Jonah | Belly of a Fish | Jonah 2:1-10 | Week 3

We've been in a series in the last few weeks going through the book of Jonah.  Jonah is the fifth of the minor prophets.  He prophesied in the latter half of the eighth century BC, so a long time.  Jonah is unique because it's mostly a narrative; he's not making big proclamations and all these sorts of things, it's telling us an interesting story.  Hosea and Amos were also prophets at the same time, and in all three of those books there's this running theme of God showing God's mercy to other nations.  God calls Jonah to go share this good news of this mercy with the Ninevites. The Ninevites were bad people.  They were often brutal, they disregarded human life and all these sorts of things.  The whole book is really about God's extravagant mercy.  

Jonah was disgusted at the idea that God would show mercy to people that Jonah felt didn't deserve it.  So, when God calls Jonah, he runs.  He pays the fare to get on this ship, and as he gets on the ship, he goes down into the belly of the ship and he falls asleep.  God sends a huge storm, and the sailors realize that it was because of Jonah that this storm was happening, so they were freaking out and woke him up.  Ironically, the sailors, who didn't know the God of Jonah, acted more in line with God than Jonah did.  They asked him to appeal to the Lord, his God.  He didn't.  He was in full-on rebellion, so he suffers the consequences of running.  He was tossed overboard and sinks to the bottom of the sea.  You know the story.  Here's the thing that's so ironic, God does for Jonah what God wanted to do for the Ninevites through Jonah.  Pretty wild, huh?  So, just as Ryan shared a few weeks ago, we see a resentful prophet meeting a relentless God.  That's the story of Jonah...