Jonah 2
Repentance, Jonah Goes
Up
Open your Bible to…
Jonah 1:17 Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Pray
Intro
√ Repentance, Jonah goes up
We closed our last study with Jonah being swallowed by a great fish because he had not obeyed the Lord.
Chapter 2 records how it is that God brought Jonah to a place of repentance so that He could get Jonah back on track.
I think you’ll find both a word of encouragement, and a word of warning, from Jonah’s experience because all of us will be tempted to disobey the Word of the Lord in our lives.
Jonah’s experience reminds us that it’s always easier to obey the first time that God speaks!
The Goad of Repentance (vs. 1:17-2:1)
Jonah 1:17 Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Jonah 2:1 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the fish’s belly.
√ The goad of repentance
Until now Jonah has been in a place of disobedience, that is, he’s been sinning against the Lord!
God gave him a message to preach, a people to preach it to, and a command to go!
Jonah rejected God’s will and took off in the opposite direction.
In response God worked to bring Jonah to repentance by sending a…
Storm
Sign
Tempest
Calm
Fish
But, it’s not until Jonah’s been fish food for three days that he finally decides to repent (evidenced by his prayer)!
In fact, this is the first time the Bible records that Jonah prayed during this ordeal!
The sailors prayed (ref. 1:5 & 1:14), but until this point there’s no indication that Jonah had prayed to God.
Jonah must have been a stubborn man to have waited this long to repent!
The lesson is that God knows how to break stubborn and disobedient people and bring them to repentance!
Ex. Saul of
Acts 9:3 As he
journeyed he came near
Acts 9:4 Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?”
Acts 9:5 And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” Then the Lord said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”
“The goads”?
Goads are nothing more than a sharpened stick that shepherds use to poke wayward animals to get them to go in the right direction.
When Saul and Jonah were stubbornly resisting the word and the will of God, God poked them with a “sharp stick” (difficult circumstance) to get them turned around and moving in the right direction.
In Saul’s life God knocked him off his horse and blinded him.
In Jonah’s life God sent a storm, a sign, a tempest, a calm and a fish, to “goad” him to repentance!
So, the “goad of repentance” are those things that God sends our way when we’re walking (or running, or sailing, or riding) in the wrong direction…
…to turn us around and get us going in the right direction.
Ap. Goaded to repentance
The first step to getting right with God is repentance.
However, as we’ve seen demonstrated in Jonah’s life…
…people aren’t always ready to repent!
So, if you’re walking in disobedience and unwilling to repent…
…understand that God is going to “goad” you toward repentance!
Don’t resist that goading, as Jesus said to Saul…
“It’s hard to kick against the goads”
The sooner you repent the sooner life will stop hurting!
If you refuse to repent, watch out!
Ex. Sexually immoral man ~ 1 Cor. 5:5
1Cor. 5:5 deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
It would seem then that Christians who refuse to repent run the risk of experiencing an early death so that they might be saved from eternal destruction.
The Prayer of Repentance (vs. 2-9)
Jonah 2:2 And he said:
“I cried out to the LORD because of my affliction,
And He answered me.
‘Out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
And You heard my voice.
Jonah 2:3 For You cast me into the deep,
Into the heart of the seas,
And the floods surrounded me;
All Your billows and Your waves passed over me.
Jonah 2:4 Then I said, “I have been cast out of Your sight;
Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’
Jonah 2:5 The waters surrounded me, even to my soul;
The deep closed around me;
Weeds were wrapped around my head.
Jonah 2:6 I went down to the moorings of the mountains;
The earth with its bars closed behind me forever;
Yet You have brought up my life from the pit,
O LORD, my God.
Jonah 2:7 “When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the LORD;
And my prayer went up to You,
Into Your holy temple.
Jonah 2:8 “Those who regard worthless idols
Forsake their own Mercy.
Jonah 2:9 But I will sacrifice to You
With the voice of thanksgiving;
I will pay what I have vowed.
Salvation is of the LORD.”
√ The prayer of repentance
As we noted in verse 1 this is the first time that we have any record of Jonah praying! In his prayer he recounts his experience in the sea and in the fish, that…
God rescued him when he was almost dead ~ vs. 1-6
He repented & promised to obey ~ 4-9
He thanked God for saving him ~ vs. 9
But perhaps most important is God heard his prayer of repentance!
