“Jonah’s Fervency” – Jonah 2

Somebody tell us where you were when you know God answered a prayer of yours.  Were you praying in your prayer closet?  Were you in church?  Maybe you were driving down the road and had your own little “Jesus Take The Wheel” moment. Where were you and how were you praying?

What is the best position for getting a prayer answered?  How long should your prayer time be?  Should you pray before every meal or wouldn’t it be better to pray afterward?  How should you be dressed?  Should your head be covered?  Your eyes closed and hands folded? Or arms raised up as you look to Heaven?

Now, some of those questions may have some answers but to be honest, when you are in the middle of a crisis, it’s hard to remember all the right answers.  In fact, those questions probably don’t enter your mind when your world is crashing down around you.   “Oh, Almighty Deity of Omnipotence, hallowed be thy name.”  That’s not really how it comes out, is it?

“Oh, God, please help me!!!”  It’s usually something more like that, right?  It happens in the middle of battle in the foxhole.  It happens as a car is sliding on the ice.  It happens just outside the office of the doctor who gave bad news.  Christians do it.  Non-Christians do it.  Even atheists do it when the going really gets rough.

I heard the story about a little boy in a small Kentucky church who was being rowdy and loud and wouldn’t be quiet.  His frustrated dad finally yanks him up and carries him over his shoulder out the door.  Just as the father was about to go out of the auditorium the whole crowd heard the little boy holler out, “Y’all pray for me now!”

When you feel completely helpless; when the situation seems hopeless; when you know this isn’t the movies and the cavalry is not going to come; there is something about being in that position that makes people realize that there must be a God.  And if there is a God then maybe He will help me.  And whether we know it or not it is an admission of God’s strength, His power, His sovereignty and especially His grace and mercy when we call out to Him in those situations.

And that is right where God wants us to be.  He wants us to acknowledge Him as the Almighty Deity of Omnipotence even if we don’t necessarily use those words.  He deserves to be recognized as such and sometimes He even uses our sin to put us in those positions so that we do finally recognize Him as the all-powerful Creator and Sustainer.  Now, we know that not everything bad that happens to us in our lives is the result of sin, but often times God will use our sin, or the consequences of that sin, to put us in a more teachable position.

In Jonah chapter 2, you might say that Jonah is in a teachable position.  His disobedience has led to consequences that have put him in a place where he is helpless.  The situation seems hopeless.  The cavalry isn’t coming for him and he cries out to God for grace and mercy.  And that is right where God wanted him to be.  James 5:16 is one of my favorite verses.  The King James reads, “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

I’ve told you before that word “fervent” means to be stretched out or laid out, putting out effort.  It is exactly the picture of Jonah here as he prays in chapter 2 of the book of Jonah.  Jonah is considered one of the Minor Prophets, not because his prophesy was any less important but only because his story is just not very long.  Jonah was one of the good guys.  He was a man of God who had been used of God and had, in times past, had a powerful message for his home country of Israel.

And that was fine with him.  He enjoyed his job.  He could do that.  I don’t know that it came with a good medical and dental plan but overall the job was working out for Jonah.  He had always done what God told him to do. Until now.  Now God had told him to go to Nineveh, about 500 miles to the east and Jonah had tried to go to Tarshish, about 2000 miles to the west.  He didn’t want to go preach to Nineveh because he was afraid that those barbarians might just accidently believe him and repent and God would forgive them.  And Jonah couldn’t have that.

But you remember the story.  Jonah boarded the ship for Tarshish and God caused a horrible storm to come up and the other men on board finally threw Jonah overboard.  And that was fine with Jonah.  He would rather die than go to Nineveh anyway so I doubt he even tried to hold his breath as he went under.  This is the end!  Good bye cruel world!  And then what happened?

The last verse of chapter 1 says that God provided a great fish to swallow Jonah.  And that is where we find Jonah in chapter 2, inside the fish.  Let’s continue with this incredible story in chapter 2 of Jonah.

From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. ² He said:

“In my distress I called to the Lord,
and he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,
and you listened to my cry.
³ You hurled me into the depths,
into the very heart of the seas,
and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
swept over me.
⁴ I said, ‘I have been banished
from your sight;
yet I will look again
toward your holy temple.’
⁵ The engulfing waters threatened me,^[b]
the deep surrounded me;
seaweed was wrapped around my head.
⁶ 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.

⁷ “When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, Lord,
and my prayer rose to you,
to your holy temple.

⁸ “Those who cling to worthless idols
turn away from God’s love for them.
⁹ But I, with shouts of grateful praise,
will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”

¹⁰ And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.”

