Jonah and the Whale

By Pastor Peter Linnecar

As soon as Jonah decided to set his will against God he went down, as far as the depths of the sea. But, after he had been in the belly of the whale for three days and nights, he cried out to the Lord in his distress and the Lord heard him. God is a merciful God, He answers prayers. If you cry out to God and realise that you are totally dependent on Him, He will hear you and He will answer.

Jonah was a prophet, he had been faithful to deliver the word of God in the type of Jeroboam the 11. But when God spoke to him again, he did not obey but when in completely the opposite direction from Nineveh, where God had sent him.

Jon 4:2

Jonah knew the character of God and he didn't want to deliver God's message because he didn't think God would treat the Ninevites as he thought they should be treated. We saw last weekend how he had crossed the sea, in order to go the opposite way to Nineveh, but during their journey on the sea a storm had arisen, and it had only stopped when Jonah had been cast into the sea. When the lots were taken Jonah knew that he had to be thrown over the side for the sake of the sailors. It is strange that he was not willing to go to Nineveh, but he was willing to be thrown overboard and risk his life for the sailors.

It is interesting to note that since chapter 2 he went 'down', eventually going 'down' to the depths of the sea.

We are going to see how God answers the problems in our lives at the right time for His purposes to be fulfilled.

Jon 1:17

There are examples of other people who had been swallowed by a large fish. One species of fish, the Seadog, is found in all warm seas and in 1578 a sailor was swallowed by one. The captain of the vessel ordered a canon to be fired at the fish, once this was done the fish vomited up the sailor and he was unharmed. Again, another sailor was swallowed by another fish for 48 hours. The whale was harpooned and brought back to the ship and the sailor was retrieved from the whale; after two weeks he recovered fully. These are a few examples of what happened without God. We are talking about what happened to Jonah according to God's purposes.

I wanted to show these examples to make the point that this is a historical story, not just an allegory as some theologians argue. I want to look at what Jesus said about this:

Lk 11:29-36

There's Jesus specifically referring to the story of Jonah and to the fact that what happened to him with Nineveh were true. Elsewhere it refers to 'as he was three days and three nights in the great whale'. The last part of what I just read is to do with a lighted candle not being in a secret place. When Jonah was in the whale it was God that had caused the storm and that he prepared the whale. It was God all the way through who was preparing the way for His purposes to be fulfilled; His purposes were of mercy. God wanted to give Nineveh the chance to repent, even though they did not deserve it. Jonah was the man to go to Nineveh in order that they might repent, and so, God prepared the way for him.

Jesus says here that there is a greater than Jonah here, His name is Jesus. The three days from the cross to the resurrection is greater than the sign of Jonah. Don't be in a secret place as Christian, or someone who has a compromised position about the way you go about things as a Christian.

"No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light."

Some people have asked me this week 'what is God doing?'. He is shaking things so that we might all go together, growing in our relationship with God. You can't be a Christian in a dark room, you're a light, and a light it to provide the means for those who are in the darkness that they can be different. When Jesus died on the cross and three days later rose from the dead, the reason was because you can't keep a light in the grave. Death, where is your victory?

I just want to be briefly look at the prayer that Jonah prayed:

Jon 2:1-2

Everything had gone wrong for Jonah. It might be your sitting here thinking that you don't know how you're going to sort through the circumstances you are in. Jesus Christ is in control, God knows what He is doing in your life, even if you can't see the solution. What matters is the attitude you take to circumstances. Don't be bitter, just have complete dependency on God. God loves it when you realise that you have nothing else, only total dependency on Him.

Jon 2:3-4

It doesn't matter how guilty you might feel, God answers in spite of your guilt. It doesn't matter what judgement you think God should give you, if you cry out to God and turn to Him in your heart, He will answer. He has made a way for you. Why is it those things have happened to you? Because God wants to get hold of you, because He loves you. Each stage is carefully orchestrated. Jonah realised this. He had gone down to Joppa, down to the ship, down to the depths.

