Through Storms and Stinking Fish | Jonah 1-2
Del Fehsenfeld III | April 3, 2016

Good morning, everyone. My name is Del, for those of you who don’t know me. Pastor Brian, as Brent mentioned, is on vacation for a couple weeks, so we get the “second string” today, but maybe we can score some points together.

We’re going to be looking at the book of Jonah. Jonah’s hard to find, so page 774 in your pew Bible, if you want to do that, or it’s between Obadiah and Micah. I’ve put some of it on the Power Point, but you may want to follow along, because I’m going to be abridging in places.

We’re talking about storms and stinking fish this morning, and their purposes in our lives. Okay? So let’s begin reading Jonah 1:1. “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.’”

Now, do you know anything about the background of Jonah? Jonah was a Hebrew. Nineveh was the world power at the time, and an incredibly ruthless, oppressive people. So Jonah gets a surprise commission from God to go to a group of people that culturally, racially, economically, politically was on the bottom of his list. So it had to be incredibly jarring for Jonah.

Jonah, as far as we know, had been a faithful prophet of the Lord, and yet he begins to wrestle, like we all do, with the hard things, the things that don’t fit the grid, don’t fit the picture. This was certainly outside of his comfort zone and actually ran against all of his prejudices of every kind. It basically flipped him out, as we’ll see here in just a second.

I. God moves toward people despite their evil

It’s interesting to me, though, to note something right at the beginning here, and it’s really the heart of God that we get pictured here in one verse. As evil as Nineveh was, God had a heart for them. He actually decides to send somebody to them; he’s not going to leave them alone. Even though he’s sending someone to make a pronouncement of judgment against their evil, the fact that he doesn’t just wipe them out or leave them to their own recourses shows God’s intentions toward them were to give them opportunity for repentance.

So, the heart of God moves toward people, moves towards us, despite our evil. I mean, it’s just unbelievable that everything that I’m going to say from this point on comes out of the heart of God that this morning is for us. It’s for us, not just when we have our act together, it’s not just when we have done well, but in the depths of the worst, the worst evil that can reside in human hearts, and actually in our behavior, our track record both individually, in our families corporately and nationally, God has this heart that is always, always moving towards people.

Part of what Jonah’s going to find out throughout this entire letter is that God’s intentions are always to move toward people; our natural tendencies are to exclude people. So, God is inviting Jonah here, in a way that he never imagined, to join him on a spiritual adventure. That adventure is a redemptive mission. It’s one that comes from his heart, to move towards people in need. What it means to be a follower of this God, to be with him, is actually to join him, right, in that kind of heart, that kind of perspective, and that kind of movement.

But notice in verse three, Jonah does the exact opposite: he rises to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He goes down to Joppa, he finds a ship going to Tarshish, he pays the fare, he gets on board, and he sails toward Tarshish, “away from the presence of the Lord,” the Scripture tells us.

I want you just to notice here that Tarshish is actually, geographically, the opposite direction of Nineveh. Jonah’s intentions to avoid this assignment are pretty clear, wouldn’t you agree? In fact, Tarshish is the most remote place in the opposite direction of Nineveh on the map. It’s 500 miles the other direction from Nineveh, so Jonah basically is saying to God, “I’m not taking this one.” You know, “I’m taking a pass on this assignment. I’m heading ‘south for the winter’.” Right? And, “I’m not going to Nineveh.”

It’s interesting that you and I, who are called to Gospel ministry, actually are sent ones. You remember that God is making his appeal through us, “be reconciled to God.” The apostles; in the Scripture the word “apostle” actually means “sent one”. So Jonah here is playing the part of the anti-apostle. He’s actually moving in the opposite direction away from people, and I want you to notice here that that movement away from people—the Scripture repeats it twice here in verse three—is a movement away from the presence of the Lord.

