05.3. JONAH OVERBOARD

JONAH OVERBOARD Jonah 1:17, Jonah 2:1-9

WE come this evening to a further study of the Book of Jonah. You will remember our last discourse ended with
Jonah 1:16, with Jonah overboard, and the sailors offering sacrifice unto the Lord and making vows. That seemed indeed to be the end of Jonah; but one of my professors used to say, “a man is immortal until his ministry is finished.” Whether that is always true, it will appear to have been the fact of this prophet’s existence, for although he is thrown into the midst of the sea and is swallowed up by a great fish, his history goes right on, and the belly of that fish, instead of being his grave, was converted into a closet of prayer. This is one of the points at which the critics stumble. They cannot quite believe that anything so improbable ever actually took place. If the text of this night could be cut out of the book of Jonah, the modern Jehoikims would be made more happy thereby, and would the more readily consent to the inspiration of the Minor Prophets. But this is the very part of the book which cannot be set aside. Upon these ten verses Jesus Christ has set the seal of His own acceptance. And to cut them out, is to call in question either His knowledge or His honesty. Personally I am not disposed to do either! To me this record contains no serious barrier to belief. My reason is no more offended by it than by many another historical incident of the Word of the Lord. I don’t see one feature in the whole narrative which ought to strain the faith of the man who admits that there is a God in heaven. The record is, “The Lord prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly. And he said, I called, by reason of mine affliction, unto the Lord, and he answered me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and Thou heardest my voice. For Thou didst cast me into the depth, in the heart of the seas, and the flood was round about me; all Thy waves and Thy billows passed over me. And I said, I am cast out from before Thine eyes; yet I will look again toward Thy holy temple. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul; the deep was round about me; the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars closed upon me forever: Yet hast Thou brought my life from the pit, O Lord, my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord. And my prayer came in unto Thee, into Thine holy temple. They that regard lying vanities forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto Thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that which I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord” (R.V. Jonah 2:1-9).

Three or four suggestions for our consideration. In the first place Jonah’s experience involves both I. The Natural and the Supernatural.

“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah”—Natural! There is not the least occasion to suppose a miracle here. The Mediterranean Sea has in it tonight many a white shark which could, and if he had a chance, would, swallow any man in this audience. The scholarly Pusey in his “Notes on the Book of Jonah,” cites from history a number of instances in confirmation of the naturalness of this episode. There are a half dozen instances on record where these sharks, which sometimes attain the enormous weight of 10,000 pounds, with an extreme length of 30 to 40 feet, have swallowed men. He also cites well-authenticated instances where this same specie of fish has been found, • one with a deer, absolutely whole, in the stomach; one with a large sea-calf, undigested; and one which had a full-grown horse. Mueller still further confirms the naturalness of this incident by saying, “In 1758, in stormy weather, a sailor fell overboard from a frigate in the Mediterranean. A shark was close by, which, as he was swimming and crying for help, took him in his wide throat, so that he forthwith disappeared. The captain had a gun, which stood on the deck, discharged at the fish, striking it so that he cast out the sailor, who was taken up alive. The wounded fish was harpooned and presented to the man who, by God’s providence, had been so wonderfully preserved. The sailor went around Europe exhibiting it at Farnconia, Erlangen, Nurnberg, and other places. It was 20 feet long and weighed 3,924 pounds when dried.” And yet people go up and down the country saying, “a whale cannot swallow a man.” Well, beloved, the record says, “a great fish.” ’ And naturalists know that the larger of these white sharks could at one gulp swallow a decent-sized family without effecting a sore throat. Natural!

