by Pastor Glenn Layne

September 15, 2002
This Week's Message:

Second Message in the Series
You're Drafted! Jonah and You

In the Fish

Jonah 2

Last week I suggested that in a sense, Jonah fell asleep in the light-the light of the word of God calling Him to make God's name known to the nations. But God sent a storm and a "great fish" recapture his servant-to call him back to his task as a witness of God's love and grace and greatness. As chapter two opens, we find Jonah actually inside the "great fish" and now he's wide-awake-wide-awake in the dark!

No doubt you have seen and many of you have worn these WWJD bracelets-"What would Jesus do?" That question is taken from the 1897 book In His Steps by Charles Sheldon. In the story, a whole congregation resolves to ask that question in there life situations. I read In His Steps as a teenager and it made a lot of sense to be. But there was one problem. Many times I would get myself into one kind of mess or another due to my own stupidity. Times like that, the WWJD question didn't do me any good. Jesus wouldn't get himself in such a mess.

The WWJD question wouldn't help Jonah much either. Jonah is in big trouble, and he put himself there. I guess you could say he was in the Biggus Troubleus of a whale, which is just south of his esophagus and just north of his stomach. Just imagine being inside a whale. It's hot, dark, and slimy and remember: that creature was doing his level best to digest him!

But God was at work in it all. Sin leads to trouble, but praise God, in the midst of the trouble, God moves to restore and correct. That's God nature, his history.

God, the Corrector:

• Proverbs 3:11-12

11My son, do not despise the LORD's discipline and do not resent his rebuke, 12because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.

God's correcting discipline is a sure sign of His love toward us!

• Proverbs 15:31-32

31He who listens to a life-giving rebuke will be at home among the wise. 32He who ignores discipline despises himself, but whoever heeds correction gains understanding.

We have an obligation to receive God's correction. We have a choice: we can receive it or ignore it. But ignoring it will always come back to bite us.

• 1 Corinthians 11:32

When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.

God's discipline is designed to keep us in the circle of the faithful, not to crush us and destroy us.

Not all receive God's correction:

Judas: just think of Jesus' appeal to him on the night he betrayed him.
Lot: he takes up life in Sodom and ends his life is disgrace and moral depravity.
Demas: the last we hear of him, Paul says that he'd bailed on the ministry because he "loved this present world" more than he loved the Lord.

Well, what will Jonah do? Chapter 2 is a kind of Psalm, no doubt written later to reflect the kind of praying that he engaged in inside that whale.

1. The Great Fish (1)

• Is this historical?

Did this really happen? It's often been attacked as a piece of fiction, a flight of fancy. However, the book presents it as a real event, and Jesus refers to it in the gospels as a real event. Is there any historical evidence for this kind of experience?

Yes, there is. The evidence is largely drawn for 19th century whaling records. Massachusetts towns like Salem and New Bedford sent out countless whaling ships, like the Pequod, the fictional ship of Moby Dick

Ambrose Wilson wrote an article way back in 1927 for the Princeton Theological Review that was the result of his examination of whaling records of New England and England that might have a bearing on the Jonah story. What he learned was fascinating. Not only was the Jonah story possible, it had happened since then. And not only that, it was fairly easy to figure out what kind of creature had swallowed him.

One objection to the Jonah story is that the throats of whales are too narrow to swallow a man. For most species of whales, that's true. But the sperm whale, also known as the cachalot, has a throat passage that can expand as wide as eight feet. It was been known to swallow whole sharks as long as 16 feet-which are certainly bigger than a man.

• What was it like in there?

Once inside, a man would find a temperature as high as 106 degrees F. He would find gastric juices that would be unpleasant, but that couldn't actually digest him (it can't digest living matter, or else it would digest his own stomach walls!)

The stomach would be about ¾ fluid (including other stuff the whale had eaten-its favorite being octopus) and a pocket of air since some air would be drawn in since whale are air breathing mammals. (Jonah calls it a dag gadol, a "great fish" because it's a sea creature, not because of a scientific error.)

• The experiences of Marshall Jenkins (1771) and James Bartly (1891)

Ambrose Wilson found two well-documented cases of being swallowed by a whale and surviving. One was the case of Marshall Jenkins. In 1771, Jenkins' boat was bitten in two by a whale. Jenkins was swallowed whole and the whale dived. A few minutes later the whale emerged and literally threw up Jenkins where he was recovered by his shipmates-bruised and shaken, but very much alive.

120 years later a far more interesting incident occurred-the story of James Bartly. In February of that year the British whaler Star of the East sighted a large sperm whale near the Falkland Islands. Two harpoon boats were launched; one speared the whale, but the second was lashed by the whale's tale. One man drowned, and the other, James Bartly, was missing. The whale was killed and was brought along side of the ship. The crew worked all that day and night removing the blubber. The next morning they continued gutting the whale and hoisted the stomach intact on to the deck of the ship. They were startled when the stomach showed spasms of life and cut it open only to find James Bartly inside-unconscious but alive. The captain, Sir Francis Fox, wrote, "He remained two weeks a raving lunatic…at the end of the third week he had entirely recovered from the shock and resumed his duties." Bartly later described his experience: the feeling of being swallowed, the slimy feeling inside the stomach, the awful heat. His exposed skin was bleached white by the gastric juices and never fully recovered their natural color.

