Introduction
God created the whales, and the all the creatures in the sea, and if He knows when a single, little sparrow falls from a tree, I am sure He also cares for the great fish that swim in the ocean.
But far more than God might care for saving the sea life; He is most concerned with saving sinners like you and me. The first chapter of the book of Jonah closes with God using a whale (or a ‘great fish’, as it is actually called) to save a defiant prophet from drowning to death in the middle of the sea.
Yet, even in this scene in which the great fish plays such a prominent role, this is still not about the fish. In fact, the subject of the sentence in verse 17 is not the fish; it is the Lord who prepared the fish.
This verse records the only detail of Jonah’s story that most folks even know, and the only one that many folks seem to want to talk about.
And yet, even here, the real story line is not Jonah in the belly of the great fish, but rather Jonah in the hands of His gracious God. The great fish is only an extra, a bit actor, in a larger drama; one that stretches beyond the belly of the whale to the belly of a cold, dark, tomb in Jerusalem.
Ultimately, this story that seems so unbelievable points us to a gospel that we must believe in order to be saved. With that in mind, let’s zero in on this one verse and consider it carefully. There are three questions that I want us to ask and answer of this text. Firstly, let’s ask the question:
- WHAT IS THE POSSIBILITY OF THIS?
Rather matter of factly, the writer tells us that, “…the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.”
Many of the Bible’s critics have pointed to this particular statement as being so ridiculously impossible that it reveals the fallacy of the Bible. Even some Christians and so-called Bible believers have felt the need to sort-of shy away from a literal reading of this text, or to explain away what the Bible very plainly says here.
We can believe what this Bible tells us, even when it is something that seems unbelievable to us.
As we consider the possibility of Jonah being swallowed by and surviving inside a great fish for three days and nights, I want you to think about a couple of things that lend credence to this story. For one thing, consider with me:
- The Ability That Accounts For This– Some well-meaning Christian authors and preachers have tried to help out the credibility of this story by describing the sizes of certain fish, or retelling folk legends of men surviving inside them. Yet, none of these so-called “evidences” for the validity of the Jonah story actually help out the story.
I love how one writer put it. He wrote:
“…it is useless to discuss the gullet sizes and geographical habitats of dozens of species of whales, or the chemical content of mammalian digestive juices and their projected effect on human epidermis over prolonged periods. If we wanted to discuss this sort of thing, we would have to begin with first things first, and ask whether or not God could talk to a man, as he did in Jonah 1:1.”[i]
The point is that what occurs in verse 17 is a miraculous work of God, and that’s the only way to explain it. That is what the Spirit tries to conveys to us when he says, “…the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.”
God had lined up this fish to swallow Jonah and God saw to it that the prophet survived inside that fish. It was God’s doings and that is the only way to explain it. It is not marine biology, but biblical theology that we need to explain the possibility of what is recorded here. The supernatural ability of a God who sovereignly controls this world is the only way we can account for what we read in verse 17.
With that in mind, consider not only the ability that accounts for this, but think also about:
- The Authority That Attests To This- There are some passages in the New Testament that have great bearing on this particular verse in Jonah.
The Lord Jesus referenced this story as a sign or symbol of His own ministry. Specifically, in Matthew 12:40, Jesus said, “For as [Jonah] was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
We will come back to that verse a little later, but first of all, just notice that Jesus repeated what the text said here, that Jonah was inside the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.
In other words, Jesus the Living Word of God had no problem accepting what the written Word records here in the book of Jonah.
There are those who would like to portray Jesus as being quite different – much cooler and more fashionable -than the Bible-toting, Bible-believing crowd that files into a thousand churches like this one every Sunday. And yet, what they fail to realize is that Jesus believed His Bible too! Repeatedly in the gospels He lent His authority and approval to what the Bible teaches by quoting it as truth.
He believed in Genesis 1 and He believed in Jonah 1. He had no trouble believing in that miracle-working God, for He is that God, was with that God in eternity past, and saw Jonah go into the fish’s belly when it happened.
Is it possible for a man to be swallowed alive by a great fish and survive in its guts for three days? Jesus believed so because He knows that with God nothing shall be impossible.
Let’s ask a second question of this text. The first was this: what is the possibility of this? Along with that, let’s ask the question:
- WHAT IS THE PURPOSE FOR THIS?
Again, our text tells us that, “…the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah…” The Lord was ready and waiting for the sailors to pitch Jonah overboard.
He already had this great fish ready to swim up and swallow down this man; but why? What is the purpose for this strange and supernatural twist in the story? This is an important question, because I think we may misinterpret the reason for this fish, as we often misinterpret the work of God in the story of our own lives.
Was this a sort of penitentiary for Jonah, a punishment for the wayward prophet?
I would suggest it is not. In fact, I would suggest that firstly, this great fish is:
- God’s Mercy To Rescue Jonah– A couple verses before this one, when the mariners laid their hands on Jonah, hoisted him up, and tossed him overboard into the raging sea, they did so with the understanding that he was going to die.
Jonah would have thought the same thing. As his head went under the surface of the water, the prophet expected that he was going to drown to death. And truth be told, that is what he deserved. He had defied the God of heaven, rejecting His call, resisting His will, and running as far away as he could.
And yet, the same God who had sent a great storm to stop the prophet from his running now sent a great fish to save the prophet from his drowning. As one writer put it, “This fish is a life-saving vessel sent by God to rescue Jonah.”[ii] This was God throwing a life preserver to Jonah, even if it was shaped like the gaping mouth of a giant fish.
There may be some of you who perhaps feel as if some turn of events in your life right now is somehow a punishment or even mistreatment of God toward you. And yet, it could be that what God has sent into your life is actually the only thing that will save you from a real disaster.
