I was astounded that Gepetto, Figaro, and Cleo could survive inside the whale.  It was awfully spacious in there, though.  If you were in church nursery about the time I was, or before, you also know that it was no fish that swallowed up Jonah.  It was a whale; it had to be!  Even a sunfish, sturgeon, Atlantic Goliath grouper, or a whale shark for that matter—large as they are—none of those could have swallowed a man whole.

So, was there no fish, no whale?  Rather than get into that, I want to consider the purpose of the fish.  Fish live in the sea, some down very deep: places you and I can’t go.  From time to time, a new species gets discovered, down in the dark.  So far as those sailors aboard that ship on the now-calm sea were concerned, Jonah was gone, consigned to the deep, the place where no man could live, like the far, deep heavens, like the place of God.  Jonah was gone.  Sail on.

The fish takes Jonah where no man could go and live.  Jonah knows that much; he knows what’s around him, the element he’s in: dark and silent, deep and vast.  And he prays.  “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me” (2:1).  It’s the old cry of the psalms, the cry of agony, caught in a fallen world, living a fallen life.  When we really grasp how fallen our life is, how far from God’s Word we have plunged, we no longer want to live that old, fallen life.  We want to live a true life, a real and good life.  Who can show us such a life, point the way or lay the foundation?  Who can provide such a life?  And what will it cost?  There are many things I might like to have, but they cost too much.  I can’t afford them.  I can’t take my limited resources and shortchange my promises and responsibilities.  God has given me every resource.  They are His, and He wants me to do something with them.  Do I want to, though?

From the depths, Jonah “called to the Lord, and he answered” (2:1).  The psalms are many things—angry, sad, disappointed, discouraged, feeling abandoned, forgotten, but also elated, relieved, and humble, and penitent.  Above all, the psalms are songs of faith in God who listens, even when it seems He doesn’t.  Does God listen?  Does He respond?  What’s your testimony?  Jonah’s testimony from the depths is that God answers.  There’s the experience of faith: God answering us.

And how we need His answering voice, His answering Word, His answering acts!  We have our Jonah times, too, down in the dead, dark, depths.  Jonah puts his experience vividly: “From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help” (2:2).  “Deep in the realm of the dead.”  Other translations put that as the depths of Sheol (the old Jewish underworld), or “the belly of Sheol.”  Like the belly of the fish or whale, where the contents are consumed.  The dead don’t see; they don’t hear.  The dead neither fear nor hope.  But Jonah was in the whale in the sea.  We can take it that way, and I don’t say, I’m not saying that never happened or that it couldn’t have happened.  God is a God of wonders.  I am suggesting that Jonah the prophet sings like a poet, singing the things of this world to speak of things just beyond this world’s grasp.

If you’ve ever watched those National Geographic specials, you may have noticed that the sea, even in some of the deepest depths, is amazingly alive.  The sea is not a dead place, nor the place of the dead.  The realm of the dead is in the deep darkness, the place of those who are not alive, who do not have life.  That’s the place from which Jonah finds himself crying out to God, the God whom Jonah knows is listening, who responds.  Jonah calls out for help, and God “listened to” his cry (2:2).  No place is too far for God to hear.  God is never so far that He does not hear.  Those living their death may cry to God, and He will hear.

Jonah had refused God’s mission, went just the opposite direction, and God redirected Jonah down to the old dark depths, the crushing forces of the old chaos, deep down, but God didn’t destroy Jonah there.  God wasn’t interested in destroying Jonah; God wants to save Jonah, change Jonah, renew Jonah.  To do that, Jonah’s perspective is going to have to change.  Jonah is going to need to wake up to certain key truths.  God plunges Jonah in the depths, but do you know, Jonah—all afraid and terrified as he is, and with good reason!—Jonah is safe even in those dark depths, because God appointed a fish to keep Jonah alive, to preserve his life, so that God and Jonah might use the time fruitfully, might reawaken Jonah’s faith, faith that lives by obedience rather than convenience.

It wasn’t fear that brought Jonah down.  It was disobedience.  The opposite of faith isn’t fear.  The Word of the Lord came to Jonah; Jonah went the other way.  The Lord gave Jonah a mission; Jonah went missing.  God wanted Jonah to go among the dead—those who were without God—go and speak to them, speak to the dead.  Jonah saw no point in it, no use.  We get it.  Jonah just knew he could put his time to much better use, and God would come around eventually.  So God answered, and “hurled [Jonah] into the depths, into the very heart of the seas” (2:3).

Would you be willing to agree that there’s a difference between punishment and cruelty?  Every once in a while, in Christian circles, the word chastisement comes up, like a mushroom.  Chastisement sounds like punishment, and we don’t like punishment, though we dole it out to others quickly enough.  Chastisement is strong discipline, and discipline has a purpose.  God’s purpose in chastisement is illumination, correction, reform, a change: strong light for the blind eye; clear, strong sounds for the deaf ear.  A couple of years back, Pope Francis wanted to change one of the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer: lead us not into temptation.  We don’t see how God could or would ever do that; James tells us God has nothing to do with tempting us (Jam 1:13).  He’s right to the extent that we take tempt to mean induce to sin.  God never urges us to sin, let alone causes us to.  No, our failures are all our own.