Jon 2:5-6

God answers in the most impossible of circumstances. If you don't respond to what God is speaking to you about He has every right not to continue with you. There is a day of judgement. So why aren't you responding? I know there are a few here to night to whom God is speaking specifically through this story. He went down, yet 'has thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God.'

Jon 2:7

Rom 5:6

This sign of Jonah was nothing compared to Jesus. Those three days between Calvary and the resurrection was for you. This is not a theory, or some vague idea, it is for you. It is the difference between darkness and light.

Jon 2:8

If you trust in anything else but God you are forsaking the mercy that He has for you.

Jon 2:8-9

The moment Jonah said that, in verse 10, the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. God answers, in stages sometimes, but He answers. He answers to win our undivided loyalty and thanks. God helps us to make us become merciful like Him. Where are we at in our lives tonight? What are the circumstances of our lives like? The end result for each one of us is that God, a God of love and of grace, has a heart to redeem mankind; that is why Jesus came. We don't need to live in the hell of sin, we can live in the glory of the holiness, the righteousness, of Christ.

Jonah, why are you going to Tarshish? Well, actually I'm running away from God. But why would you want to do that? I can't be bothered, if He wants to do what He wants that is fine, but I have done my bit already. What a change when he says: "I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD."

Jon 3:1

Walk as Children of the Light

For 400 years leading up to the birth of Jesus, there had been no prophet to bring the Word of God to Israel. The silence was finally broken when the Angel Gabriel came to Zacharias to tell him that his prayer for a child had been heard (Luke 1:13):-

But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. / And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth. / For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. / And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. / And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

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Later Zacharias was to prophesy over the child (Luke 1:68) :-

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, / And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; / As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: / That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; / To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; / The oath which he sware to our father Abraham, / That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, / In holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life. / And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; / To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, / Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, / To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.


Sometimes we find ourselves in dark circumstances, unsure of the way forward. But as we see here, God can bring about a complete and utter change – just as at the very beginning of creation, He spoke light out of darkness.

In the passage above, Zacharias referred to scriptures written 700 years before in the time of Isaiah and King Ahaz. Israel and Judah had split, Ahaz was going contrary to God, and there was no hope in the land. Against this background of darkness, Isaiah prophesied both of the evil which was to come, and of the hope which found its realisation in Jesus (Is 8:21 22, 9:2) :-

And … it shall come to pass, that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse their king and their God, and look upward. And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness … The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.


When Zacharias spoke, he knew he was heralding a transformation – no hope to hope, darkness to light.

The passage from Isaiah continues: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. / Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.


The child Jesus Christ is the one who became a light to the Gentiles, who brought light in the midst of darkness, as Paul reminds us in Corinthians (2 Cor 4:6) :-

For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.


The same God who commanded light out of darkness, who made something out of nothing … that same God came through the one heralded by John the Baptist. He came as a light to lighten the Gentiles and has come into your life and taken what was decay and total darkness, has drawn you with His chords of love, and has caused you to come to His glorious light.

So what does all this mean for us? You may be in circumstances where there is darkness and you feel uncertain of the way forward. But the God who brought light out of darkness can change everything. As we go into a new year, lay aside the analysis which you have played over and over in your mind, and be like Zacharias, proclaiming Jesus Christ, Lord and Saviour, the light who dispels darkness.

Ephesians 5:8,10 says :-

For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: / Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.


As we stand at the threshold of a new year, I invite you to join me. Together in 2009 let us walk as children of the light.

Changed on the Inside

Pastor Peter Linnecar shares from John 9, from the story of the man born blind, where we see that Jesus is interested in all our lives, and knows what we need. He is the one who seeks us out, even when we are in our darkest moment, and changes everything.

As we look at scriptures today, you’ll see that God is interested in your life, and wants to change you on the inside for the better. Sometimes when we think about God, we forget His ways aren’t our ways, and that His thoughts aren’t our thoughts. He’s good and He loves us – God is love.

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Isaiah 55:8 - 11

Whenever God speaks, the word has a purpose which will be fulfilled. He never says something He regrets. He will always work out His purposes.

