Instead of falling into the ocean and remaining there, a great fish swallows Jonah. The chaos within Jonah’s soul is another matter, however.
Sometimes, God will bring us to a place of isolation, not as punishment, but for reflection. We need to sit, think, pray, cry. Our fears and anger can so dominate our thoughts that no other voice is heard. But in a dark and quiet place, we can hear God. He is always speaking, but we’re not always listening.
Suddenly, the question of what lurks beneath the water is revealed to Jonah as a place where God dwells. Do you believe that there is a corner somewhere, anywhere, where God can’t be there with you? Look at what Psalm 104:24-26 says:
How many are Your works, O Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
There is the sea, vast and spacious,
teeming with creatures beyond number —
living things both large and small.
There the ships go to and fro,
and the leviathan, which You formed to frolic there.
Suddenly the dark waters are not filled with frightening creatures lurking about, but are teeming with creatures placed there by God! Look at the leviathan happily swimming in the ocean. It’s no longer a dreaded and frightening creature, out to destroy. It frolics!
Wait a minute. What’s happening here? What about all those Bible verses about the “monster of the deep” and the “sinister serpent”? It’s a matter of perspective.
From our perspective, the unknown is indeed frightening. When you take the unknown, mix it with your fears, add the trauma you have suffered, pour in the pain you have endured, and add in the avoidance you’ve made part of your life, the dark is indeed frightening.
What’s lurking under there is far too scary to ponder.
Now, let’s step outside our point of view, and climb up to God’s.
Have you ever had someone give you a hand to get up on a rock and once you were there, you were awestruck?
We once went hiking in Utah in a place called Goblin Valley. It’s one of those places where the wind has sculpted the red sedimentary rock into odd and wonderful shapes, some of which look like little squat men — snowmen made of rock!
We decided to climb this one mountain to catch a view of the whole valley. Needless to say, we are not talented climbers. We were constantly saying, “Here, take my hand!” and struggling to scamper up sharp steep rocks. We were sweating profusely, because summers are hot in the Utah desert.
We finally cried, “Wow!” as we stood atop this mountain, and surveyed a valley filled with drifting clouds, shafts of soft yellow light and cool breezes.
We marveled at a rock formation way off in the distance aptly named, “Temple Rock.” It looked like a marble Greek temple in the afternoon sun. What changed? We were still in Goblin Valley, but atop that mountain, up and away from the desert floor, our perspective dramatically changed.
That made all the difference on how we saw this place.
Jonah’s perspective will change after being in the deep dark belly of the whale. His fears and anger caused him to forget this central truth: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” (Psalm 116:15). God takes no delight in watching Jonah suffer and die; He wants Jonah to change his perspective on how he sees himself and how he sees God. In that dark belly, he calls out to God. This time, it’s from a heart filled with faith. He has nothing to hide from God. Jonah is now seeking the greater purpose of his life.
He sees this dark belly as a kind of tomb and suddenly life is precious. The man willing to jump in the sea with a death-wish now sees life as a gift to hold on to. That old Joni Mitchell song, “Big Yellow Taxi,” puts it well: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone….”
Sometimes a change in perspective comes from a near miss.
Let’s hear what Jonah says. He’s being completely honest here:
In my distress I called to the Lord, and He answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help and You listened to my cry (verses 1-2).
He is not out of trouble. He senses, however, that God has provided a safe place (relative to the turmoil of the sea and the creatures therein) for him to grieve in and cry out in.
It is “safe,” yes, but it’s also a kind of grave.
Interesting, isn’t it? The place where we might want to run and hide — a place of isolation and darkness — can also be a kind of grave. Maybe that’s how we want it.
But Who is in there with you makes all the difference! We are not alone in the dark place. He is there. Now, more than ever, Jonah’s heart is softening towards Him:
“You 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” (verse 3).
Jonah now sees the Lord’s hand in this whole affair. He tried to run away from God and find a spot where He could not possibly be. The oceans reflected his inner self, where he felt overwhelmed by all of the fear and hurt raging in him. Yet, it’s interesting that he still saw the waves, as scary as they were, as still being in God’s hands. While the storm raged, inside and outside of Jonah, God was showing Jonah that He was not distant or aloof.
