A Peculiar Prayer Meeting

Jonah 2:1-9

“I know, O Lord, that Your judgments are right, And that in faithfulness You have afflicted me” (Psalm 119:75). I spoke on this verse Sunday night. This idea goes against the theology of many Christians. God, in His faithfulness and right judgments afflicts us? We tend to think that when we are doing everything right, God will bless us with good things. We seldom stop to think that the troubles in our lives are blessings too. Jonah is in the middle of just such a “blessing” and look at what he is doing!

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Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish’s belly. 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. 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. 4 Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight; Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple. 5 The waters surrounded me, even to my soul; The deep closed around me; Weeds were wrapped around my head. 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. 7 When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord; And my prayer went up to You, Into Your holy temple. 8 Those who regard worthless idols Forsake their own Mercy. 9 But I will sacrifice to You With the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.”

Jonah 2:1-9

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While the text calls this a prayer, it is also a psalm of praise. There are three parts to this Psalm: Jonah’s Plight, Jonah’s Prayer, and Jonah’s Promise. There is much that we can learn from such a prayer and song.

First, we see Jonah’s plight (verses 1-6a). Jonah knows exactly where he is. This fish has swallowed him alive, and he is now at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. To get some perspective, the Mediterranean Sea is 17,000 feet deep at its deepest levels. The closest mountain in the continental U.S. is Mt. Whitney in California which is 14,494 feet above sea level. To find a mountain 17,000 feet high you would have to go to Alaska. So, when Jonah says that he went to the bottom of the mountains, that is a pretty accurate statement. He is inside this fish and weeds are wrapped around his head. God got Jonah’s attention, and the experience was humbling.

Lying at rock bottom, Jonah could only look up. Of course, this is figurative because Jonah was in total darkness. There is no light inside a fish and even if he could see through the fish, light only penetrates the ocean about 1,000 feet. This is called the aphotic zone, or no light zone of the ocean. What a blessing and comfort to know that no matter how bad our situation gets, we can pray to God. Light may not reach us, hope may not reach us, friends may not be able to reach us, but there is no depth that God cannot reach us, nor that we can reach Him. Jonah understood very well what David wrote in Psalm 139:8-10:

If I ascend into heaven, You are there;

If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.

9 If I take the wings of the morning,

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

10 Even there Your hand shall lead me,

And Your right hand shall hold me.

Jonah, placing his faith in God’s deliverance made a promise that he would keep his vow. Jonah realized that He had sinned against God and the only right choice was to go to Nineveh and preach God’s message to the people. He fully trusted God to deliver him from the belly of the fish and when that happened, he would be obedient. Yes, Jonah’s situation was an object lesson of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, but it was also a process of humbling Jonah and teaching him to obey God. The “affliction” from God was both faithful and good. It was exactly what Jonah needed.

Father thank You for caring enough about us that You do not leave us like we are. You are always working in our lives to make us more like You. We are also grateful that “…height, nor depth nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).