Verse 1-2
This is the first time we have recorded for us in this book Jonah responding to God. Jonah was in a place that now he was willing to call out to Him. He had reached the lowest of lows. He had reached bottom. And out of his distress, he cried out to God.
Jonah did not have to get to this point. His disobedience led him to this place. Chapter 1 verse 3 could have been a verse of obedience. But instead in verse 3 he ran. Jonah was then given another opportunity in verse 6 when the captain of the boat said, “call out to your God so that we will not perish.” Jonah had another opportunity in verse 11 when the people on the boat said, “what shall we do that the sea may calm down.” But it took him to being in despair and distress to finally cry out to His God.
Our sin makes us rebellious—it hardens our hearts, It blinds us. And sometimes it takes great suffering to open our eyes to our disobedience. Sometimes it requires great pain in our lives for us to finally repent and turn back to God.
After calling out to God in verse 2, Jonah then describes his terrifying near-drowning experience and his current dire situation.
Verses 3-6
It is interesting that Jonah says in verse 3, “You cast me into the deep…” and “all your waves and billows passed over me” These are not words of accusation against God. Jonah is acknowledging the sovereignty of God. Jonah is not releasing himself of the responsibility of his rebellious choices. He is acknowledging that God allowed this to happen and that God is still in control even in our rebellion against God.
Jonah’s rebellion had led him to a place in which He was not only in physical despair but in spiritual despair. In verse 4 he says that he felt like he has been driven from God. Or as the NIV says, “I have been “banished” from God’s sight.
When you have been swallowed by a fish and then sitting inside his belly you probably don’t have a strong sense of what is going on. You may think that you are dead—that you are in the place where the dead go. Jonah may have felt like he was truly separated from God.
And in verse 4 Jonah is realizing “Wait a minute, I don’t want to be separated from God. I don’t want to be out of His presence. Remember in chapter 1, that was his initial desire Jonah ran to “flee the presence of God.” And now he is realizing that is not a good place to be.
I think sometimes in our life we get to a point where we just want to do what we want to do and we don’t want to obey God. We don’t want to submit to His authority. We don’t see submitting to Him as freedom and joy. We see submitting to God as something that hinders our own happiness. And so we run from God. And we run from anything that has to do with God.
Maybe you have gone through this type of season in your life. Maybe the season was when you were in college. You grew up in a Christian home. At some point in your life you placed your faith in Jesus Christ. But then you got to college and you started to drift away from God. You started to pull yourself out of biblical community and biblical accountability. And you found yourself being drawn to things that you knew did not please God but there was something in you that said, “I want to do what I want to do. I want to do what makes me happy.”
And you began to live a life that was very different than the life God had called you to live as a believer in Jesus Christ. And there was this voice in you that said, “you shouldn’t be doing these things.” But the more you did this things the more your heart become hardened toward God and the more you found yourself longing for the things that do not please God.
But at some point the very things that you were pursuing started to cause your life to unravel. These choices that you were making were leading you down roads that you realized that you did not want to go. They were leading you to feel empty and unsatisfied. They were leading to pain and heartache. And you began to think about the joy and peace that you had when you were walking with God. And submitting your life to him longer seemed like a bondage but now it seemed like the very freedom you were always craving. And you realized that life outside of God was really no life at all. And you wanted to be back in the presence of God.
When we pursue life out of our own human desires and our own human wants it leads us to places that brings destruction to our life. If you begin to live out your marriage out of your own desires, it will bring destruction to your marriage. If you begin to live our your relationship with your children or parents or friends out of your own desires, it will bring destruction to those relationships.
Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that appears to be right to man, but in the end it leads to death.”
Jonah was making one bad decision after another because those decisions were coming out of his own selfish desires. Out of his own hardened heart toward God. Those decisions were coming out of a rebellious spirit. And those decisions (that seemed right to him) now led him to a place that he described in verse 2 as the belly of Sheol or the belly of death.
And in verse 4 Jonah longed to once again to look upon God’s holy temple. To once again experience the presence of God. He longed to once again to be in a right relationship with God. To know the joy and freedom of that relationship.
After crying out to God in despair, Jonah seemed to recognize that God is going to deliver him. Now I don’t know if Jonah added these words of deliverance later when he is writing this account having known that God did deliver him or if in that moment sitting in that fish that God gave him a peace, a hope, an assurance that deliverance is coming. But in verse 6, after expressing his current state of despair, Jonah says, “yet you brought up my life from the pit.”
Verses 6-8
The New Living Translations translates verse 8 “Those who worship false gods turn their back s on all God’s mercies.” When we pursue life outside of God, when we make things greater than God and they become our idols, we miss out living in His mercy and experiencing His love. His mercy and love didn’t go away but when we are in rebellion toward him we are rejecting His love and mercy.
If you are ever in a season in which you seem to no longer have the joy of God, you may want to ask the question: have I taken my desires and made them a priority over God and His desires. And in doing so, have I turned my back on God missing out on experiencing the joy of walking in his mercies.
Verse 9
Jonah was inside of a fish. He could not literally offer a sacrifice to God. And so he is saying, “may my words, my voice of thanksgiving be my sacrifice to you. May my words that are coming out of my mouth express my worship to you.
At the end of verse 9 Jonah expresses one of the great themes and truths of Scripture: Salvation belongs to the Lord. It is only through God that we can be saved. It is only through the person of Jesus Christ that we can know salvation. Jonah was acknowledging this truth. Salvation belongs to the Lord. We cannot find it outside of him.
Verse 10
Jonah chapter 1 ended in hopelessness. It ended with Jonah desiring to take his own life. Because his heart was hardened toward God. Jonah 2 ends with hope. It ends with Jonah desiring to be in the presence of God. It ends with Jonah desiring to be in a right relationship with God. It ends with Jonah recognizing that our hope, our joy, our salvation can be find only in God. But between the end of chapter 1 and the end of chapter 2 Jonah had to go through some very difficult things to turn his heart back to God.