Pastor Phil Burdoin
March 6, 2022
Jonah. A man that became famous because of one thing. Not one small thing, but one giant thing. The Bible says he was swallowed by a giant fish. A crazy story but one that was confirmed as fact by Jesus himself when he spoke to the people of his day and they asked him for a sign. In Matthew 12 He replied the only sign that would be given was the sign of Jonah. “Just 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.” So Jesus’ words tell us this was a real event, not just a story.
In the fifteenth year of Amaziah son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel became king in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn away from any of the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit. 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.
2 Kings 14:23-25
God says “Arise” “Get up.” Jonah goes “down”
“goes down” to Joppa to run from the Lord
“goes down” into the hull of the ship to sleep
“goes down” to the roots of the mountain after being thrown overboard
Jonah realizes that the fish was deliverance not damnation.The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.
Jonah 2:5-6
When everything around him was going fine, when he was predicting the expansion of Israel and people were cheering him on. He was unaware of a major character issue he had. His arrogance and pride. It wasn’t until he became helpless and the situation seemed hopeless that he begins to reflect and say maybe I’m the problem here.
You realize that when Jesus is all you have left, he’s all you really need.
Jonah responds with gratefulness.Jonah begins to praise God and rededicate himself to God before he has any assurance that he will make it out of the fish alive. There’s no guarantee that that God is going to release him from this fish. And yet it’s when he experiences how merciful God really is that he says “I will make shouts of grateful praise to you.” It’s not when a great miracle like surviving for three days in a fish happens (he didn’t know that was going to be the case). It’s when a person realizes their true position with God, acknowledges that THEY are the problem and confesses that to God. As a result, God fixes that broken relationship and provides salvation. That’s the real deliverance-not the release from the fish or escape from the circumstances.
Embrace grace, don’t run from it.Jonah mentions the Lord’s temple two different times: The holy of holy was a source of God’s grace.
I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’
Jonah 2:4
When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.
Jonah 2:7
How do you need to respond to God’s grace today?Bottom Line: Embrace grace, don’t run from it
