Then Jonah Prayed

Jonah 2:1 “Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly,”

Jonah 2:2 “ 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.”

Jonah 2:3 “ For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.”

Then Jonah prayed! Why did he pray? Because he was in the belly of a whale… that’s a pretty bad place to be to finally have reason to pray to God!

What will it take for you? What will cause you to finally have a “then Jonah prayed” story of your own? I hope it doesn’t take a hospital bed. I hope it doesn’t take seeing your wife and kids driving off in the car. I hope it doesn’t take the sound of sirens or the slamming of a cell door. I hope it doesn’t take you being in a pool of blood in a car wreck. I hope it doesn’t take you being in hell to finally to look up to God.

I’d love to see you one day pray to Jesus for yourself, to pray for him to save you… to find out he would! What a day that would be.

In Jonah 2, Jonah is in a real spot. He’s God’s prophet, but he’s got himself into a real mess disobeying God. That’s how sin goes, without respect of persons. He wasn’t an exception to God’s rule, what makes you think you will be? …Jonah is GOD’s man and he himself was not able to infuse ultimate success into disobeying God, what makes you think you will?

But Jonah had got on the outs with God. Not that God had wronged him, but God wasn’t quite suiting what he wanted him to be. Dear reader, the Lord never will be what you want him to be. He is who he is and who he says he is. And in time you’ll thank God for that rather than it be an inconvenience for you. But did never did seek counsel from you or me when he created the heaven and the earth, nor when he decreed in glory that salvation would be through his own Son, and him alone. Don’t get confused on this fact. That God doesn’t exist for your purpose, but you for his. That’s why you will NEVER find purpose, permanence and fulfillment outside of him. We are really back the front these days. You are the creature “created being”, that’s what the word means, he is not. And you want to fight him to your dying day on all that? Well you can I guess, but it’s going to do nothing to do him, and harm to you.

And if we can see anything in our nation, society, communities, homes and personal lives… it’s that we are not succeeding at all without the Lord God. And like the whale scooping up Jonah when he was floundering, out of his depth and sinking in deep waters… we are being swallowed up by something far greater than us. And even people “doing well” are not happy. You get what you want and it still doesn’t satisfy the soul does it. Be honest.

Under the surface that whale is waiting for you reader. You may not see the whale yet, doesn’t mean it’s not there. The fair weather can be very seductive, you think calm waters and gentle waves can’t turning into something yet totally beyond your control! Our society and lives get a whole lot more than we bank on or budget for when we leave God. And now we are in the belly of things we’d like to get out of but can’t. People take a few drugs and end up addicted. People take a few drinks and end up alcoholics. People do a bit of adultery and end up divorced and dividing their children. People get greedy and end up broke. People get envious and get swallowed by unhappiness. People are into all sorts of stuff that they cannot get out of, much like Jonah in the whale’s belly. I’m writing this because I found the God of the whale, if he could save me, he can definitely save you too. Every part of our life that is without Jesus we are poorer for. The best and only thing I can give you is Jesus.

Jonah found out something that I have in my life and you will too. Which is that there are giant monsters which are gulping down lives, families and communities all in one go… sea monsters we never counted on or factored in when we merrily boarded the ship to the pleasant pictures of Tarshish, when there was no signs yet of the foul winds and raging waves that would soon engulf the boat.

We think we can make a life of sin and disobedience and wickedness and iniquity “sea worthy” and it is not.
God told Jonah one thing, Jonah did the other. We are not different. He finds himself swiping his boarding pass on a ship to Tarshish when God told him to go to Nineveh… and suddenly they’re in a big storm. Sin affects all those around us, “on board” with us. Yeah you can rally the troops and find a lot of people on board with you to the same destination the highway to hell. It’s not going to be the one hell of a ride you think though. And as the ship becomes engulfed in waves, Jonah goes to sleep as they start taking on water… how are we asleep at the worst time to be so in our lives? Parents are sleeping on what their kids are going through and where they are at. Pastors totally asleep on God and the things of God. Churches sleeping on their communities. We are a nation asleep at the wheel, and we are fixing to have a wreck. Drivers asleep at the wheel are dangerous.

