On a warm August morning, sometime in elementary school, I decided to run away from home. Having spent a week of summer vacation at my grandmother’s house, I was awash with discontent upon re-entering life in the real world. I kicked the screen out of my bedroom window, packed a backpack of clothes, and grabbed a washed out Hershey’s chocolate syrup bottle to serve as my water bottle.
My reason for leaving was simple – I didn’t like my mom’s cooking. At my grandmother’s house, I ate a vastly disproportional amount of corn dogs and pizza. At home, I was forced to eat a balanced diet.
Before I could make my escape, dad came home to find the screen kicked out and I was toast.
The Problem
My desires were misaligned with what was best for me.
I was seeking happiness in getting what I wanted, rather than trusting the hands that fed me. My out-of-tune heart, had I been allowed to follow it, would have led me down one of two paths:
1) obesity and heart disease
or 2) starvation and death from exposure to the elements.
Ok, so perhaps that’s a little dramatic, but you get the point. I sincerely wanted to run from the presence of my parents and reject their will for me. I failed to see the big picture, and consequently chose folly over wisdom. My heart was misaligned from the very things that were for my good.
This is the kind of heart we see in the prophet Jonah in the first chapter of his biography. The book of Jonah reveals him as a man sharing a heart with a selfish, misguided 8 year old version of myself.
God tuned Jonah’s Heart by His severe mercy and grace
“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” (v. 17).
It is common to think of being swallowed by a fish as Jonah’s punishment. For sure, it sounds like a most terrible experience. But we need to see more in the story of the great fish:
1) Grace comes to us through a gift
The fish was God’s gracious gift to Jonah, God’s divine intervention to rescue him, not a cruel and unusual punishment. Jonah deserved death, yet by way of a fish he received life. The storm brought Jonah to confess his sin, and the fish arrived as Jonah was experiencing a small part of the pain of disobedience.
2) Grace comes to us through suffering
Jonah’s suffering brought him back to God’s presence. Jonah’s flight gave him exactly what he wanted – escape from the presence of God. But in that he saw his profound need for God’s presence. In chapter 2, verse 1, we see the very first thing Jonah did in the belly of the fish was return to God in prayer.
“What we want in suffering is an explanation from God. What we receive in suffering is a revelation of God.” – David Platt
3) Grace comes to us through justice
God’s grace to Jonah did not occur in the absence of justice. God would have been right in allowing Jonah to sink that day. We cannot insult God’s character as a good judge by implying that he turns a blind eye to wrongdoing (see Prob. 17:15). Death was and is still the penalty for our sins, yet Jonah was saved. But how?
Justice for his sin was not served in Jonah’s day, but was
accomplished years later in the future reality that the story of Jonah pre-figures..
Like a train track, as two parallel lines, guides the train to the intended destination, the parallel accounts in scripture are meant to drive us to a specific destination.
Listen for the parallel in the story of Jonah: he was sacrificed for the salvation of others, he laid in the fish for 3 days, he was brought back from this grave in order to do God’s will, and he called the lost to repentance.
The sacrifice of Jonah to the storm points forward to the sacrifice of Jesus to the storm of God’s wrath.
Had Jesus not been thrown into the fury of that storm Jonah had no hope for rescue, because there would never have been adequate atonement for his rebellion. And if Jesus had not endured that storm of God’s righteous justice against our sin, we would all have no hope for rescue.
Christian, God’s Grace is what stopped Jonah in his tracks to tune him. But God never leaves as passive recipients of sanctification. Jonah’s suffering in the ocean and in the fish sent him on a trajectory towards repentance.
How did Jonah respond to the grace and rescue he received?
Jonah Confessed his sin
In v. 10, we are told that Jonah confessed to the sailors that he had been running from God. In all of the previous account, Jonah seems to have blocked out his sin, perhaps numb to its reality in the frenzy of travel (even sleeping through the storm).
Sin is not a personal matter between you and God, and confession is a corporate means of healing (see James 5). Jonah confessed his sin of disobeying and rejecting the God of the Universe, and that is a terrifying prospect. By confessing sin, we open ourselves up to the possibility of punishment and disapproval.
But that is not what Jonah found in confessing his sin.
Submitting himself to the perfect justice of God he found the extravagant grace of God.
Jonah returned to the Presence and Word of God
Sinclair Ferguson points out that Jonah rejected two things in running: he rejected God’s Word (the command to act) and he rejected God’s Presence (communion with God).
After the ordeal with the fish, Jonah returned to both God’s word and God’s presence. Hecould not out-run God’s Omnipresence (that He is everywhere, and nothing is done outside of His sight) but Jonah did reject God’s personal presence (the reality that God makes Himself known in grace and power).
Ferguson continues explaining that we do this by fleeing the reality that God can and does act in our lives as we live in service and engage in prayer. Outside of Christ, God’s presence is deadly. But in Christ, we can come to the throne of grace with boldness – even in the midst of our struggle – and find forgiveness.
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Re-tuned
The same grace that tuned Jonah is the grace that tunes us.
Allegedly, Eric Clapton went backstage after one of Jimi Hendrix’s awe-inspiring performances. Hendrix is known for his masterful, yet effortless command of the electric guitar. He was left handed, and flipped a right-handed Fender Stratocaster upside down to play his ruthless, string bending symphonies. In many ways, his blues/rock revolutionized how the instrument is played.
Clapton saw Hendrix’s unattended guitar backstage . He was too curious at the sight of this glorious instrument to fight the temptation to pick it up and try it out.
What he found when he played a chord on Hendrix’s old guitar was that it was terribly, miserably out of tune.
My hope in Christ is to rest in the hands of the One who can bend my
weary heart strings back into harmony. Surely it has been painful. In fact, it comes standard with accepting the call of Christ, who was no stranger to suffering. And each day I find myself dissonant to the will of God.
But in the hands of a master, even the most out of tune instruments can be made to sound glorious.