Thanking God

Jonah 1:17-2:10

11/2/14            D. Marion Clark

Introduction

We now come to the miracle that makes Jonah famous – his being swallowed by the big fish.

Text

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.

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, ² saying,

The prayer is written as Hebrew poetry. The distinctive feature of Hebrew poetry is the repetition of a thought in the next line. See it in the opening verse.

“I called out to the Lord, out of my distress,
    and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
    and you heard my voice.

Jonah cries out to the Lord, and the Lord hears. He responds. That is the theme of the prayer. In his need he called out to the Lord and the Lord saved him. The rest of the prayer develops this theme.

Verses 3 and 4 present the first stanza. In verse three he describes what happened.

³ 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.

Notice that Jonah ascribes to the Lord what happened to him. We know that the mariners actually cast Jonah overboard at his recommendation. But Jonah says that the Lord cast him into the sea. And he ascribes even the elements of the stormy sea as belonging to God: “your” waves; “your” billows. His point is that the Lord is behind all that is taking place.

⁴ Then I said, ‘I am driven away
    from your sight;
yet I shall again look
    upon your holy temple.’

Though Jonah is in peril, he nevertheless has hope. Note how he describes it: “yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.” He is going to speak of the temple again and make an inference to it near the end, so the concept of the temple is significant. What is that significance? The temple signifies the presence of the Lord.

Remember how Jonah’s flight was described as fleeing the presence of the Lord. Though Yahweh is everywhere, there is a sense that his unique presence resides in the temple in Jerusalem. Perhaps Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple best explains.

“But will God indeed dwell with man on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built! ¹⁹ Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O Lord my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you, ²⁰ that your eyes may be open day and night toward this house, the place where you have promised to set your name, that you may listen to the prayer that your servant offers toward this place. ²¹ And listen to the pleas of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place. And listen from heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive” (2 Chronicles 6:18-21).

Of course, God does not dwell in a building on earth. Nevertheless, he determined that he would choose a nation for himself that would reside in a particular location, and in that location he would have a temple where his people and all true worshipers could present their sacrifices to him. And for those who could not literally be at the temple, they could still turn their faces toward the temple and offer up their prayers as though those prayers were sent to the temple before his presence.

You easily see the irony for Jonah. He was cast into the sea precisely because he was fleeing the presence of the Lord. Now his hope lies in coming back into the presence of the Lord. That is what he means by looking upon God’s holy temple. Now we come to the second stanza in verses 5-7.

⁵ The waters closed in over me to take my life;
    the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped about my head
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.

⁷ When my life was fainting away,
    I remembered the Lord,
and my prayer came to you,
    into your holy temple.

Again Jonah describes his peril. This time he speaks not of his hope but of his hope fulfilled, namely his rescue. And that rescue occurred because the prayer he had made to the Lord did arrive into the temple and he was heard.

Verses 8-9, the final stanza, teach a lesson and gives Jonah’s resolve.

⁸ Those who pay regard to vain idols
    forsake their hope of steadfast love.
⁹ But I with the voice of thanksgiving
    will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
    Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

The lesson is that our hope is found only in the Lord God. You will notice in your Bibles that Lord is spelled in capital letters as Lord. Whenever you see that in your Old Testament, you are reading the Hebrew name by which God identified himself – I AM WHO I AM. In Hebrew it is pronounced Yahweh, though we are more familiar with the pronunciation, Jehovah.

The point is that our hope is not found in a generic lord, a generic god. The idea that it does not matter what god one believes in is simply false. The whole experience of the mariners on the ship was that none of the gods they called upon could help them. They were “vain idols.” Salvation belongs to the Lord, to Yahweh.

Therefore, Jonah resolves to give thanks to the true God, the Lord God. He vows that he will come to the temple and offer up a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Lord. He has learned his lesson. Not only is it unwise to flee the presence of the Lord because he is going to get in trouble, but to do so is to flee the only hope of steadfast love. It is to flee the only one who can save.

¹⁰ And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

What then can we learn from Jonah’s fish story and prayer?

Lessons

1. We have a greater temple.

The earthly temple was destroyed, but it was never more than a copy of the true heavenly temple. In that true temple stands our high priest who sees that our prayers are heard, for he intercedes for us. His ministry was superior to that of any earthly priest, and it remains ever effective for us now. The writer of Hebrews explains:

Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, ² a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. ³ For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. ⁴ Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. ⁵ They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain” (8:1-5).

What this means for us is this. There may be times you do your own fleeing, maybe even now. You find yourself sinking down into a stormy sea. Remember the Lord. Pray to the Lord. Your prayer will not vanish into thin air or sink into the sea; rather, it will find its way to the heavenly temple of the Lord, where our Lord Jesus Christ serves as our High Priest. He assures that our prayers are heard, and he adds his own intercession.

Remember that the Lord is sovereign. You are never alone. Whether you be in the temple of the Lord or miles away in a ship or even at the bottom of the sea, your Lord is with you. You might protest, “But my trouble is of my own doing. I, like Jonah, am guilty of disobeying my God and fleeing him to go my own way.” Then learn from Jonah. He who fled from his God now expresses hope in his prayer that he will someday return to the temple into the presence of the Lord. He fled in fear; he will return in thanksgiving.