“And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights”—supernatural! Personally I believe that this might have been accomplished by natural means, so far at least as the preservation of life is concerned. It is claimed that the fakirs of India have a custom of sealing up the lungs by turning the human tongue back into the epiglotis, thereby rendering the victim insensible, and leaving him in a comatose condition for weeks, out of which he is aroused at their pleasure. It is a fact of natural history that life can be sustained for some time in the belly of a fish, possibly because the gastric juices hermetically seal the body swallowed. But I am not so anxious to escape the miracle as to insist upon this as an explanation of Jonah’s remaining alive. In fact, I don’t believe it is the explanation. To me the admission of a miracle from God in preserving his life seems the more rational. It is one of the amazing features of modern thinking that so many men seem determined to deny the supernatural. Anything, any explanation, is regarded by a certain class of so-called thinkers as more satisfactory than an assent to the intervention of divinity. You have heard the story, perhaps, of the colored man, who had caught the spirit of modern criticism and was disposed to remove the miraculous element from the Word. He was preaching about the Israelites’ passage over the Red Sea, and the overthrow of Pharaoh and his host in the waters thereof. And, looking at his congregation, with a learned air, he said, “My bredern, der aint no use sposin a miracle heah. Dis can all be splained on natural grounds. You see, it was like this: It was about de middle ob de winter when dese Israelites was agittin out ob Egypt. And when dey come down to de sea, dey found it well frozed ober. And dey, bein’ afoot, all walked across on de ice. But when Pharo, with his great heaby charots tried to foller ’em, de ice wouldn’t hold ’em up, and so he and all his army broke thro and got drowned.” An old deacon of this colored church, not quite satisfied with this explanation on natural grounds, rose and said, “Hold on Elder, jes’ a minute dere! I have got one question I would jes’ like to ask ye! Ise been stud- in’ Gography, an’ de Gography do say, dat am de place ob de tropics, whar it don’t freeze ober; now will you splain dat?” To which the colored parson replied, “Yes, sah, dat’s all easy enough; you see dis all happened before dey made any gographies, and dere warn’t no tropics den.”

We smile at the colored man’s irrational method of avoiding the miracle, but as I live I am not able to see wherein it is one whit less rational than the present-day critics’ endeavor to do the same. The man who has a mind so constituted that it can accept the Gospel record of Lazarus’ resurrection, a mind so constituted that it can believe Daniel’s report of how the three Hebrew children passed unhurt through the fiery furnace, and yet denies the possibility of Jonah’s divine preservation in the fish’s belly at the bottom of the deep, is not saved from the charge of faulty reasoning, because his skin is white and he speaks the lingo of the schools. The only man who need have trouble with this incident in the book of Jonah is the man who is unwilling to admit the claim of Scripture, “with God all things are possible.” And this supernatural experience was significantly symbolical. It had another meaning than that which then appeared. If as a judgment it looked backward to Jonah’s sin, as a symbol, it looked forward to Christ’s burial and resurrection. Doubtless that was the very reason God had prepared the fish to swallow Jonah up. He could as easily have gotten him ashore by means of a floating spar. He could have sent an angel to keep him afloat until another vessel came that way, He could have gone to him Himself, walking on the water, as He went to Peter and other disciples in an awful night of similar storm. But He let him go into the deep, and be swallowed up by this fish that He might prefigure His own descent in the earth and His escape therefrom by His resurrection. One day certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees said to Jesus, “Master, we would see a sign from Thee;” but He answered and said unto them that “an evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas; for as Jonas 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.” And, when Paul came to write to the Corinthians touching the resurrection of Jesus Christ, He spoke of how He died for our sins, according to the Scriptures and how He rose the third day, according to the Scriptures. A disposition, therefore, to take Jonah from the sacred cannon, the present-day endeavor to cast discredit upon the record of the prophet’s experience in the deep, is the disposition and endeavor which, if it were successful, would leave the resurrection of Jesus Christ to be followed by an interrogation point. And then, as the apostle Paul says, “If Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain, ye are yet in your sins; then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.” God forbid! “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” In the second place Jonah’s experience, as here narrated, illustrates II. God’s Purpose in Judgment.