Mark 10:27 says things impossible with man are possible with God. He works out things in His way in His time.

Who sinned?

John 9:1 – 2

Jesus and the disciples saw the same thing but reacted differently. To the disciples, it was a blind man, and they wanted an answer as to why he was blind. Sometimes we can’t work out why certain things happen. I don’t claim to have the answer to everything. But as far as God is concerned, we may be trying to get answers to questions we shouldn’t be asking, because Jesus’ answer was completely the opposite of what they expected.

John 9:3

There are circumstances happening in your life because God wants to get your attention and reveal more of Himself than you have ever known before. He’s interested in your life. He was so interested that He came to this earth to seek and save that which was lost. He wanted to change you on the inside. The way you started off in life was wrong. We are sinners, and we know we are.

I am the light of the world

John 9:4 – 5

Jesus Himself is the light of the world, and He’s come to dispel the darkness and sin within us. The disciples couldn’t figure it out. There was a situation and something must have caused it, because things shouldn’t have been that way. But Jesus said the works of God would be manifest in the blind man.

John 9:6 – 7

It didn’t happen there and then. The clay was put on his eyes and he was told to go and wash and when he did, his eyesight was given.

John 9:8 – 12

Jesus made the clay, touched his eyes, sent him off, and while he was away, Jesus went on His way. The man returned having had his miracle, able to see for the first time in his life – and he didn’t know where Jesus was.

John 9:13 – 34

“And they cast him out.”

What a reaction. The Pharisees doubted the man who claimed that he was born blind and that Jesus had healed him. Those five words, “And they cast him out,” struck me, because our sin has shut God out. When we start off in life, we’re against God, and we do not want Him. We want to do our own thing. But we try and try, and it doesn’t work. It’s as if we’ve cast ourselves out – our sin has brought a shutter down between us and God.

Romans 5:6

At the right time God sorted things out, to break through the shutter and get hold of us. He wants to change the sin and wrong thought life with His life inside you.
This man who was given sight for the first time in his life, was asked about Jesus and was trying to work it out – He must be of God because look at what’s happened to my eyes.

When you were at your wits’ end, Jesus heard you when you prayed. God is organising things to increase that relationship with Him - He is your heavenly Father. He loves you and provides for you.

I wonder who told Jesus what had happened to the man.

John 9:35 – 38

“Lord I believe.” The reason you can say that is as a result of Jesus finding you. Through the Cross of Calvary, you were on His mind, and at that point He took in Himself your first life, your sin. It was then a case of God’s Holy Spirit speaking to you and drawing you. He’s brought you to this point in time where He says, “Do you believe on the Son of God?” What do you say?

Romans 10:8 – 10

Lord, I believe

All Jesus asked was, “Do you believe on the Son of God?” The man answered, “Who is He?” I am the one who healed you and the one who is speaking to you now. “Lord, I believe. I’ve been trying to sort things out on my own, and I’ve made a mess.”

Is it fair that some people come across this truth and others don’t? Don’t think like that. I’m talking about God in relation to you. Why did things start out as they did in Israel all those years ago? Why am I preaching like this there in England? I don’t know. But it’s how God speaks to you, how you realise that He gave His son so that you could be born again. You could be thinking, I know I need that. I try to lead a good life, and time and again I fail. There are some things I’ve given up on because I can’t overcome them. Jesus knows that, and He wants to point out you can’t do it on your own. Your sin is preventing the life you want to live. The only way to live that life is when Jesus Christ comes inside and causes you to start again with His life inside you.

This man, born blind, got his sight back and by the end of this encounter with Jesus, he could also see spiritually.

John 9:39 – 41

God loves an honest heart. I know some of you are being honest with yourselves, and realise inside right now that God is speaking to you. Respond to that voice. Say “Lord I believe. Sort me out. Change me from the inside.” And He will.

God has already made provision for what you need. He loves you and He will reveal Himself to you through His provision.

Jesus gets very personal because He loves you.