The School of Calamity, Part 2

Lesson two of two from the book of Jonah as I processed the aftermath of Hurricane Helene upon Columbia County, GA.

Jonah and Knowing How Powerless We Really Are

Jonah 2:1-10, "Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, [2] saying, “I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, 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 flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. [4] Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ [5] The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head [6] at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God. [7] When my life was fainting away,  I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. [8] Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. [9] But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the LORD!”

[10] And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.”

In my last article, we briefly considered Jonah 1:4 that explicitly says, The LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea!"

And we considered carefully that God did not hate Jonah, He loved him and needed to get him out of boat that he was in fleeing from the presence of God.  God longed to draw Jonah to Himself, so He hurled a great wind. God did whatever it took.  He sent a great wind. He will send a great fish.  And will in time send a plant to provide shade and then a worm take away that shade.  And finally a scorching wind and the sun to beat down on Jonah’s head, all to teach Jonah that God loves sinners and that God loves Jonah.

We concluded:

God sends His people to the school of calamity that they might learn His heart.

God sends His people to the school of calamity that they might better know their God.

Now I want us to stay in Jonah for 1 more article as we consider this moment that we are living in having experienced a massive hurricane even in Columbia County.

Rich Mullins once wrote…

“The Bible is not a book for the faint of heart. It is a book full of all the greed and glory and violence and tenderness and sex and betrayal of mankind. It is not the collection of pretty little anecdotes mouthed by pious little church mice. It does not so much nibble at our shoe as it cuts to the heart and splits the marrow from bone to bone. It does not give us answers fitted to our smaller minded questions but truth that goes beyond what we even know to ask.” 

With that in mind, I want us to consider Jonah, that we might consider our own hearts and often our posture towards God Himself.

We will start by thinking of the contrast between the Jonah of Jonah 1:3 and the Jonah that we just read of in Jonah 2:1.

Jonah 1:1–3, “Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, [2] “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” [3] But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.”

Jonah heard the word of God, understood and defiantly did the opposite of what God had called him to do. 

The passage gives no indication that he was confused or misunderstood.  No, that is not what is happening.

God sends him east and he goes west. 

God sent him to modern day Iraq and he headed to modern day Spain.

If you seek to understand Jonah’s posture towards God, it is defiant.  It is contrary to God. In that moment that the will of God and the will of Jonah clash, and Jonah believes he will get his way! 

He must have at least thought he had the power to overrule the will of God. 

Think of the arrogance.  Think of the ego. Think of the pride. 

“I heard you, God, but I am not doing that!”

Perhaps we could conclude that Jonah saw himself as big as God is, if not bigger!

If Jonah would have known the poem Invictus, which would come over 2000 years after Jonah, perhaps he would have said, 

“I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”

So God sent a great wind in vs. 4 so that in vs 5 even brave sailors are afraid.  Follow me in Jonah 1 as I pick up in Jonah 1:8–9, “Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” [9] And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

I would suggest that we are starting to see Jonah transformed before our very eyes. 

In verse 3, Jonah would see himself as big as God.

By vs. 9, Jonah would say, the Lord is God, and I am not. I fear Him.

Jonah 1:15, So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.

But in the wisdom of God, something more was necessary, so we read in  [17] And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.”

The same God who sent the great wind in vs. 4, now sends are great fish in vs. 17!

And what you think of that fish really matters.

You might think of the fish like a garbage truck come to pick up only what deserves to be thrown away. But that is not what is happening. This is great fish is more like an ambulance, come to get the sick and the dying, to breath life back into a troubled soul. 

To humble the proud and in time revive the poor in spirit.

It is not a garbage truck, it is an ambulance.  

What a different man we find in the belly of the fish.

When he was in the belly of the boat (Vs. 5), he was sleeping while others were fearful. He was in his sin and comfortable in His sin, but now he is not sleeping, what is he doing?  He is praying!

Jonah 2:1, “Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish,”

He is no longer in a posture of  arrogance, he is expressing dependence. 

He is no longer shaking his fist at God, he is defeated. He is at the end of himself, and there he begins to pray. 

In this ambulance of a great fish, God was at work in Jonah’s heart.

Hear 4 observation that Jonah was able to make even in the darkness of the belly of a fish:

1. God answered me!

[2] saying, “I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice

And there is little doubt that Jonah would have had, in the immediate aftermath of these events, many occasions to rehearse what had happened to him and to repeat again the summary which is contained in verse 2. The people met him and he said, “Where have you been Jonah?” and then immediately followed up with, “And why do you smell so   bad?” I mean, he must have been really fragrant for a significant length of time coming out of this. I’m not a fisherman, but there’s something about fish; once it gets on you it’s just almost impossible to get rid of the stench. And his friends would have said to him, “What in the world has been happening?” And then he would have said, “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. [And] from the depths of the grave  I called for help, and God listened to my cry.”

The emphasis in these verses is not so much upon the predicament of Jonah as it is upon the PROVISION of God—not so much about what Jonah has done to get himself in this situation as it is upon what God has chosen to do to save his servant in the situation. Jonah ends up on dry land at the end of the chapter, verse 10, and it is clear that he ends up there not because he deserved to but because of God’s grace. What we discover is that the challenge facing Jonah was the opportunity for God to show quite clearly what we’re told there at the final sentence of verse 9: that “salvation comes from the Lord.”

Jonah was in the water, half-drowned, suffocating from the seaweed round his head, and he had cried out to God. He cried out to the very God from whose presence he’d sought to run. And yet God answered me!! What a testimony!

2. God hurled me

Look at what he says in verse 3: “[3] For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.” 

God cast him into the deep, God hurled him into the sea!

Who physically hurled him into the sea? And why would Jonah state it like this?