So much for those who say it couldn't happen!

2. Jonah's Psalm (2-9)

But let's get back to the meaning of the story. Verses 2-9 form a kind of Psalm of Jonah. Let's look at that psalm.

• At the point of death, 2-3

2He said:

"In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me.
From the depths of the grave [Sheol, the abode of the dead] I called for help, and you listened to my cry.
3You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.

• Rescue from death, 4-7

4I said, `I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.'
5The engulfing waters threatened me, [more literally, "the waters were at my throat"!] the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head.
6To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit [the pit of death], O LORD my God.
7"When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.

• Vow reaffirmed, 8-9

8"Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace [he's thinking of God's grace in saving his life, as well as the grace by which a person is made right with God-which the Gentiles have been denied as they "cling to worthless idols"] that could be theirs. 9But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the LORD."

• God awakened his servant in depths…on the verge of death. O God, awaken the church in America! Of the six inhabited continents, only in North America is the church not growing. Will we need a term in a whale's belly to waken the church? The storm of last September 11 wasn't enough? Will we need more?
  
• But I am confident that God will awaken His church. I am confident in the power of Scripture to wake us up…God will do what's necessary to wake us up!
• In John 15:1-2: God will "lift us up" and prune us. This is in Bruce Wilkenson's excellent little book The Secrets of the Vine.

1"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2He cuts off [airo, "lifts up"-a better translation-that is, away from the ground-away from impurity, so it can thrive] every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

• Some day, most all of us will find ourselves in the belly of some beast. Some day we will see the fools we've been…sometime we will find ourselves up to our neck in the consequences of our refusing the word of God.
• The good news is: God gives a second chance…here and now!
• Now be sure: there's no second chance after death. Hebrews 9:27 says:

…man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment…

No second chances then…no opportunity then either for the lost to accept Christ or for the people of God to somehow make up for a life of missed opportunities for Christ. Now, here, is the time, and so long as there is life, there is grace abundantly available. He can change all things for you.

• Some second chance people:

Abraham: he lied, he doubted, he made foolish choices and yet he is now called the father of the faithful-because of the God of the second chance.
Jacob: a wheeler-dealer, a cheat, a liar and a coward. But God took him, wrestled him to the ground and turned him into Israel.
Moses: a murderer.
David: an adulterer and a murderer.
Peter: he denied knew Christ and even cursed and swore he didn't know Him, in order to save his skin.

…and Jonah.

• What cripples us today? What makes us ineffective? What makes us "whale belly dwellers"? You have to look in your own heart, but as you look you will see the times that you have refused God, been faithless. You will see you addiction to things and your love affair with success. You will see your sexual unfaithfulness of mind and body and soul. You will see your low-prioritizing of God, your high-prioritizing of pleasure. You will see your passion for unimportant things and your indifference to eternal things. You will see your prayerlessness and your restlessness. You will see love of God and the lost stunted and love of self-abundant. You will look in the mirror and see Jonah, and look around and see whale belly.
  
• Fred Markert is the New Orleans director of YWAM-Youth With a Mission. He makes a powerful point about the Lordship of Christ. He says that most of us take a position of Passive Lordship-the idea that we express when we say to Christ, "If you ever need me for anything, just let me know. I'd be willing to do most anything-just give me a call." We passively wait for a phone call from God. But Active Lordship says, "I belong to Jesus, and He's already told me to go, to give, to serve. That's His standing orders. I'm not waiting for a call from heaven. I have standing orders. It's not a question of someday I'll do something if called upon; it's a question of what good thing shall I do now."
• Markert uses an interesting analogy to drive this point home. Say your doctor gives you a prescription. On the bottle it says, "Take with meals and at bedtime." Would you really expect your doctor to call three times a day and say, "Hi this is your doctor-time to take your pill!" But isn't this just what we say to the Lord when we say, "If you ever need me, just call!"?
  q Passive Lordship. It's not Biblical. I believe in the transforming power of Scriptural truth. We must be people of the book, inside and out. That word gives light. When the light's on in a life, darkness must flee. When we turn a light on in a dark room, we don't wonder, "What shall we do with the darkness?" In the light, darkness must flee! Fill your lives with the light of the word of God, of worship, of prayer and good Christian books, and see the darkness flee.

3. The second chance, 10

And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

Imagine Jonah as he tumbles out onto the shore. The sky never looked so good, the air never felt so soothing, the sand never felt so firm. His heart is filled with thanksgiving and a gritty determination to go to Ninevah.

It was his moment.

Now it's your turn. Now it's your turn to reaffirm the Lordship of Jesus in your life. I want to give a special invitation today for you to affirm Jesus as your Lord.

Some of you need to accept as Lord. Some of you need to repent of your rebellion against your Tarshish loving ways-you've been running from God. You know what the Lord would have you do, and you don't want any part of it. But now you've seen yourself in the story of Jonah, and now's your moment.

Some of you need to unite with this church, and follow Jesus in believer baptism. Some of you need to yield to God in a very specific matter of obedience that you and the Lord have been fighting over. Some of you need to turn your back on sinful habits.

Today's the day!

© Copyright 2002, Pastor Glenn Layne, www.templecitybaptist.org