Jonah Survey

Text: Jonah 1:1-4  

Lots of people will be sceptical about Jonah’s story.  They will say, ‘How can a man be swallowed by a fish, survive inside it for three days, and then be spewed up unharmed onto dry land?’  This simply can’t be true, so the story must be a myth.  Two facts contradict this:-

• The God who created the universe can create a fish.  Jonah 1 distinctly tells us that God made this particular fish for this purpose.  Jonah 1:17  God can make a fish.  He’s done it before.
• Jesus believed the Jonah narrative, and he was around when it happened.  In fact Jesus quoted Jonah more often than he quoted any other prophet.  He had commissioned Jonah, he had prepared the fish to rescue him!  He used Jonah’s sojourn in the belly of the fish to illustrate his own time in the grave. Matthew 12.

Essentially, the message of Jonah is that the opportunity to repent of sin and be forgiven extends to every nation, not just to the Hebrews.  Jonah’s not altogether on board with the message!

1 Jonah’s Call and Concern. Ch 1

Jonah’s a Jew, a Hebrew, one of God’s chosen people, one of those special people, with whom God has made a unique covenant.  He is in a position of great privilege. Yet God’s love and salvation is for the whole world.  Jonah’s call gives the clue to the underlying meaning of the book, and the message of Jonah.  See:-

• His call.  Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying.  How did Jonah receive this call?   Some commentators point us to John 1, where JESUS is described as ‘The Word.’  John 1:1  They extrapolate from this that when ‘the Word of the Lord’ came to Jonah, it was Jesus who came and stood before him, calling him to work for him.  That won’t happen to YOU!  He now speaks to us through the Scriptures, which are are complete.
• His Commission. 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.”.
  • The summons!  Arise and go to the most feared city in the whole world.  Nineveh was not a tourist destination!  And worse still, when the prophet gets there, he is to go through the streets, shouting to the inhabitants that God is deeply angry because of their sin.  
  • The Shock!  But if the summons was terrifying, the theology that lay behind it was even more shocking.  Not only were the Ninevites barbarians, but they were NOT HEBREWS! They were pagans, people outside the covenant God had made with his people, How on earth could Jonah do a thing like this, – preaching about the God of Israel to people who were not part of Israel!  No way!  
• His Cowardliness. 3 But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
  • He wants to escape from the presence of God.  He has still to learn that no matter where you go, you are always within God’s reach.  Psalm 139:7   
  • He goes to Joppa. Joppa is a sea port, so it’s where you would go to get away from Israel quickly, but it’s also significant.  This is about Jonah running away from the idea that God can save the Gentile nations, – and Peter was at Joppa when he received news that the very first Gentile convert was about to came to Christ.  The story is in Acts 10, and the man’s name was Cornelius, and he was a Roman.  While at Joppa, Peter had a dream, in which God showed him that all foods were clean to eat.  READ Acts 10:28  Hardly a coincidence that Joppa features in both Jonah’s disobedience and Peter’s obedience.

We know the story.  A great storm arose, and the captain of the boat found Jonah sleeping  and when the storm did not abate they cast lots to see who was bringing this disaster upon them. The lot fell upon Jonah, and at his request they threw him overboard.  Jonah was swallowed up by a fish which God had specially created.  It was while in the belly of the fish that Jonah prayed for deliverance and fully trusted in God.

2 Jonah’s Penitence and Prayer. Jonah chapter 2. V1 – Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly,

When he was in the belly of the fish, he must have been the most scared man in the world. In the face of such a situation, the common response of mankind is to blame God.  The typical attitude would he, “How could a loving God leave me here…  do this to me?” Jonah was different.  In his imprisonment in the belly of the fish, he PRAYED, and the substance of his prayer is found in chapter two.

• Jonah in the grave.  v2 “And 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.. The word translated ‘hell’ in the AV, is the Hebrew Sheol-  it is directly quoted by Jesus in Matthew 12:38  He tells the Pharisees, who are asking for a sign, that the only sign which they will have is the sign of Jonah – that as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days, so the Son of Man would be in the grave for three days also.  Jonah in this sense is a type of Christ.  And of course Jonah refers to the belly of the fish as ‘Sheol’ – ‘the grave.’  Matthew 12:39-41 Jesus was three days in the GRAVE, not in HELL.
• Jonah’s hope of deliverance.  v4 Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.’ Jonah believed God.  Even when his situation was impossible, he believed that God would honour his word, and deliver him.  
• Jonah’s prayer of repentance.  v7 “ When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. 8 They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. 9 But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have.” So Jonah repented of his rebellion, and waywardness in the face of God’s command.  V8 is extremely important.  In some translations, – eg the New King James Version, the word is capitalised. Mercy, – lovingkindness – is one of the attributes of God, yet more than just an attribute of God, – God is mercy, or as John puts it in 1 John 4:8, “God is Love.” –  God is Mercy, and that mercy is demonstrated for us at the cross, in Jesus. Right here, in the fish’s belly Jonah is pointing us to Christ, even if he doesn’t fully understand that yet.

So, at the end of the chapter we read that God spoke to the fish, and the fish vomited Jonah up into dry land.  The Lord in his mercy has spared him, he’s alive and he has learned a costly lesson indeed.

3 Jonah’s Preaching and Petulence Ch3 & 4

In chapter 3, Jonah has arrived at Nineveh, and begins his long walk through the city, preaching the message of God’s hatred of sin and the punishment that is deserved.  The people begin to repent, and soon the king gets to hear.  He too rends his garments, and sits in ashes as a toke to his abject loathing for his own sin.  he cries out for forgiveness, and instructs all the people of his city and his state to do likewise.  See the effects here:-

• The heathens are converted.  They are spared from the terrible wrath of God.  3:10  
• They obtained eternal life. We know this because Jesus told us in Matthew 12:41  
• Jonah is angry and frustrated.  In chapter 4, we see Jonah complaining about what God has done in Nineveh.  He just KNEW this would happen.  These Ninevites were wicked sinners, and the deserved to be punished.  He’s so angry that he has become depressed and suicidal. Jonah 4:1-3   To illustrate the value of a human soul, God allows a vine to grow where Jonah is sitting, trying to shelter from the desert sun.  It grows so big that it covers him and he takes comfort from it.  But overnight God sent a worm to eat the vine and it died.  Jonah again is angry with God. 4:8-9  The book ends as God explains to Jonah, that it is wrong to care more for one’s material comforts that the lost souls of men and women.  Jonah 4:10 

So the forgiveness of God has extended to all nations outside Israel. The pagan sailors have been saved, and the citizens of Nineveh of that day have repented and been converted. They will be part of that blood bought multitude of whom John wrote in Revelation 5:9