II. When we move away from people we move away from God.

Here’s what I want us to see this morning, second observation: when we move away from people that God loves, we move away from God. Even when we’re very religious, even when we’re willing to take many assignments from the Lord, when we exclude certain groups of people, when we discriminate on the basis of the evils that they’ve done to us, when we refuse to return good for evil, when we categorize certain kinds of people as being beyond worth of our attention or our hearts or our sacrifice, that kind of movement in our hearts—regardless of our religion—is always a movement away from the presence of the Lord. If we want our lives with God, we have to embrace his intentions, which are to move toward people, even in their need. Right?

This is an incredible critique, right off the bat, to my heart, to all of our hearts. Particularly, I think, it’s the trap of those of us in religion, because all of our tendencies, at some level, are to exclude rather than to welcome, rather than to move towards pain and hurt and to brokenness. So Jonah takes the ship to Tarshish.

Then verse four: “The Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea. There was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. The mariners were very afraid and each cried out to his god, and they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep.”

III. God will disrupt our plans that shut out people

I want you to notice here that God, despite Jonah’s intentions to pass on loving these people, God disrupts his plans, doesn’t he? He hurls this storm onto the sea. And God disrupts all of our plans that shut out people.

I was thinking a little bit about this this week. I have a certain fantasy—I don’t know if you have any of these—of a place where it’s always 80 degrees, and the ocean is nearby. In fact, a friend of mine found this place from his years in the service, in Mexico (I know where it is!). He told me that people like you and me can go there and live in paradise for $30 a day.

I think about Mexico a lot, actually, and I find myself thinking about it most when challenged the most deeply with hard assignments; things that grind, people that frustrate, circumstances that bind and that I hate. I have this script that sort of plays in my mind: “Lord, I want to have a meaningful life, I want to do good, I want to serve you, I want to have gotten to the end and run the race well, but I would really like to go to Mexico.”

The Lord has a way of disrupting the ways that we construct our lives to sort of run the middle of the road, to do good at one level and yet to avoid the things that we’re most deeply called to in a broken world. Jonah experiences here, through a severe mercy, a storm, a disruption—a violent disruption—that God will not allow him to simply pass to go to Mexico. God wants to realign Jonah’s heart and his perspective towards the essence of his calling.

IV. People are desperate. Are we tuned out below deck and asleep?

So the storm comes, and it begins to threaten the ship. In verse five we find the shocking commentary that Jonah had gone below deck and was asleep, right? And the sailors who are, obviously, afraid, crying out to their gods, looking for some sort of respite or escape from the terror that had come upon them, find Jonah, the man of God, asleep below deck, tuned out and utterly useless, really, in the situation.

Here’s the shocking statement, verse six: the captain of the ship comes to Jonah, and you hear the incredulous nature of his perspective. He’s like, “Don’t you realize we’re about to die here? What do you mean, sleeper? Arise from your sleep, cry out to your god, that we all might be saved!” People are desperate, and the question that...this has just been slamming me this week: people are desperate all around us. Their lives are in mortal danger. Are we tuned out? Are we below deck? Are we asleep?

It’s interesting here to me—it’s a really incredible irony. The sailors in this situation care more about Jonah’s life, actually, than Jonah cares about his own, certainly about the sailors’. Another incredible irony: the sailors are tuned into the storm that has enveloped them, and they care more about each other. They’re the ones calling the prayer meeting. Isn’t that crazy? It’s the only place in Scripture that I remember pagans calling the prayer meeting, actually invoking and imploring the prophet to pray.

I think that we could park there just for a second, and just ask the question, as we think about the world that we live in, is it possible that the people around us are desperate in searching for answers, looking for salvation and deliverance of some kind even though they don’t know where to look, while the church sleeps? While we have lost our will to fight and to pray?

The plot of this really thickens, because we see, in verses seven through 11, as the sailors begin to investigate the apathy and the hardness that has really gripped Jonah’s heart, they begin to ask some questions. “Where are you from?” “Who is your god?” He begins to confirm their worst fears. He says that basically, “Yes, I serve the one and true and living God that made the sea...” and they’re like, “Great.”

“...and who made the winds...”

“Great.”

“...and I’m actually running from the presence of this God.”

“Fantastic!”