You may feel hemmed in and held up by God, trapped in a circumstance that feels like a prison, when in reality, God is just squeezing you into a life vest meant to save you from yourself and the enemy that would utterly destroy you, if he could.
The purpose we find in this great fish is not only the mercy of God to rescue Jonah, but consider also that it is:
- The Means of God To Right Jonah- Throughout this opening chapter, Jonah has been heading in the wrong direction. Specifically, we are told repeatedly that Jonah went “down”.
I love what Phillip Cary writes about this when we come to verse 17. He said, “Jonah has completed his long descent from before the face of the Lord…Now he has hit bottom. He’s as far down as you can get. And there God is with him and he is saved.”
Jonah had been going down, but inside the belly of the fish, God was going to right Jonah, and change his direction, both physically and spiritually. One preacher said, “The belly of a fish is not a happy place to live, but it is a good place to learn.”
And learn something, Jonah did. The rebellious prophet that never once spoke to his God in the first chapter fills the second chapter with prayer and praise.
All along the Lord simply wanted Jonah to do what He had commanded him to do. Jonah didn’t like it, but Jonah was the one that was wrong, not God.
And when Jonah found himself inside the belly of a fish, it was only because God would rather get His servant right than let him run away.
You say, “I don’t understand why all this stuff is happening in my life,” or, “I don’t understand why things haven’t happened the way I thought they would!” Have you stopped to ask if perhaps behind the discomfort or disappointment of your situation is simply the hand of a merciful God who loves you too much to let you go wrong for too long?
Looking once more at this verse. We’ve asked the question, what is the possibility of this? We’ve also asked, what is the purpose of this?
There is a third question that I think we need to consider before we leave this verse. That is:
III. WHAT IS THE PICTURE IN THIS?
Fast forward with me from Jonah in the belly of the fish, to Jesus walking down the dusty roads of Palestine in the first century
The crowds have swelled around Him as news of His healings and miracles has spread. Yet, His preaching and popularity have also put a target on His back with the religious leaders of the day.
In Matthew 12, some of those opponents came to Him and said, “We want to see some sort of sign from you.”
They wanted Him to do a trick or perform some sort of stunt that would validate His claims as the Messiah. Jesus answered them this way, “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet [Jonah], For as [Jonah] was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matt. 12:39-40
What this means is that there is more going on in the story of Jonah than immediately meets the eye. There is a sign, a symbol, a picture that we are meant to see.
What is it? Well, firstly, according to Jesus, this story pictures:
- The Resurrection of the Son of God- Again, in Matthew 12, Jesus directly relates the three days and nights that Jonah spent in the belly of the fish to the three days and nights that He, as the Son of man would spend in the grave, or the tomb.
The Bible tells us that after they crucified the Lord Jesus, a group of people who loved Him took down that bloodied, battered body, pulling his limbs free from the nails that held Him there. Then they wrapped Him up in grave clothes, because that’s what you did with the dead.
Generously, a wealthy man named Joseph had donated his own, private garden tomb for Jesus’ burial. A handful of those weeping followers carried that limp body inside that dark hole and laid it out on a slab of stone. They said their “goodbyes” and turned and left. A big heavy stone was then rolled over the door, like the mouth of that great fish closing up over Jonah’s body.
Inside that tomb the body of Jesus never moved for three days. No air filled its lungs, no pulse beat in its chest, and no blood ran through its veins. There weren’t even any brain waves in His head. He was stone-cold, toe-tag dead.
But then early on Sunday morning something happened, and that body that had been cold with death warmed to life. The eyes of Jesus opened up and looked through the linen strips that covered them.
His legs that had been spared from being broken only by His death, flexed and bent as He shifted His body and stood to His feet. He that had been dead now lived again!
Now remember, Jesus told His opponents this was the only sign they were going to get. If they didn’t believe in Him after this, they were never going to believe.
Now go back to Jonah. You say, “This whole living-man-in-a-fish stuff is crazy! I don’t think I can believe that.” If you can’t believe that, how you are ever going to believe the whole resurrected-man-in-a-tomb stuff? The resurrection of Jesus is the sign to us! He is alive, and if we don’t believe that, we can’t expect God do any more than that!
Perhaps that’s why we hear Paul say in Romans 10:9, “…if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
The picture here is not only that of the resurrection of the Son of God, but I think there is also pictured here:
- The Resolve of the Salvation of God- I told you earlier that God was actually being merciful to Jonah when He had him swallowed up by this great fish.
He was, but He was also being merciful to someone else – the people over in Nineveh.
You see; God had purposed to send them a preacher, and in His sovereign foreknowledge, he had also purposed to spare them when they repented at the preaching of that preacher. God was so determined to reach out to Nineveh before they perished in their iniquity and ignorance that He would go so far as to save a rebellious preacher alive inside a fish in order to get him turned around and headed their way.
What about you today, oh sinner? Do you realize how far God has gone to reach out to you and save you before His judgment falls upon this world?
Why, He went so far as to send His only-begotten Son to this earth, let Him be hung on a cross in shame, and suffered Him to die in the place where you should have died.
He even went so far as to have that Son put in the grave where you should have gone, and descend down into the hell where you should have spent eternity.
Then He went so far as to raise that Son from the dead to prove to you that He is who He said He is. Not only that, but He sent me to preach all of this to you today, to either reveal to you for the first time, or remind you again of how much He truly loves you!
It seems to me as if this God is determined to save! He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance!
Conclusion
Do I believe in a whale that saved a man by swallowing Him? You better believe I do.
I can believe in a story like that because I believe in a God who saves men by dying for them on a cross and rising from the dead.
There in the ground, His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain,
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again,
And as He stands in victory,
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me,
For I am His, and He is mine,
Bought with the precious blood of Christ