We have probably all heard this story many times since we were little kids.  I remember it being told very eloquently by the great theologians Abbott and Costello.  They said that the crew had thrown everything overboard to satisfy the hunger of the whale including a barrel of apples and a stool.  And three years later the whale was actually caught in the New York harbor and cut open where they found Jonah sitting on the stool selling apples 3 for a nickel.

And for some people that is as believable as the biblical version.  Some people want to focus on the fish and how crazy it is to think that a fish could do that and a person could survive and blah, blah, blah.  And while I can’t explain it, I don’t even want to because the point of the story is not the fish.  It’s not really even about Jonah.  It’s about  God and how He works and this chapter is specifically about prayer and the kind of prayer that God wants to answer.

This is a great story, no matter how you look at it, though.  And every great story tells the who, what, why, where and when so let’s look at those things in this chapter of prayer.  I want us to see first where Jonah prayed in verse 1.  It says he was “inside the fish”.  From Abbott and Costello jokes to pictures we saw when we were kids, we have this picture of Jonah sitting comfortably maybe even with a little campfire there to keep him warm and give him light.

And while I don’t know what kind of fish it may have been, I have a pretty good idea that it wasn’t like that for Jonah inside that fish.  I have a pretty good idea that Jonah wasn’t comfortably on his knees praying by the gentle light of a campfire as he prayed.  Jonah was probably gasping for breath for 3 days.  Every time the fish breathed and let water in Jonah thought he was going to drown.

He had saltwater in his eyes and mouth and lungs.  He could feel the rough texture of the inside of the fish.  He was constricted by the rib bones.  He couldn’t move around; couldn’t wipe the water out of his eyes; couldn’t even open his mouth without water pouring in.  He had nothing to eat or drink.  No sleep.  Total darkness. His life is slipping away but even death can’t come soon enough and he is completely helpless.

And some of you are thinking I have just described your life; maybe now or maybe not so long ago or maybe even what you think you are about to go through.  Your world is caving in and you are helpless to do anything about it.  Maybe it is because of the consequences of your own sin or maybe through no fault of your own you find yourself trapped, drowning, miserable and with your ears popping from going down even further.

I don’t know if Jonah prayed out loud or if it was a silent prayer.  I doubt if he had his hands folded toward Heaven nor was he in the optimal position for much intercessory prayer but I believe this was the most powerful prayer Jonah ever prayed.  And we see in verse 2 when he prayed.  Look at that once more.  Jonah says, “In my distress I called to the Lord.”   I cried out in MY distress, MY affliction, MY pain, MY horror, MY need.

Jonah knew in his mind that Nineveh was in trouble but right now he didn’t care.  He knew that his own country of Israel was in trouble but that wasn’t bothering him right now.  He didn’t care if David had cried out or if Moses had had problems or if Abraham, Isaac and Jacob themselves had ever been in desperate need.  I doubt if he could have even called any of their names.  But he cried out to God in his distress…and God answered him.

Sometimes when I preach a funeral I say to the family something about how this kind of thing happens to everyone in the world.  Pretty much everybody who ever lives loses a loved one to death.  And knowing that everybody else goes through this doesn’t help you one bit, does it?  It doesn’t make it any less painful to you to know that others have been there.  But you can cry out in your pain and He will answer you.  In Psalm 3 David says, “I was crying to the Lord with my voice, and He answered from His holy mountain.”

That’s the difference in religion and having a personal relationship with God through His Son Jesus.  Religion is what has happened to other people in the past.  A relationship is what is happening to me right now.  Religion says to pray this certain way at certain times and maybe that distant god over there will see you and maybe he will have pity and hopefully he can help somehow.  A relationship just cries out right where you are when you need Him to the God that promises to always be with you, knowing that He is in total control of the situation.

We have seen where and when Jonah prayed now let’s see to whom he prayed.  Let’s see that Jonah had more than religion.  He cried out to his personal God and Savior in verse 6.  See, up through the middle of verse 6, Jonah had been going literally and figuratively down, down, down.  Look back over it.  “From the depths”…”into the deep”…”engulfing waters”…”to the roots of the mountains”.  Down, down, down.  Until verse 6 where he says, “But you brought my life up from the pit, Lord my God.”  He calls Him, “MY God” as if the infinite God could be wholly and completely his.  Is that wrong of Jonah to say?  Of course not!  God wants to be YOUR God not just THE God.  He wants to have a personal relationship with you to where in the very deepest, lowest part of your life that you cry out to MY God, MY Savior, MY King and MY Lord.