The sailors busily on the deck lighten the load as if that could placate the raging sea… a little thing we try doing, offering God our compromises of worship (Easter and Christmas church attendance anybody?), and you’re always careful not to go “too far” or be “that bad”… all while we refuse to repent and sell out to God and actually do what he told us to do… and the storm is not assuaged a bit. One little sin in the garden of Eden resulted in six thousand years of war, rape, violence and suffering, one little sin, even if it is little… matters. A whole army in the book of Joshua was undermined and defeated because one man in the whole army disobeyed God… Achan. It’s the exception to the rule, God’s rules, that you make that will be your undoing. The only thing God is interested in is obedience from the heart, if you don’t love him enough to do so, then it’s because his love hasn’t transformed yours yet.

We are often to God like our pets are to us. We call them to come, tell them to sit and stay… and they decide what they want to do. We call that obedience and “good boy”. And we think God is like that. Which he’s not. He means what he says. And the stakes are a whole lot higher.

In the book of Jonah we see that even God’s children can be very disobedient to God. That’s why you need to get your face in God’s holy word for yourself to get to know who Jesus is, as in actual, and you will be shocked… because there’s a lot of bad examples out there, and in high places usually it gets worse, who are totally false points of reference for who God is and what he says.

And so Jonah went the opposite direction to what God told him to do! … and he’d ended up in the belly of a whale. That’s been me too. In my life I’ve gone opposite, I’ve cracked it with God, I’ve got an attitude to God, and I’ ve headed elsewhere, and I ended up in the belly of the whale… I found out I wasn’t the master, I was the meat. While you are busy pursuing things in this world, you don’t yet realized you are the prey, there’s bigger fish in the sea than you. We are nothing, and Satan, this world, death and hell is trawling the waters and even though you think you’ve got safety in numbers, you ever seen how whales mow through huge schools of plankton and take all of them out together? That’s what Satan is doing to the people of this world. You are just collateral. This world won’t wait for you. It won’t thank you. It won’t remember you. You will not have changed it. It’s as wicked and woeful as it’s ever been. Why don’t you trust in Jesus?

You want to see what death and hell is like? Go and watch a whale storming through the water with it’s mouth open and it takes everything in, they can swallow huge amounts of krill in one bite, taking the whole lot out, families, communities, populations of plankton gone in one bite. “Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.”

Our society, lives, nations are being swallowed up. How many people take a pill, snort a line and their life and family is swallowed up by drugs. How many people load that first website, and their life Is swallowed up by pornography, where they can’t even think straight. What about these big media companies, swallowing us up in endless reels and scrolling. What about home improvements programs swallowing us up in needing to build bigger and better. And you might say what’s wrong with that last one? Well, nothing wrong with building etc, but people are caught up so much in this life and affairs and pursuits as the run the hamster wheel of this life for an objective that won’t ever be reached… you do realize that the purpose of life is knowing God? We settle for so far beneath what God created us for. People literally live for the most base things, for some people their idea of heaven is alcohol sex and footy, they can’t even think higher than that. This world will just swallow you and your lust up and you’ll wake up one day in hell wondering why did I never give some idiot with a Bible the time of day just once. You know that Bible believing Christians are made out of the same dirt, yes there are bananas crackers and nuts out there but do you realize they used to also think and live like you do now? It’s not they don’t get the old life, just they found true living in Christ… a life that reaches into eternity, not just living for the next dopamine hit.

While you are busy pursuing your “daily food” maybe take a look in the rearview mirror and see that big old whale coming up behind you that sees you as food. Before you know it, your life will be swallowed and digested by Satan. How many beautiful young marriages with house and kids a few years ago are now divorce situations, all because someone’s eyes and desires started wandering, because they weren’t fixed and founded and centred on Jesus.