If He follows with affliction, it is for our reform. “Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God, out of the fish’s belly, and said, I cried by reason of my affliction unto the Lord, and He heard me.” Of course He did. Long before this time David had been subjected to severe judgment, a judgment sent upon him for his good, and he wrote what Jonah is now quoting, “In my distress I cried unto the Lord and He heard me” (Psalms 120:1). I believe, as I have often said, that the devil is responsible for our sufferings. He it was who led Jonah away from his Lord and landed him in the deep, but God in His great mercy makes even the plans of this archenemy to praise Him, and the very troubles into which Jonah’s sin led were overruled for his good, in that he saw how serious it was to run away from the heavenly Father. It was the devil who put it into the heart of the Prodigal son to say, “Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.” It was the devil who deceived him into supposing that “riotous living” would lead to pleasure; and it was the devil who paid him off with pigs for his associates, and the sweet honey-suckle for his sustenance. But those very hardships proved to be a power in the hand of God in impressing the awfulness of his iniquity, the degradation of his station, and bringing him to a keen appreciation of the fellowships and the food in his father’s house. That is always the purpose of judgment so far as God has anything to do with it. His speech for the present-day sinner is exactly what it was 3,000 years ago, when by Ezekiel’s lips He said, “As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye, from your evil ways, for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” There are men here tonight to whom He is putting the same question!

Jonah accepted his affliction with wisdom. There are two ways to meet judgment. The one is to declare it unjust and plunge into deeper sin; the other is to see as Jonah saw, that it is sent for our good, and turn back to God. Although he believed that God had cast him into the seas, so that the floods had compassed him about, and billows and waves had gone over him, still he said, “I will look again toward Thy holy temple.” When the waters came even to the soul, when the depth closed him round about, when the weeds wrapped his head—symbol of the graves clothes—when he went down to the bottoms of the mountains; when the earth with her bars were about him forever, when his soul fainted within him, he remembered the Lord, and his prayer made in the deep was heard in the holy temple. That is the way to meet affliction. The prodigal son gives us an example of what to do in the darkest hour. When the waves and billows of trouble were rolling over him he said, “I will arise and go to my father.” Blessed way to meet them! The man who so treats affliction will convert it into a friend. Manasseh at Jerusalem had forgotten God and gone after sin, but when he found himself in prison in Babylon, he turned again to God and was blessed in the turning.

Charles Spurgeon says, “troubles are called weights, and a weight, you know, generally cloggeth and keepeth down to the earth, but by the use of the laws of mechanics you can make a weight lift you up.” And the man who knows how to take hold on God in the time of trouble will find his affliction a weight that can be made to lift him into the very presence of the Infinite One.

Jonah did his utmost, also, toward reparation. He offered “the sacrifice of thanksgiving,” and pledged the fulfilment of his vows. That was all he could do under the circumstances. It was his best—his utmost. Had he been on land it would have been his business to have gone to Nineveh, and only such an action would have been acceptable, but, situated as he was he could only resolve, and God accepted the resolution as sufficient. It is high time that men who have sinned against God learn that in turning back to Him again, so far as lieth in them, they must put the past right. There are some acts that one cannot undo, and for such he must plead forgiveness. There are others that he can reverse, and in these reparation alone will suffice. A friend of mine about to die could gain no peace of mind whatever until she had sent for her stepmother and asked forgiveness for some things she had said to her.

Dr. Louis Albert Banks tells the story of a lawyer of distinguished ability who went into the Music Hall of Cleveland, Ohio, to attend the Mills meeting there. As he listened to the truth, he was convicted of sin, and because he had been pushing a suit and had already won it in the lower courts, knowing that the principal witness on the winning side had falsified for a definite sum of money, the attorney had been promised a fee of $12, 000 on condition the suit was won in the highest court. He went out from this meeting to face the crisis of his life—$12, 000 on the one side for pleading a false issue, and defrauding the defendant. On the other side a clean conscience, if he restored the payments already received, and refused to further prosecute the suit. All night he wrestled like Jacob of old, but the next day he settled the question by determining to restore the ill-gotten money, and resign his office as attorney in the case. Then it was he realised God’s favor in forgiveness; then it was he said to the friends to whom he communicated it all, “Now let me go home to my wife. She will be so happy, for she is a Christian woman, and godliness means more to her than gain.”