Now, he could have said, It was the sailors who hurled him into the deep. The sailors threw him overboard. Jonah said, ‘I’m running from God, throw me overboard,’ and so they threw him overboard. And now here he is in the heart of the fish, and he says, ‘You, O God, hurled me into the deep.’ Now, what is this?”

Jonah is recognizing that what had taken place was under the determining hand of God—that the sailors, in fulfilling Jonah’s instructions, became the instruments of God. In the same way that the brothers in the story of Joseph, as you read in the chapters in Genesis, who acted according to their own willful passions—their jealousy and their spite, their desire to be rid of Joseph—they sold him into the hands of the Ishmaelite traders, they banished him off to Egypt, and when they are finally encountering [Joseph] again in Genesis 45:8, and they realize with alarm that they are face-to-face with the brother that they had banished, what does Joseph say to them? He says, “It was not you who sent me here, but God.” 

Jonah saw the hand of God even in His trouble!

How I long for you to see that hand of God even over the past 10 days!

3. (Jonah observed) God seemed to have banished him from God’s Sight

Verse 4, “Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ [5] The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head [6] at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever

These are the words of a man who knew he was running from God and it sure appeared God would simply dispose of him.  Imagine plunging into the water, sinking down, weeds wrapped about his head.He must have concluded. This is it!  God has banished me.

Notice throughout the Scriptures that the people of God can certainly feel this way at times. If you have thought it, you are not alone!! Jonah said, “I have been driven from your sight.”

And just when he thought he’d been abandoned for good, he is swallowed by the fish.

Remember, that fish Is not a dump truck. It Is an ambulance!

That belly of the fish, is not a great place to live but a wonderful place to learn.

We see that at the end of vs. 6 “But you brought my life up from the pit.” “But you brought my life up.” Who else could bring his life up?    4th and final observation..

4.  God brought me up from the Pit

He went down to Joppa, he went down below the deck, he went down into the depths. And here God intervenes divinely to lift him up!

In James Rowe’s hymn “Love Lifted Me” he writes…

I was sinking deep in sin, Sinking to rise no more,    

Very deeply stained with sin, Far from the peaceful shore.Then the Master of the sea Heard my despairing cry,

And from the waters he lifted me; And now safe am I.  

Jonah, who just previously was the Master of his fate, now cries out in vs. 9 Salvation belongs to the LORD!”

What a hard place to be, that belly of the fish.

It is not a great place to live but a wonderful place to learn.

And Jonah is now transformed from considering himself able to fight the will of God, to completely dependent upon God.  From I am the master of my fate, to God alone is the Savior of my soul.

What a change!  From I am the master of my fate, to God alone is the Savior of my soul.

What a change! A change that, I would suggest, might need to happen in us…

If we are honest, we default into thinking of ourselves as smart and competent and able to determine our own fates. 

We are in charge of our lives! We determine our own futures.

And then events happen like the morning hours of Sept. 27th. Which can make us feel so small!

Helene was massive. It was large, about 350 miles wide. For comparison, GA is 230 wide and 300 tall

It was strong, with winds reaching 140 mph when it made landfall late Thursday, creating widespread storm surge. It carried heavy rains. And it was fast, speeding north at up to 24 mph offshore and 30 mph inland. The geographic scale of Helene’s destruction can be compared to 1989’s Hurricane Hugo and 2004’s Hurricane Ivan.

At 5:37 a.m. Friday, a hurricane-force wind gust of 82 mph was observed at Augusta Regional Airport, according to the National Weather Service. That is hurricane winds in Augusta, GA and we are hours from the coast, especially the gulf coast!

Helene was massive and Helene was devastating:

Helene is the second-deadliest hurricane to strike the United States mainland in the past 50 years,

T​he death toll is over 225 people, and includes over 30 in Georgia

Some parts of western North Carolina were cut off by mudslides and flooding, prompting officials to send in supplies, food and water via air.

Georgia Power reports that8,000+ power poles that must be repaired or replaced (previous record was 1700)

More than 1000 miles of wire replaced

1,500+ transformers and 3,200+ trees on power lines that must be removed or addressed to restore power.

As of Tuesday morning, Richmond County officials reported eight Helene-related deaths.  Aiken County officials reported six and I did not see Columbia County’s numbers!

We, like Jonah, often have a sense of self-sufficiency and self-determination. 

We live as if we are the Masters of our Fate, and the captain of our souls

But in the face of such a massive storm and a devastating storm, when we pause and consider just how small we actually are, and just how little we actually are, and how powerless we actually are.

And the good news is a storm like Helene gives us a chance to reset

Just as Jonah is now transformed from considering himself able to fight the will of God, to completely dependent upon God.  

So too we can be transformed from I am the master of my fate, to God alone is the Savior of my soul.

A true encounter with the God of the universe makes me feel gladly small, perfectly puny. And safely in the Hands of the Master of the Sea, the Savior of my soul.

So I close with this:  Even as That belly of the fish, is not a great place to live but a wonderful place to learn, so too living through Helene and the aftermath is not a great place to live, but it is a wonderful place to learn.  

In Buncombe County, NC alone, 72 people had been confirmed dead as of Thursday evening, Dozens, perhaps hundreds are still missing in that area.  Sheriff Quentin Miller said at a Thursday evening press briefing to the citizens around Asheville “We’re coming to get you. We’re coming to pick up our people.”  It is quite remarkable what rescue crews can do, and power companies can do, and medical folks can do, but if we are honest, we are quite small and quite vulnerable against forces of nature.

And yet, there is no God like our God, the Master of the Sea, the Savior of my soul.

And in His hands, we are secure forever and ever!

Rev. John Fender