… THEN Jonah prayed. That is your ONLY way out. My only way out too. And the other guy as well. Jesus is for every person. He’s not just for the odd Jesus freak. What kind of hope do you think that Jesus guy God has put in your life has, because they know you’re going to mock and make fun of the message and they tell you about Jesus anyway. They must have something you don’t, wouldn’t you agree? And it is because of the hope that is in Jesus Christ. Because he saves, JESUS saves. Because he conquered the whale “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death”.

If you read the end of Jonah 2, the whale vomited Jonah out, not because Jonah was great, for he was not, but because of his great God. The Lord spoke unto the whale and the whale vomited him up on dry land… safe and sound. You think Jonah was grateful for that? You bet he was glad when his feet hit dry ground… but that can be you too… you can experience the miraculous power of Jesus Christ in your life… his power to save is a simple honest surrendered prayer away. You are … that… close dear reader.

You know through Jesus Christ the Bible says “Death is swallowed up in victory.” You know how many people death has swallowed up before Christ? Every. Single. Person. To. Have. Ever. Lived. It’s coming for you too. But you know that there is a God in heaven who sent his Son to die for you, who spent three days and three nights in the belly of the whale… and he defeated death. Like that whale vomiting Jonah out, death, hell, the grave, Satan, sin could not hold him, it and they had no power on him. He in fact, the Bible says, made an open show of his triumph over them. Take that, Satan!

Jesus saves! THEN Jonah prayed. Some of the most amazing prayers come from the ugliest most desperate situations and circumstances in life ” He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from them which hated me: for they were too strong for me.”
Yes you do need Jesus Christ’s salvation. You just don’t know it yet. This is not for someone else, it’s for you. It’s not for a better time, it’s for now. Why be so hard to God? We are in a nation and society that refuse to turn back to God “thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return.”

I know what that’s like. I am no better. I’ve been in so many situations where I just didn’t pray, refused to repent, hardened to God… I’ve been in seasons of life where I was numb, dead and cold to God, no matter how bad it was.… That’s called pride “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts”… and that’s been me. But I do thank God for “Then Jonah prayed”… I do thank God he gave me the grace to cry unto God, and I thank God so much he heard me and saved me.

And so today, we have been in Jonah 2 and a most wonderful prayer… from the belly of the fish. Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, referenced his very own self in the time that Jonah spent in the belly of the whale, three days and three nights, so we know without a shadow of doubt that the very Spirit of God moves upon this precious Old Testament story. May the Holy Spirit move upon your heart today.

Psalm 32 says this is the exact prayer that every single person that is godly has ever prayed ! “For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him.”

You know what godliness is? It’s not going to church, though a godly person may go to church. It isn’t being baptized, though a godly person may be baptized. It’s not what you wear. It’s not how you hold yourself. It’s not how much money you make. It’s not how perfect your niche in life is. It’s not meeting up with friends for coffee and gossip.

Godliness is Jesus Christ, and it’s the prayer of repentance and faith, turning back to him, even if from the belly of a whale and I doubt you will be in as unusual and tight a spot as Jonah was! But you will be in a whale, swamped in sin, wrapped up, held tight, gasping for air, on death’s doorstep, wherever you are in and in whatever situation when you finally pray to God for mercy and he saves your soul.
…

It’s amazing how God turns it around. Because in Christ Jesus, God turned this horrible happening in Jonah’s life into a triumph for God’s grace and mercy. In time, we look back on that circumstance and that place as precious where we finally prayed. God sometimes has to do a lot to finally get us to a place and circumstance to THEN Jonah prayed… I pray you will be able to put your name with his right there along side him also. You’ll experience the power of God in your own life so it need not just be academic and theoretical anymore as you speak about that which you have never experienced. That whale got big on Jonah yes, but it was nothing to God, he just spoke to it and it couldn’t vomit Jonah out quick enough. Dry land, safe and sound awaits dear reader, God will put your legs beneath you again! “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”.

Blog Bible Christian Church Faith God Holy Spirit Jesus Jonah Mercy Pray Prayer Repentance Salvation Sin