Jonah 1 (A great story that's really not about the fish)

1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. 4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. 6 The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.” 7 Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?” 9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.) 11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?” 12 “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.” 13 Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. 14 Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.” 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him. 17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Who is Jonah?

2 Kings 14:25–26 (NIV)

25 He was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher.

26 The Lord had seen how bitterly everyone in Israel, whether slave or free, was suffering; there was no one to help them.

So a bit of context here. Jonah lived in the time of a king called Jeroboam II. He was an evil king. Yet Jonah was a prophet, someone who heard from God, and God saw the suffering of the ordinary people, and used Jonah as a vessel for his Word.

But here, in the book of Jonah, we have a lot more detail about this man. And I think there’s a lot in this story for us to learn about what God is like, and how it points to Jesus. So let’s walk through it together.

v1. Word of the Lord came to Jonah. Standard prophetic formula (opens Hosea, Micah, Joel, Zephaniah, Zechariah, Malachi).

v. 2 Ninevah - Great city (first of 7 greats). Terrible city - torturers. Their wickedness has come up to God (see 2 Kgs passage).

v. 3 Jonah got up and went, the wrong way! The word used in the Hebrew is the same. In other words, God said ‘get up and go’, so Jonah ‘got up and goed’, but in the other direction. Tarshish, Joppa etc.

MAP SLIDE. Example of Washington and Kabul.

He is trying to get away from the presence of the LORD. And remember whenever you see LORD in capitals it’s referring to God by name. So he’s trying to get away from YAHWEH.

Why does he want to go away? Surely he wants to go tell it to the evil Empire? Spoiler for later chapters. We might be able to subtitle this book ‘I knew you would do that’.

v. 4 SURPRISE. The LORD is there too - he hurled a great wind on the sea. The first throw.

v. 5 The sailors are terrified - must be a really great storm to terrify experienced sailors. So they pray to their gods. Common reaction to fear. It was common then for gods to be thought of as attached to places. So each of these sailors would have had his own local god that he grew up with.

The second throw - all the stuff goes into the sea. Raising the level of the decks. It’s not enough.

Meanwhile, Jonah is asleep. What kind of sleep? The sleep of depression?

5 verses in, and an unbelievable amount has happened!

v. 6 The captain stirs him. Again, someone is telling Jonah to GET UP. It’s one of the themes of this story. ‘You pray too!’ He doesn’t. Note that he doesn’t ask for God’s help. Jonah is pretty passive throughout this story, except when he is running away.

v. 7 The sailors draw lots - they want to know why this has happened. Imagine a bunch of straws, one shorter than the other.

v. 8 They don’t immediately pile on him. The compassion and care of these sailors is extraordinary. Instead, they question him. This odd guy who has fallen into a deep sleep while the storm rages, who hasn’t cried out to his God to save him like all the normal people do, and who has now drawn the short straw.

They question him instead. He tells them who he is, where he’s from, and the killer line for them:

Jonah 1:9 NIV

9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

v. 10 Then they were terrified. He’d already told them he was fleeing the presence of his God. But now he tells them that his god isn’t just a local god. Jonah’s trying to escape the God of heaven, who made the land and sea, by fleeing to the sea. Do you see the problem here? Jonah seems to have known all along who God is, and even that He is the God of everywhere, yet he still thinks that there is somewhere he can go to get away from God.

v. 11 The sea picks up, and still these sailors are remarkably polite. I image them asking awkwardly ‘what shall we do to you?’

v. 12 And Jonah knows. He has known all along, which I think is why he went to sleep. He tells them to chuck him in the sea. He might as well now, as he knows the storm isn’t going to go away.

v. 13 And still, these sailors are reluctant to be involved in murder. They row as hard as they can, desperately trying to get the ship back to land, but they can’t. For the third time, the storm increases. These men are so impressive. They’re not looking for a scapegoat. Remember that we find this story in the Hebrew scriptures, in a book that is making the point that there is only one God to worship. And yet here we are being given a really good moral example from some pagans who don’t know God, who are far less selfish, more god-fearing than the King’s top prophet who hears directly from God.

14. Then these pagans do what Jonah didn’t. They cry out to the Lord. We’re going to do this thing, because it seems like the only thing to do, but we don’t want to be guilty of shedding innocent blood.

15. As soon as they hurl Jonah overboard, the storm stops. If the story stopped there, it would be a pretty gruesome, terrifying story. Disobey God, and you’ll be drowned. Tell that one to your kids next time they’re being naughty. But that’s not what happens.

v. 16 As far as the sailors are concerned, it ends there. They bow out near the end of chapter 1, with even greater fear and awe of the God of Israel. The fact that the storm stopped straight away has confirmed to them that He is indeed the God of the sea. That isn’t how storms generally end, and sailors know it. They gradually peter out. The wind dies down, the waves last longer, but they gradually get less and less. Yet here, the storm just stops Notice that the writer tells us that they made a sacrifice. That’s important, particularly to this writer, because it shows that Jonah wasn’t a sacrifice. One of the major things that distinguished the Hebrew religion from their neighbours was that they didn’t sacrifice humans.