Right? So then they say to him, you know, “Then...what do we do, since you clearly not only don’t care about our welfare, but you’ve actually gotten us in this mess? Your lack of spiritual sensitivity and vibrancy has actually brought additional pain. You’re pouring salt in our wounds. What do we do with you?”

V. Spiritual apathy and hardness would rather die than pray

Jonah’s answer, if we let it land on us this morning, might break our hearts, because we see in verse 12 this answer: “He said to them [in response to the question, “What should we do?”], ‘Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down, for I know that it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon me.’”

At one level, when I first read this story, again seriously, I thought, “Well, hey! Jonah at least is taking personal responsibility here. He’s willing to be the sacrificial lamb to get everybody out of the jam since he’s the one who caused the mess.”

But think about this a little more deeply. Jonah is in no mood for prayer, right? The sailors are crying out to their gods, the pagan captain has just said to him, “How ’bout pray?” Jonah says, “No, I’m not in the mood to pray. I’ve already thought this through and I’m not...God has brought me to a place here where I am not going to follow, and I don’t want to pray about it. So, I’m unwilling to fight for this situation. I’m willing to be a part of the solution, I’m unwilling to engage, so throw me into the sea.”

He’s essentially committing suicide, right? He’s essentially saying to these sailors, “My apathy and my hardness is such that I would rather die than pray. I would rather quit than repent.”

Have you ever been there? I’m preaching to myself this morning, because I’m in a period of my life where the emotions, the conflicting emotions, are so strong that I think I get this. It’s possible to be in places in our spiritual journey where we would rather die than pray. Where we’d rather quit than actually do the hard work of repentance and realignment of our lives.

So Jonah takes, really, the unthinkable option. He just says, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea.” Now it’s interesting; the sailors, though pagan, instinctively recognize the horror of this way of proceeding. They begin to row, verses 13 through 16, more violently, they empty the ship—they basically fight heroically to save the prophet who will not pray, who will not repent, who will not cry out to his God, who will not become part of the solution.

But all of that was to no avail, and so they finally, with no other options, plead to God that he will not hold them accountable for this man’s death, and chuck this guy overboard.

We pick up the account in 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.”

Now, this was not the Love Boat. This was—I mean, it’s hard for us to even imagine, we can use conjecture, of what this would have been like, but essentially Jonah’s in the middle of a raging storm, the waters begin to swallow him up and he begins to drown, horrifically, a fish—think about this for a second—swallowed him! Okay? Three days?! I mean, I’m not sure...I know it was dark. Have you been in the inside of a fish’s stomach lately? I think this was disgusting beyond belief. If you’re claustrophobic this is your worst nightmare, right? This was not a good time.

I’ve read some accounts that if you were to survive something like this—I’m not sure how—you would be sloshing around in the acids of the stomach. I mean, this is bad news for Jonah.

VI. Deep prayer is usually birthed out of deep distress

I want you to notice verse one of chapter two. “Then Jonah prayed.” Make sense? I just want to make this observation: deep prayer is usually birthed out of great distress. I hate to say it, but we are not wired… Listen. Before we’re too hard on Jonah, how many times will we take every option but to pray? How many times do we take every option but to repent?

God sends a stinking fish after he sends a violent storm, a violent disruptions, and somewhere in there Jonah breaks. I mean, he breaks, and he prays. He cries to the Lord. We get his prayer here in chapter two. I think I’m going to read it.

“I called out to the Lord out of my distress and he answered me.” Another understatement of the year. “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 sea, and the floods 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.’” This is obviously in his mind’s eye, right?

“The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head 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. 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 I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

VII. God answers after our worst

You know that Jonah’s deep amazement during this horrific and terrible moment of his life, this stinking fish experience of his life, his amazement, I think, more than when the fish vomited him up on the shore, which we read about in the next chapter, is that God listened to his prayer.

I want you to think about this for a second. We play all kinds of mental games, I think, with God and with prayer, and there are so many mysteries, it’s understandable. But I think the basic script I feel like, for me, goes something like this: God listens and sort of favors and grants answers to prayer on the basis of some kind of merit, right? My merit. So when I’ve had a better week than another, then I’m probably more likely to get my prayer answered. When I’ve read my Bible, when I’ve been nice, that’s when God answers prayer, right?

