Then the sailors picked Jonah up and threw him into the raging sea, and the storm stopped at once! The sailors were awestruck by the Lord’s great power, and they offered him a sacrifice and vowed to serve him.
Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights.
Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish. – Jonah 1:17 – 2:1
Have you ever been hard-hearted? I know I have. I have found myself so immersed in a circumstance or possibly a perceived injustice that my heart just became stone-like. This hardness has been toward people and I confess toward the Lord.
In the past, most often my hard-heartedness would come when I was behind the wheel in traffic. Nothing like driving in heavy traffic to make you hate your fellow man…I don’t know if I have matured or if I am just not caught in traffic much anymore, but it isn’t as much of a problem as it used to be.
But the serious hard hard-heartedness comes when life does not go as I would like it to. For whatever reason, God just won’t follow directions and it really ticks me off. So much so, I might spend a day or two refusing to talk to God. I would justify it in my mind that He doesn’t listen to me anyway, so not a big deal if I did not speak to Him. I have spent a good deal of time and energy trying to figure out exactly what the name of this particular sin is. Is it pride? Maybe, but it really doesn’t matter the name, it is sin.
This brings me to the text. The way it is written, it appears that Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days before he repented. Perhaps he was unconscious for a portion of the time, but how hard-hearted do you have to be for it to take three days in a fish to get you to repent? I can be as much of a self-righteous jerk as anyone, but I would have been turning that attitude around before I even hit the water.
As hard-hearted as he was, God was still able to use Jonah. Jonah was in no way intending to glorify God in his stubbornness. But God is sovereign and can use anyone and any circumstance.
God was glorified and shown to be in control of the winds and sea (foreshadowing of Jesus calming the storm). Matthew 8:23-27; Mark 4:35-41.
God was glorified in that the fellow sailors sacrificed to Him and vowed to serve Him.
God was glorified in Jonah’s three day stay inside the fish in that it was a foreshadowing of Christ’s three days in the tomb. Matthew 12:38-41.
I used to think that God could use anyone as long as that person was willing to be used by God. Make no mistake, that is preferable, but as Jonah’s story shows, God is sovereign and can use anyone, even when they are specifically refusing to be used.
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