Vs. 1 tells us that…
“…Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the fish’s belly.”
In vs. 2 he says…
“Out of the belly of Sheol I cried…”
That is, Jonah came to believe that he would die in the fishes belly and that it would become his “grave”.
Yet, far from the help of any Man, Jonah discovered that he was not beyond the help of God!
That God heard his prayers though he was hidden in a fish’s stomach at the bottom of the sea!
Jonah tells us that he…
“…look(ed) again toward Your holy temple.” ~ vs. 4
And…
“When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the LORD;
And my prayer went up to You,
Into Your holy temple. ~ vs. 7
Perhaps remembering the prayer of Solomon when he dedicated
the
1Kings 8:30 And may
You hear the supplication of Your servant and of Your people
The point is that Solomon’s prayer was a reminder to the Jewish people that when they were suffering as a result of their own sin…
…but then turned toward the
Ex. Jonah a symbol of
disobedient
Remember that one of the lessons of Jonah was that his experience was symbolic of the
spiritual condition of
His disobedience was a picture of
Yet, even as Jonah re-discovered the mercy and grace of God when he repented…
…so too could
God would hear their prayers.
Ap. The Lord hears your prayers
We’re reminded that God’s ear is always open to the cry of the repentant!
We don’t have to go to the
God’s presence fills the universe and His ears are open to the cry of the repentant!
So, as long as we’re still breathing we’re not beyond the help of God if we’ll pray to Him with a heart of repentance.
The Response of Repentance (vs. 10)
Jonah 2:10 So the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
√ The response of repentance
Oh how gracious God is to the repentant sinner! Here we find God’s response to Jonah’s repentance…
…He tells the fish to barf Jonah up on the beach!
Wouldn’t that be a sight!
I wonder if the fish breeched, then barfed?
Or, did he just launch Jonah from the sea like a Trident Missile!
Notice that we’re not told where Jonah ended up, only that it was on “dry land”.
But if I was a betting man I’d lay odds that Jonah found himself back at Joppa where the whole misadventure began!
Why?
Because true repentance starts where our disobedience began!
Ex. Jesus’
prescription to the Church at
Rev. 2:5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent.
To the church that had lost its first love for their Savior, Jesus tells them to…
Remember from where you have fallen (right with God)
Repent (turn around ~ from your sin)
Do the first works (obey ~ do what He told you to do)
If we apply that prescription to Jonah’s life it would look like this…
Remember from where you have fallen ~ go back to where the sin began, Joppa.
Repent ~ turn away from Tarshish.
Do the first works ~ obey the command of God and go to
So, Jonah finds that God has graciously delivered him from death and placed him back on dry land so that he can do what God called him to do.
Regardless of what beach Jonah found himself he still had a long journey in front of him!
About a month’s journey.
So, Jonah finally obey the word of the Lord and sets out to
preach in
Ap. Getting back to where the sin began
If you’re in disobedience and you want to get right with the Lord (and you do what to get right with the Lord!)…
…it starts with going back to where the sin began and making things right or acknowledging your sin.
Saul came back to
Before Jesus restored Peter to ministry He asked him 3 times if he loved Him ~ even as Peter had denied the Lord 3 times.
I’m not suggesting that this is necessary to receive forgiveness, it’s not!
But, I think it is a pattern that we should follow because in the process of going back to where the disobedience began we gain the opportunity to testify of God’s grace and mercy.
Think about our examples…
If Jonah did get barfed up on the beach at Joppa everyone there would see that he had repented and was now going to obey God’s command.
When Saul returned to the Church in
When Peter confessed his love for Jesus it provided the perfect framework of humility for Jesus to restore him to leadership in the Church.
So, in our own lives it is important to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading and if required…
…remember from where you have fallen so that you can testify of the Lord’s grace and mercy in your life.
Close
√ Jonah
So, in chapter 2 we read of Jonah’s Repentance, Jonah goes up.
Chapter 2 reminds us that God is working to bring us to repentance that He might restore us to a vibrant relationship with Him.
If we won’t listen to His Spirit we’ll discover that He has ways to get our attention and bring us to repentance!
Remember Jonah’s experience…
The goad of repentance
The prayer of repentance
The response of repentance
Save yourself some misery and obey the Lord!