You know what Jonah discovered in the pit of the stinking fish? God answers after our worst. He listens to the prayers of our distress. He’s after something bigger than we can imagine, which is fundamental change in our experience of him, and understanding of his heart not only for us but for the world. Jonah’s just absolutely amazed because God answers him; his rebellion did not exhaust God’s mercy. Although a religious man, he has a pretty profound experience of God’s grace and deliverance; would you agree? In this fish.

He sort of sums up this whole experience at the very end of this prayer, in verses eight, nine, and ten, with three statements: “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.”

You know, all of the things that we turn to and embrace instead of God’s purposes—his plans, his mission, what he’s calling us to join him in, the people he’s called us to love, the hard things right in front of us—you know what they are? They’re really elaborate but really foolish, flimsy forsaking of what actually is true hope, of what we’re really made for, of the destiny and the future that God’s taken us into.

Jonah realizes this. Mexico’s not all it’s cracked up to be, right?

Secondly, he says in verse nine, “I have found a new voice; it’s a voice of thanksgiving, and that thanksgiving is going to give birth to something new out of my life. It’s going to be a sacrifice. I’m going to sacrifice out of this thanksgiving.”

You know, thankful hearts fulfill their vows to the Lord, and I think, as I dissect the times when apathy and hardness and refusal to pray—my trip to Tarshish—the first thing that usually goes is my gratitude. I forget the grace and mercy and deliverance that came to me first and that I share with others. Thankfulness helps us fulfill our vows.

And then it says here—which is really the theme of this book, which we don’t have time to develop this morning—if you want the theme of Jonah in one sentence, salvation actually belongs to our God.

This was not only a message that Jonah would eventually deliver to Nineveh, it was one he had to experience first, right? He knows this after the fish vomits him up.

Now, I’m not going to tell the rest of the story this morning because of our time, but you can read it; it’s interesting, Jonah’s struggles and his existential wrestlings and his questions and his biases and his prejudices don’t wash off with the vomit. This guy...actually, we’re left really not knowing for sure what his final choices will be. But what we do know is that he did go to Nineveh, and he went to Nineveh, not just with a message, he was the message.

It’s hard to conceive of how a country like Nineveh would even receive or listen to a Hebrew prophet. Some of the commentaries I read suggest that these were highly superstitious people with a history of cataclysmic events in their history. So when some dude walks out of a fish, not only with a story of that but sort of looking like it, they probably paid attention in a different way. That’s probably how he even lived through the experience of basically telling them that their country was going to be destroyed by God if they didn’t turn from their evil.

Jonah not only brought a message, he was the message. A rebellious prophet who, through storms and stinking fish and distress, found mercy from the God who loves even evil people. That was his message, it was the gospel. He basically only had to say a sentence, because he had a story.

Now here’s my question to you: what’s your story? Who’s your Nineveh? Are you on your way to Tarshish? See, the applications of this, I think, actually preach themselves. Have we forgotten our identity as sent ones? Have we carefully excluded and scripted out of our lives those who we will be sent to and those who we will not? And if so, who are the people that we’re ignoring, that we’re avoiding, that we’re fleeing?

Second question: is it possible that you have become so apathetic, hard-hearted, or discouraged that, like Jonah, you quit? If the truth would be known, you would rather die than pray, and corporately, is it possible that we are living in a day when the storms of culture are actually raging in our country and around the world like never before? People are desperate and looking for answers, and we’re turned out and asleep. In this passage I see an incredible call to the church to pray and to engage in Jesus’ name.

So would you pray with me, and then we’ll have communion.

Lord, I thank you for the chance just to be among friends, to look at your Word, to be challenged deeply by the story of Jonah. And I ask, Lord, that like him we would have a fresh rediscovery of your heart that moves towards people in their evil, that invites on the mission to join you.

And then, Lord, I pray that we would be a people who use the storms and stinking fish of our lives to truly learn to cry out to you.

I ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.