And here comes the fish. It’s the star of the show in children’s Bibles, but it doesn’t get much airtime here. Jonah 1:17

Jonah 1:17 NIV

17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

God provided it.

This was the part that I would obsess over as a child. I am a planner. Ask Tim about the power sockets at Istanbul airport if you want proof. As a little girl, I would imagine what it would be like to be in the belly of a fish, and then I would start to work out how I would survive and how I would get out.

The fish is dramatic, and super weird. The fish is a challenge to secularists who don’t believe in miracles, though really the whole of Jonah is a challenge to the secular worldview, starting form God speaking to a man, and then God causing a great storm, and then God stopping said storm instantly. But the fish is not the point. The fish is actually just the means of rescue. Forget making your bed on the fish’s tongue, and drying out your wet clothes on that hangy down bit (uvula) and making plankton salad out of the other things the fish has swallowed. It’s not important.

What’s important in this story is what we learn from Jonah, what we learn about God, and how we read it as Christian people. It’s a great story. By that, I mean, it’s a good story. But it’s also a great story in that it repeatedly uses the word ‘great’. The city is great. The great wind causes a great storm. The sailors have great fear. And the fish is great. So this is a story of great big things - let’s see what we can learn from it.

What do we learn from Jonah?

He hears directly from God (v1). He knows about God (v9 God of heaven, maker of land and sea).

This is not enough. We might say he has gifting, without the character. Anointing without obedience. Maybe you’ve met people like that? He is selfish. It’s maybe understandable to us that he wouldn’t want to go and preach to Ninevah, but he shows zero concern for the sailors lives until they really force the question. He heads off to bed, thinking they might all die with him, and not attempting to do anything about that. This guy lives almost 3,000 years ago, but I can kind of relate to him. Again, I’m in awe of how much action and character development is packed into this tiny story! As the rest of Jonah unfolds we’re going to learn more about his character, and we’re going to see these themes develop of his selfishness, and his knowing about God, but not wanting to obey God.

What do we learn about God?

He hears - the wickedness of Ninevah (v2), the cry of the sailors (v14). God is not indifferent to human suffering. God is not indifferent to injustice. He sees and he hears.

He is all-powerful - he started and stopped the storm.

He is merciful. Especially to Jonah, but also to Ninevah. We can’t have his mercy for ourselves but withhold it from others.

Where is Jesus in Jonah? Where is Jonah in Jesus?

I want to finish by getting us to think about how we read the Old Testament? These things happened before Jesus was born. Can we learn anything from this story about Jesus.

Firstly, we know that Jesus himself was familiar with this story.

Matthew 12:38–41 NIV

38 Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.” 39 He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41 The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here.

So Jesus read these scriptures too. And he used Jonah as an example to talk about his own coming death and resurrection. God sent the fish as a way to rescue Jonah. Jesus’ death was a means of rescue for us.

But Jesus says something really provocative at the end. He says ‘something greater than Jonah is here’.

Someone greater than a prophet who hears directly from God. Some people say that Jesus was a prophet. Just a prophet. That is one of the teachings of Islam. But here, Jesus is saying that he is greater than a prophet. What is the proof? Here’s a story that three of the gospel writers included, because it was so important to them:

Luke 8:22–25 NIV

22 One day Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side of the lake.” So they got into a boat and set out. 23 As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger. 24 The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!” He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. 25 “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.”

Does this remind you of anything? A guy sleeping in a boat while a storm rages. Experienced sailors are terrified. The boat is in danger. At first we think, JONAH! But this story ends so differently. Jesus got up. Remember how everyone was telling Jonah to get up, and he only got up to run away? Jesus got up, and he rebuked the winds and the waves, and the storm stopped dead. Remember how uncommon it was for a storm to stop dead, but this one did.

Just like the sailors in Jonah’s story, the sailors here, the disciples, are terrified. I think they have the same emotional experience as Jonah’s crew. The storm stops, and the realise the power that they are in contact with.

“Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.”

Remember what we learned about God from the story of Jonah. He is the one who commands the wind and the waves. And here is Jesus, commanding the wind and the waves.

Jesus is greater than Jonah

Jonah ran from the mercy of God. He didn’t want to get up and take the message of repentance to the evil city. He slept in the boat while everyone on board was in danger of drowning. He had the gift of prophecy, but not the character. We’ll see more of that as his story goes on. And yet the great story of Jonah points to the one who was to come who is greater than Jonah. It shows us the divinity of Jesus, who commands the wind and the waves.

Over the next few weeks, I want to invite you as we study Jonah together to be looking out for what we can learn from Jonah, what we can learn about God and His character, and to be thinking about how we can see Jesus, the greater one.

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