboard.

You didn't ask them to throw you into a whale or a fish, whatever this was. We'll call it a whale. But you've cast me into the deep in the midst of the seas and the flood, midst a place where I had no sight or safety.

You compassed me about. All of thy billows and thy waves passed over me. The unending sound of the rushing force of your mighty power launched me into the shrouded world of departed souls. He was, he was in his grave.

Yet he knew what the Lord had told him to do. Do you put a live man in a grave? David, let me go straight to you this morning. Do you think Noah died? There would have been some oxygen. Do you think he waited till the third day to pray?

You'll have to arrive at your own decision because I have no concrete proof either way. Our Lord did make the statement as Jonah was in the belly of the fish, three days and three nights. He didn't say as he was dead in the fish.

But Jesus was in the grave that long. Jonah was in his grave that long, his first grave. And then the verse four, he says, then I said, I am cast out of eyesight, yet I will look again toward the holy temple.

Now, what do you suppose, Debra, he meant by that statement? I'm out of your sight, but I'm going to look at your holy temple again. All right. All right. Do you think that Jonah believed God? Do you think he believed him before he ever started on this trip?

If he didn't, he wouldn't run, would he? Well, when he says, I don't think Jonah was just praying in case there was a God. Yes, that's right. Good point. I will look again. I did at one time and I will again.

He could be affirming the fact that he really believed that he was going to Nineveh and that by some miraculous power he would get out of this situation. He could have also believed that this would pertain to eternity.

So I think that whatever Jonah was thinking was just the thoughts that were coming into his mind as they rushed in. And as Greg pointed out, the word again does mean that he knew he was wrong. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul.

Now, what is soul? Soul is life. The waters compassed me about even to my life. The depth closed me around about. The weeds were wrapped about my head. Seaweeds. Have you ever, anyone here ever had experience to look at seaweeds?

Some of them can reach the length of 25, 30 foot. And of course, this is what the whale was eating. And I think that wrapping around was the mixture going on in the belly of the whale. The digestive process had started.

That's all right. I doubt very much if there was still seaweed around him because it was some 600 miles that he had to travel. And he would have pulled most of them off by then. 600 miles on foot. This might have had some bearing on his first refusal to go.

But not the second. So Jonah's saying I got drenched while I was in there. The creature must have been eating a lot of seaweed or it got wrapped all around him, around his head. So he's not spending a nice weekend fishing, is he?

I went down to the bottoms of the mountains. The earth with her bars was about me forever. Yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord, my God. Now, David, I'm not particularly picking on you, but was this written while he was in the belly of the whale?

Verse 20, verse six or afterwards? When did he say this? Yes, that's right. And you brought my life up from corruption. O Lord, my God. You remember, Jesus was not suffered to see corruption. With her bars, this is a quote or a use of the world, the language of the old English.

They spoke of death as being bars. They were barred in. So that's where this phrase in the translation came from, the bars of death. Now, the difference between Jonah and Jesus was that the body of Jesus did not even begin to decay.

Jonah's did. It started immediately to become digestive matter for this fish. There is on record at least six incidents where one was a some kind of shark, large, short shark, and the others were whales.

That they knew the person that had disappeared, fallen overboard. But later they caught the fish. And when they cut it open, they found the man. He was unconscious, but it was alive. So this very incident has happened since then.

And it is on record. So it's not an impossible situation that we're discussing. It could actually happen. Fortunately, always to somebody else, not me. Oh, yes, absolutely. He didn't take any candles with him.

Darkness has always had a horrible fascination for me. I can think back sometime in my early, early childhood. And it had to be out of, well, no need to go in that. You don't hear about my life. Verse seven, when my soul fainted within me, when my life fainted, I remembered the Lord.

Now, he remembered after his life fainted. And my prayer came in unto me into thine holy temple. He could see. I believe that within five minutes Jonah passed out. But in those five minutes, he remembered God, knew his prayer had been heard.

When he says my soul fainted, he means he died. I think he promised God right then that he'd do exactly what he's supposed to do. That he was confessing for not having done it prior. And he knew that God heard his prayer.

Prayer come in unto thee into thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. Now, this seems like a verse out of context. It appears as though in the middle of all of this seriousness, well, this is serious too, but that there is a thought flashes in his mind.

And like some of you that I know, you just write down that thought because they come. Something sparked it and you don't remember what. And here he says, they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.

First of all, what is vanity, Diane? All right. Those that observe, Clarence, what's it mean to observe here? All right. Now, Greg, it says lying vanities. We've already established the fact that vanity is an empty nothing.

What's he mean by a lying vanity? Those that observe these kinds of things forsake their own mercy. What about that, Greg? All right. Who has a thought? All right, David. That's right. That's right. I have here a pretty little package.