Do you think your heavenly Father will turn a deaf ear to you? Do you believe that his love will have reached its limit? You are not a pagan who calls upon a vain idol. Your God is the Lord God in whom we have the “hope of a steadfast love.” That was Jonah’s hope. He may be unfaithful but the Lord is not. His love may be limited but the Lord’s is not. The Lord’s love is a steadfast love resting on the covenant promises that he has made. You may flee, but the Lord pursues. Your prayer to him; your return to him is nothing more than his drawing you back.

Indeed, can you not look back on the storms of your life and see his hand behind those very storms? According to Jonah, the God who brought up his life from the pit is also the one who cast him into the deep and caused his waves and billows to pass over him. It was the Lord who hurled the great wind upon the sea in the first place. But that storm, the casting of Jonah overboard, even the very sinking down to Sheol was produced by God to bring his servant back to him. The stormy trial of Jonah was not so much discipline as it was a means to lead Jonah back to his Lord and increase in him a greater appreciation for the sovereignty and the mercy of his God. So the Lord works storms in your life for the same purpose. He will stop your wandering and lead you back into his holy temple before his presence.

2. We have a greater Jonah.

By now some of you are wondering, “When is he going to get to the fish!” You are not alone in singling it out. Jesus took special note of it. In Matthew 12:38-41 we read:

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” ³⁹ But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. ⁴⁰ For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

“You want a sign?” Jesus is saying. “Meditate on the significance of Jonah returning to life after being buried at sea in the belly of a fish after three days. That is the sign from Scripture that looks to me.”

Surely our Lord meditated upon Jonah’s fish story. He knew that he was heading into a mighty storm. Unlike Jonah, he was not fleeing from God’s presence, nor was he cast by anyone overboard. He was heading directly to the storm, and he himself would leap overboard into the waves of the sea.

Surely he meditated upon Jonah’s description of sinking down further and further into darkness, into the pit, into the very belly of Sheol. Sheol represents a place separated from the presence of God. Jesus knew he would come to such a place upon the cross, when the face (the presence) of God his Father would turn away from him. He meditated on what it would be like for the waters to close in over him to take his life; what it would be like to go down to the land whose bars would close upon him; what it would be like to be three days and three nights in the earth, as Jonah was in the belly of the fish.

But the sign of Jonah was not merely that he was in the belly of a fish, but that the fish returned him to life, so to speak, by spewing him onto dry land. Jonah lived; he did not become fish food. Likewise, Jesus did not remain in the earth. He rose! The sign is that of dying and coming back to life.

But note, Jonah was saved by mercy. He was a sinner rescued from the peril his sin had placed him in. Jesus was saved by his own victory over death. The earth could not contain the one who created the earth. Death could not close its bar over him, for he had broken those bars.

Jesus had not been a sinner. He proved to be pure and thus a greater sacrifice than all the temple sacrifices ever made. Just as we have a greater temple and a greater Jonah, so we have a greater sacrifice than Jonah tried to make of himself. The story of Jonah is a fun and encouraging story to read about. The story of Jesus is the battle he won for our salvation. The story of Jonah is a sign; the story of Jesus is the fulfillment of that sign.

What does Jesus’ story mean for you? Jesus said it best, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25-26). You will come through the storm of death, for your Lord will lift you up and bring you into his Father’s glorious presence. He will take you before Yahweh into the Holy of Holies of the true heavenly temple. That is your destination.

Meanwhile, he will lift you up again and again as you feel like you are drowning again and again. He will not forsake you. Even now you can testify to that, can’t you? What then should be your response? It should be that of Jonah’s who vowed to enter into the earthly temple of Jerusalem with his sacrifice of thanksgiving. Offer your own such sacrifice to your Lord.

I cannot but wonder if Jonah had been recalling a psalm when he offered up his prayers. It is Psalm 116, which is the meditation of a person who had a near death experience. He speaks of his brush with death and then ponders what his response should be.

¹² What shall I render to the Lord
    for all his benefits to me?
¹³ I will lift up the cup of salvation
    and call on the name of the Lord,
¹⁴ I will pay my vows to the Lord
    in the presence of all his people.

¹⁵ Precious in the sight of the Lord
    is the death of his saints.
¹⁶ O Lord, I am your servant;
    I am your servant, the son of your maidservant.
    You have loosed my bonds.
¹⁷ I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving
    and call on the name of the Lord.
¹⁸ I will pay my vows to the Lord
    in the presence of all his people,
¹⁹ in the courts of the house of the Lord,
    in your midst, O Jerusalem.
Praise the Lord! (Psalm 116:12-19)

Here you are now in the presence of God’s people. Offer to him the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord. If you have yet to do so; if you have been fleeing from the Lord all your life, consider that he has somehow brought you here at this time. Call upon him for salvation. He will hear you. The sacrifice for your sins has been made.