Zaccheus gave an excellent evidence of his conversion when he said, “If I have taken aught from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.” But the concluding sentence of this night’s study contains a most important suggestion, namely, III. Salvation is of the Lord.

Jonah had lost confidence in self. There has been a time when Jonah has felt some self-sufficiency, but a fish’s belly is a poor place to exercise any such sentiment. When Peter attempted to walk on the sea, and found himself suddenly sinking, his self-confident spirit departed and he cried, “Lord, save, or I perish.” But even his predicament had more of promise in it than Jonah’s position presents. He has gone down already. He is at the bottom of the deep. Except God interfere, he is dead. Except God save, there is absolutely no hope. Where could you find a better figure of the condition of the natural man who is “dead in trespasses and in sins,” and who can do nothing whatever to help or save himself?

Charles Spurgeon says, “Last week I stood beside that window of Carisbrooke Castle, out of which King Charles, of unhappy and unrighteous memory, attempted to escape. I read in the guide book that everything was provided for his escape. His fellows had means at the bottom of the wall to enable him to fly across the country, and on the coast they had their boats lying ready to take him to another land. In fact, everything was ready for his escape, but here was the important circumstance. His friends had done all they could, he was to do the rest. But that doing the rest was just the point and brunt of the battle. It was to get out of the window out of which he was not able to escape by any means, so that all his friends did for him went for nothing so far as he was concerned.

“So with the sinner, if God had provided every means of escape and only required him to get out of his dungeon, he would have remained there to all eternity. Why, is not the sinner by nature ‘dead in sin?’ The Spirit must quicken him. He is bound hand and foot, and fettered by transgression. The Spirit must cut his bands and then he will leap to liberty.” And Spurgeon is right. Salvation is not of our effort. Salvation is of the Lord, and to see that truth as Jonah saw it is the first essential. So long as a man is expecting to be saved in some other way he remains in his sins, for “there is none other name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved.”

Jonah had ceased from trusting to circumstances. There had been a time when he was in health and his feet on solid ground, and he felt he could do as he pleased, and somehow or other make it right with God at the end. But all of that is past now, for at the bottom of the deep a man does not so reason. It is only when he is in health and prosperity! After he is brought down low; after he is utterly buried, as it were, he wonders how he could ever so blunder as to imagine that sin could escape judgment, or that circumstances could be depended upon to effect a favorable issue of life.

I appeal to those of you who are in health tonight, to those of you who are in prosperity, to make your calling and election sure. Circumstances now are favorable to your doing so, but who can tell what a day may bring forth. Tomorrow the end may be on, and it may be associated with such untold sufferings, such indescribable agony of body or mind, or both, that it would be a poor time to settle the great questions of the soul. A dying man may pray but all preparation for a death-bed repentance seems unwarranted when we remember Jesus’ words, “Not every man that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.”

Jonah knew that God, and God alone, could save. Our text is authority for the claim, “Salvation is of the Lord.” A sea captain had seen the same truth in the time of storm. When the vessel rocked to the winds and was ready to go down, the shipmaster came to Jonah and said unto him, “What meanest thou, oh sleeper, arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us that we perish not.” But there is something better than either the conduct of the shipmaster or that of Jonah, and that is to call upon God before the storm comes. I plead with those of you who have not made your peace with Him, to make it now. “Behold, now is the accepted time.” “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found; call ye upon Him while He is near.” Dr. Talmage tells the story about the ship “Rebecca Goddard,” which comes into our ports in midwinter. She was all scoured up and ready for the landing, when, coming almost into the harbor, an ice-floe came and pushed the ship out to sea, and it drifted about two or three days, and there was great suffering, and one was frozen dead at his post. They had been almost into the harbor, but they did not go in. And, many of you are here tonight who will either come in now, or else the ice-floe of indifference will push you out, and out, upon the seas of irreligion, until at last you will be going down without hope and without God. God help you now, to come!