Jonah comments,
I said, "I have been banished from Your sight; yet I will look again toward Your holy temple” (verse 4).
Jonah insightfully observes it wasn’t God that banished him from His sight. He confesses he said that. He admits what his attitude is.
He is saying that his interpretation of what the Lord is doing is only his opinion; he is now searching for the truth about himself, God and his situation.
How often do we simply blame God, and leave it at that? Today many people will blame God, and then walk away, as if blaming Him absolves them of any responsibility for what happened, or having to seek out the truth of the matter.
It is true that sometimes bad things happen to good people. But there are many times where at some level, we have contributed to our woe by making poor decisions, ignoring warning signs, or having an unwillingness to seek or accept wise counsel.
The consequences are sadly real and pound at our front door. Sometimes that pounding lasts for years.
But Jonah is willing to say:
Look, I banished myself from God, and I hid myself in the dark below the deck of the ship. Here I am again, below deck, so to speak, sitting in the dark, smelling like seaweed. But now I know where to turn…
Hearing this from a man who was running away from God and is now turning towards the Lord’s holy temple is significant. Jonah’s “divine time-out” has captured his attention. He knows he must turn towards home. This is a picture of repentance, which means to make a 180 degree turn away from sin. We are to then seek the Lord in overcoming sin.
Suddenly, Jonah’s dungeon is his deliverance. His darkness now “lights” his way to seek the arms of the One Who has been waiting alongside him the whole time. This time Jonah is not asleep. He is fully aware of his condition, his need and his predicament. Most importantly, he knows where to look for salvation: God’s holy temple.
In Psalm 5:7-8, David says,
But I, by Your great mercy,
will come into Your house,
in reverence will I bow down
toward Your holy temple.
Lead me, O Lord, in Your righteousness,
because of my enemies —
make straight Your way before me.
It’s a matter of perspective. By bowing down in God’s holy house, David could sense God’s majesty, and ask for His direction in his life. David fought a lot of external enemies, but he also faced many internal ones as well. He needed God’s strength and perspective to carry on.
Jonah’s greatest enemies, for now, are on the inside. By bowing down towards God’s house, he is acknowledging God’s majesty and presence in the world and in his life. Instead of looking to the past for answers or engaging in self-recrimination, he now has a future and a hope by looking to where God dwells. He is no longer looking at where his fear and hurt dwell.
Listen again to David in Psalm 27:4-5:
One thing I ask of the Lord,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to seek Him in His temple.
For in the day of trouble
He will keep me safe in His dwelling;
He will hide me in the shelter of His tabernacle
and set me high upon a rock.
This is a “perspective check” for David. He is seeking the Lord in His temple. By doing so, he is able to exult in his mighty and caring Lord.
Later in that psalm he exclaims,
I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” (verses 13-14).
David’s son and the next king, Solomon, dedicated the majestic First Temple by proclaiming:
…and when a prayer or plea is made by any of Your people Israel — each one aware of the afflictions of his own heart, and spreading out his hands towards this temple — then hear from heaven, Your dwelling place. Forgive and act… (1 Kings 8:38-9)
Isn’t it interesting that while the Temple is acknowledged as God’s dwelling place, Heaven is as well? One as magnificent as God cannot be contained in a mere physical structure, no matter how awesome and beautiful it may be. Therefore, no matter where you might be, bowing down like David in a beautiful place, or calling out to Heaven from inside a dark place, He is sure to hear and respond!
Jonah does not deny how dreadful his circumstances are:
The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounding me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountain I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. (verses 5-6)
Talk about feeling trapped. Hedged in. No way out. A terrible spot. He is looking at where he is, but he is pondering where he will be because of the Lord:
But You brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God (verse 6).
That “but” in the sentence is very important. It signals that although he fully recognizes where he is, he can now see that these forces — the waves, the sea, the sailors, the ship and the big fish — are all agents of God’s plan of rescue. God will take him out of the pit, the grave, and the darkness. He now has the one thing that eluded him earlier: hope!
It is a hope firmly anchored to God. Jonah is no longer anchored to his fear.
We will continue this next week...
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