It’s very interesting to see what he prayed as well.  He prayed where he was and how he was to the One he knew could help but what he prayed…had already been prayed.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think Jonah had been reading the Psalms.  Psalm 50:15 says, “Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you.”  And that is just what Jonah did.

But not only that, he actually quotes back to God God’s own words through the psalmists.  Psalm 18:6 says, “In my distress I called upon the Lord, And cried out to my God; He heard my voice from His temple, And my cry came before Him, even to His ears.”  Psalm 120 says, “In my distress I cried to the Lord and He heard me.”  Psalm 88:6-7, “You have laid me in the lowest pit, In darkness, in the depths. ⁷ Your wrath lies heavy upon me, And You have afflicted me with all Your waves.”

Sound familiar?  There is something powerful about praying back to God the words He has given us in His Word.  And Jonah knew that so he just pulled out his copy of the King James, you know because that’s all they had back then, and just flicked his Bic for some light and read a few passages while he was there not doing anything.  No, those were passages he had memorized.

Now, let me ask you something.  If, in your great time of distress, you cried out to God and the only scripture you could remember was John 3:16, do you think God would hear you?  Do you think Almighty, All-Powerful Jehovah God will hear you, His beloved and favored child, if all you can remember is “Jesus wept” or “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”?  Yes, of course He will hear you.

But what if, in your great time of distress, you cried out to God what David had cried out in Psalm 34:6, “This poor man cried out, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.”  Or to pray as Isaiah did: “I am being threatened; Lord, come to my aid!” or to pray “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. ¹⁸ But even if he does not, we want you to know that we will not serve your gods…”

And when you pray knowing that God can save you and will save you like He did David, Isaiah and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego BUT EVEN IF HE DOESN’T still, I will praise the Lord MY God!  Do you think that is a prayer God wants to answer?  Absolutely!  And, again, it may not be answered in the way you want it to be.  It wasn’t for Jonah.  He still had to go to Nineveh.  But there is power in prayer and there is special power in praying back to God His own Word.

Lastly, I want us to see why Jonah prayed.  He has prayed the right things at the right time and the right place to the right One.  But motivation is everything!  We have learned lately that even if you do all of the right things in just the right way it may still be wrong if you have wrong motives.  So let’s see in verse 9 why Jonah prayed.

Before we do, I have to tell a story on my sister, Suzy.  I remember her telling this years ago and I know she won’t mind.  She said she was in grade school and she felt the need to witness to some of the kids one day at school during lunch.  She asked the little boy across the table from her if he had ever been saved.  And the boy went into this long story about going fishing with his dad.  They were in a boat catching fish and on and on and on this little boy went telling his story. 

I’m sure Suzy was listening intently waiting for him to tell about how this situation led him to have a personal relationship with Jesus but the boy ended the story by saying that he then fell out of the boat but his dad reached down and saved him.  So, yes, he had been saved before.

Even though that is not what Suzy was talking about it is very similar to what Jonah was going through and was the reason why Jonah prayed.  Jonah prayed to God because in verse 9 it says, “Salvation comes from the Lord.”  Psalm 3, Psalm 37, Psalm 68, Isaiah 45 all say the same thing.  Salvation comes from the Lord.  The original Hebrew word means “deliverance” or “victory”.  How many of you need deliverance or victory today?

How many of you, like Romans 6:23 says, deserve death for your sins?  I sure do.  How many of you need deliverance from sin and victory over sin? 1 Corinthians 15 says, “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Jonah knew there was nothing he could do to save himself.  He couldn’t be good enough.  He couldn’t be strong enough.  He couldn’t save himself from the belly of that fish no matter what he did.  But he knew salvation came from the Lord.  That’s why he prayed.

There is a fascinating little word I want us to see in verse 4 as we close.  You probably didn’t pay it much mind as we read it but that little 3 letter word changes everything.  “I have been banished from your sight; YET I will look again
toward your holy temple.”  It’s dark right now YET I trust in God.  It is horrible right now, YET I know God is in control of the storm.  It’s not right.  It’s not fair.  It’s mean and nasty and horrible and I feel like I just can’t go on.

YET God gives peace and Joy.  YET God gives wisdom.  YET I live a full and abundant life.  It doesn’t always make sense and I can rarely explain it but He has said that our fervent prayer is powerful and effective.  I believe it and I would love to pray with you this morning about your relationship with Him.  Let’s bow our heads and close our eyes as the song Jesus Calls Us softly plays.