Very attractive. And I'll give it to anybody that will come up here and get it. You can have what's in it.

All right. It's yours. I don't like it. I'll give it to someone else. That's premeditation. I know it is. But I have a generous heart, so I'll give it to you. No, you're to open it. I'm to open it? Because it's yours.

OK. There's nothing in it. Well, you don't know that. Oh, I know it. Because that's a lying vanity. I assumed there was something in it, and there's nothing in it. So my assumption is what I want in it.

But you don't know that until you look. Well, I already know there's nothing in it. I know the thing. I wouldn't let you do the story. You want me to open it, really? Yes. Because that that's in it is yours.

But if I didn't come up, you wouldn't be able to explain the story. Well, I'd have gotten it. There is.

That's the way Satan works. It looks pretty. It makes you want it, especially if it's a free gift. But it's empty. Vanity. Don't look on the outside. Don't look at the immediate. Look at the consequences that follow.

She tore up my pretty back. All right. This verse, too, I looked at also as perhaps a confession on part of Jonah. He wants to advise others to not yield to temptation like he did. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving.

I will pay that that that I have vowed salvation is of the Lord. I will pay that that I have vowed, Greg. Salvation is of the Lord. Fred, why would he make such a statement? This. Because he didn't know.

But what there was something else he was going to have to go through. I think he believed before he ever run away or he would have run away. I think he believes more firmly now, having gone through the experience.

And this is what our troubles and trials are to do is to draw us closer to the Lord. Everything that comes to us is designed to teach us to become more Christlike. Now, don't forget that even in the midst of a crisis, remember it.

Do you remember when Jonah says, I won't go to Nineveh? And now he's changed his mind. I wonder why. Did the Lord put Jonah through this experience because he would not go to Nineveh? Just remember that more than likely, I cannot prove it because I wasn't there.

But more than likely, Jonah thought that he went through this because he refused to go. Now, standing on the sideline, we know different. This was ordained of God, and this was exactly what's supposed to be happened, supposed to supposed to happen.

The Lord did not tell him when he told him to go that first you've got to go through a fish. But he did. He does not tell us ahead of time. I'm extremely affected. Possible, but we must remember that we're taking quite a while to read it.

I think all of this flashed through his mind immediately. And he didn't waste time. But whether he died or whether he didn't, I don't know. I think I was kind of pleased that the Lord did all of this to make Jonah a more perfect witness.

The same with us. We're put through things to prepare us for something that's coming. We don't know what it is. David was put to tending the sheep when he didn't want to. In the process, he killed a lion, killed a bear, not knowing that Goliath was coming.

But if he hadn't done what he's supposed to do, he wouldn't have been able to kill Goliath. The very same thing with us. Well, all of this brought him to the place where even though he still hates these people, and none of them, he is ready to go.

Why does Jonah owe this duty to God? Why does Jonah owe this duty unto God? What? No, he didn't ask him to. He told him to. If the Lord tells us to do something, then we are in debt to him to do it. It's just that simple.

The very fact that he tells us makes us owe the duty to him. We have no say so in it. Salvation is only of God only. It does not come from any other place. Here, Jonah is looking primarily for his physical salvation.

He is prophetically talking about salvation into eternity. The elect person is saved without any movement on his part, in his mind or physical body. Where did Jonah learn this fact? Salvations of the Lord.

Where did he absolutely know that's true? On the way down, I think. Verse 10, And the Lord spake unto the fish, and he vomited out Jonah upon dry ground. Jonah hit the ground running. He didn't stop for the next 600 miles.

600 miles. How many miles a day, Clarence? Walk 20 miles a day. So this could have taken him a month. That's a long ways and a long time to contemplate what I must do when I get there and from where I come.

Well, he's now willing to accept everything, to do everything. He's a mess. I don't know if he wanted to go around water or not in order to clean up. Perhaps he did. And we'll go into chapter three next week.

Well, that's around the city. So if he could walk 20 miles a day, that'd be miles around. And that's about right. If you measure that map you have, it's laid out to scale. In fact, it has a scale printed on it.

David, did you get one? All right. Is there anything else? Debbie, I appreciated your writing it out for me. I know it's long ways, but I really didn't know how far until I began to really study it. And that was just about 600 miles flat.

He had to go up and down also. It was not an easy trip. And traveling by himself at that time in history was a dangerous undertaking. Of course, he wasn't really by himself. But as far as physically, he was.

It would sap your energy much quicker, wouldn't it? All right. I hope we're learning as we go through this how we are pictured and how our country is pictured and how it's prophetic talking about the future.

I have a question, but I'm going to hold it till next week. If there's nothing else, then let's stand and we'll be dismissed.