In The Belly Of The Fish

Our Bible passage, introduction to Sunday 15th December service and hymns are below.

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Our principal verses are:

Jon 1:17 Now 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.

 In The Belly Of The Fish

Jonah was loved of God. He was one of the Lord’s elect who looked forward in faith to the coming of Christ. He was loved before he disobeyed. He was loved while being disobedient. He was loved following his disobedience. When the Lord loves someone He loves with everlasting, unchangeable, unconditional affection. God’s love manifests itself in kindness, care and constant protection. Jonah was cared for by the Lord in his sin and when he was being disciplined for his sin.

Divinely prepared

God’s loving care of His servant included preparing a great fish to swallow up Jonah when the disobedient prophet was thrown into the sea. What all was involved in God’s preparing this fish is not revealed but this single statement dispenses with every argument against the historicity, authenticity and plausibility of this account. Whether the fish was naturally prepared or miraculously prepared is immaterial. It fulfilled the purpose for which it was divinely prepared.

Divinely preserved

The Lord’s care for this beloved son also included keeping Jonah alive, breathing, conscious and rational during his ordeal. The Lord did not leave him during his three days and three nights in the belly of the fish. John Gill explains this duration thus, ‘one whole natural day, consisting of twenty four hours, and part of two others; the Jews having no other way of expressing a natural day but by day and night’. This corresponds to the length of time Christ lay in the tomb – from the eve of the Sabbath to very early on the first day of the week – and confirms Jonah as a type of the Lord in His death, burial, and resurrection.

Divinely predicted

It is of the utmost importance that we note and highlight this typology in Jonah’s experience. The Lord Jesus calls it ‘the sign of the prophet Jonas’. It occurred and was recorded to point to Christ. Old Testament believers were granted many meaningful signs by the preaching and testimony of God’s prophets who ministered among them. Their deeds and their practical experiences, as well as their prophecies, testified of the coming Messiah and the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

God’s classroom

However, as well as giving a sign the Lord was also teaching Jonah a lesson, a lesson that allowed the prophet to work through his own prejudices and wrong assumptions to come to a clearer understanding of the ways and purposes of the Lord. When the Saviour calls His people to salvation He describes the process as taking His yoke and learning of Him. All believers, be it Moses, David, Jonah, Paul, you or me, must learn Christ, who He is and what He has done, and thereby increase in grace and a knowledge of the truth.   

Fruit-bearing trials

All the Lord’s elect – that particular and distinct people – are equally cared for and protected as was Jonah. In eternity we shall marvel that the Lord supplied so much while we perceived so little. Having been committed into the care of the Son by the Father, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit by the Son, nothing can touch or harm God’s people that is not for our good. Some who build their bodies say ‘no pain, no gain’. There is a spiritual equivalent as Jonah now discovers. Without trial and discipline there will be no spiritual growth and no fruit.

Providence

Jonah had much to learn. We all have. We are wrong to consider our conversion as a single event in time. It is rather the commencement of our experience of grace, the start point of our conscious awareness of the Lord’s work in our lives. From our first awareness of God’s love and mercy, until the day of our death, we shall continue to enlarge our stock of divine truth as the Lord leads, guides and directs our life and spiritual journey.

From glory to glory

The Lord’s people are being continuously changed from glory to glory. Jonah’s usefulness to the body of Christ required him to both disobey the Lord and learn from his mistake. That is true for us all. Though we hate ‘the garment spotted by the flesh’, even our sins are conducive to our learning Christ. The evil of the old man in the flesh, and the warring of the flesh against the spirit are means by which God weans us from trusting in ourselves and deepens our reliance upon Christ the Saviour.

Light in darkness

As with Jonah, the process of discipline and development will not be easy; there is no joy in the whale’s belly. In the coming verses Jonah describes the depths he plumbed. Yet trials secure our growth in grace. They encourage knowledge of the truth and spiritual communion with the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Truth. Often the hardest experiences of life tend most to this end. It is when we are stripped of our earthly comforts that we lean most heavily upon the One who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

Amen

Our hymns are below.

Hymn 1

Gadsby selection 1107

“The Spirit … maketh intercession for us.” Rom. 8. 26

J. Swain   L.M.

1
When some sweet promise warms our heart,
And cheers us under every care,
It is the Spirit’s gracious part
To take that word and fix it there.

2
’Twas he that turned our hearts away
From love of sin and hateful strife;
His all-creating beams display
The dawn of everlasting life.

3
’Tis he that brings us comfort down,
When we complain and mourn for sin;
And, while he shows our heavenly crown,
Assures us sin no more shall reign.

4
Our great High Priest, before the throne,
Presents the merits of his blood;
For our acceptance pleads his own,
And proves our cause completely good.

5
When prayer or praise attempts to rise,
And fain would reach Jehovah’s ear,
His all-prevailing sacrifice
Perfumes, and makes it welcome there.

Hymn 2

Gadsby selection 211

Salvation by Grace in Christ.  2 Tim. 1. 9, 10

I. Watts                                                L.M.

1
Now to the power of God supreme
Be everlasting honour given;
He saves from hell (we bless his name),
He calls our wandering feet to heaven.

2
Not for our duties or deserts,
But of his own abounding grace,
He works salvation in our hearts,
And forms a people for his praise.

3
’Twas his own purpose that began
To rescue rebels doomed to die;
He gave us grace in Christ his Son,
Before he spread the starry sky.

4
Jesus the Lord appears at last,
And makes his Father’s counsels known;
Declares the great transactions past,
And brings immortal blessings down.

5
He dies! and in that dreadful night
Did all the powers of hell destroy.
Rising, he brought our heaven to light,
And took possession of the joy.

The sign of Jonas points to the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Men and women say they are seek a sign by which they can  be convinced to believe in Jesus. There shall be no sign given beyond the death and resurrection of Christ. If you will not believe that you will not believe at all.