God does test faith.  He’s doing so throughout the Old Testament.  The disciples of Jesus soon enough found out that God continues to test faith.  Lead us not into temptation also, and I think more accurately, gets translated as bring us not into the time of trial: please don’t put our faith to the test, Lord, not the hard test, the excruciating test.  No matter how strong we believe our faith may be, we fear it can so quickly be tested beyond its limits.

Jonah turned from God, and God allowed Jonah to experience what life away and apart from God was like: the depths of the realm of the dead, dead man walking.  The Old Testament makes it plain that the Jews had no great love for the sea: unpredictable, unstable, overwhelming, erasing.  It represented the old primordial chaos, the disordered churning of the lust and the blood, the negation out of which God called creation.  There Jonah is, in the depths of the sea, swallowed alive though not dead, plunged into the old chaos of darkness and silence—he’s out of his element!  And God preserves his life—to tease out the torture and the dread?  No!  To bring Jonah to true repentance, not some halfway thing but the real deal.

Jonah knows he is entirely at the mercy of God.  He had known it long ago but over the years and times and distractions Jonah had begun to lose touch with that touchstone, that foundation of life.  We are all answerable; we each must give our account.  God is graciously helping Jonah to get reacquainted with the fear of the Lord, which Scripture assures us is the beginning of wisdom, and obedience, and love.  If we do not fear the Lord, beloved, I’m sorry to say we cannot truly love the Lord.  If we do not fear the Lord, we can love only an idea about God, our own idea.

Jonah fully feels his predicament.  In his dread, though, something of real faith yet remains, continues to act, to direct and shape words and actions.  Jonah understands that God has cast him down from the heights of his supposed faith, down to the roots of deep truths; and God has kept him alive.  Jonah has hope—that old, foolish, persistent, hope.  “I have been banished from your sight,” Jonah prays, “yet I will look again toward your holy temple” (2:4).  These are not foolish, hopeless, useless words.  These are the words of a man who understands that God has plans for his life, has always had plans for this man’s life: plans for blessing, a future and a hope.  Jonah ran from those plans when they pointed to a way Jonah did not want to go.  How often has God pointed out a way to us—a Word, a choice, an action—and we didn’t want to?

Jonah knows where he is: the place of the dead (2:5-6).  God was going to send him there, one way or the other, because God has plans for the dead, and God has plans for Jonah there, too.  If not to the dead of Nineveh, then to the place where no one can live without the grace of God.  And who can live without the grace of God?  All who live, live by the grace of God.  How few acknowledge it!

In this world, dead is dead—death is it and then nothing ever forever.  The world likes to give comfort, you see.  Death is the place of no power, no escape, no hope.  Death is the end of the story, the end of the song.  It doesn’t go on.  And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.  But how can anyone be free from death?  We all die.

One of the most beautiful words in the Bible is that little conjunction but.  “But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.  When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple” (2:6-7).  With God, the song never ends.  With God, there is return even from the darkest, deepest, deadest places.  Divers have experienced it.  Astronauts have experienced it: anyone here remember that Sandra Bullock film, Gravity (2013), the ending?  Wow.  Those who have fought in wars have experienced it.  Those who have gone through this life, wanting God, needing God, fearing and loving God have experienced it.  God brings up from the pit.  He brought me up.  He brought you up.  Do you know someone whose life needs God’s bringing up from the pit?  Are you praying for that person?  Are you praying also even for the ones you don’t know?

God isn’t really into punishment.  God isn’t chastising Jonah for the sheer thrill of it, because He can and Jonah can do nothing about it.  God is very much into truth and justice: His justice, true justice, by which everyone is given the full opportunity to hear the Word and live, even those making a living in the very heart of wickedness.  God hears Jonah’s prayer; even if Jonah’s faith might have been wavering under that great trial, his hope remained.  Jonah hoped that God would not reject Jonah’s prayer, though Jonah also knew God probably really ought to.  Sometimes, we can get to living as if we deserve certain things from God: that since God loves us—as we know He does—He owes it to us to do certain things for us, things we want, things we just know would make us so happy.

It’s like John F. Kennedy said all those years ago: ask not what your God can do for you; ask what you can do for your God.  I have the impression that Jonah was coming around to that way of seeing things, of approaching life.  Any other way is the way of idolatry—gods to serve us.  Only, the dark truth is, when people set up gods to serve themselves, those people always end up enslaved to the old gods, the old chaos, the lust and blood.  See the depravity and understand the times.

Jonah sings that “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them” (2:8).  What are the worthless idols of this day?  We can list obvious ones: power, possessions, prestige, status, physical attractiveness, sex appeal.  In the end, maybe the most complete definition of idolatry is to turn away from God’s love, not that anybody does that.  “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them.”

Jonah’s time in the great fish—appointed by God to preserve Jonah’s life through the time of trial, God’s act of grace at the center of His act of chastisement—that time in the dark depths moved Jonah to turn, to reach up and cry out, and pray, hope, and have his faith straightened out by the Lord.  Now, Jonah sings out—still in the belly of the fish but not condemned there, not hopeless or helpless there—Jonah sings out, “I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you.  What I have vowed I will make good.  I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord’” (2:9).

Yes, I will.  That’s what God has been listening for, all along.  How patient He has been with Jonah.  How patient He is with us!  He’s listening for those words of deepest, highest faith: “Yes, I will.”  Isaiah said them.  Moses and Jeremiah finally came around to say them.  Mary said them.  Peter and Paul said them.  Jesus said them: “Yes, I will.”  Those are the saving words.  Yes, I will, because God has.  Yes, I will, because God can.