There are two essential requisites for practical fitness and usefulness in the work of the Lord for every believer. These are:
1. A broken will
2. A broken heart
With our will unbroken, we are unable to discern the will of God, whether as to the practical difficulties of daily life or as to His work and service. If in the school of deep trials and sorrows, we have learned to judge our own perverse will, we shall be able "to prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Rom. 12:22And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Romans 12:2)).
When our heart with its own inclinations has been broken practically, God can reveal unto us His own heart of grace, love and tender sympathy. A broken will enables us to serve the Lord, but a broken heart makes us serve Him "after His own heart," in spirit and in truth.
Jonah, courageous servant of God though he was, had not yet learned these things. He was thinking of his own importance—of his own dignity as a prophet—and forgetting that he was God's prophet. No sooner does he receive a commandment from God than he attempts to "flee from the presence of the Lord." But the Lord soon showed him the folly of such an attempt, and Jonah had to learn some crushing lessons—two of them in the belly of the fish and the third under the gourd.
What Jonah Learned in the Belly of the Fish
The first two chapters of the Book of Jonah teach us two all-important truths. First, we learn that there is no place where God's arm cannot reach us. Second, we learn that there is no prison from which God's hand cannot deliver us.
Perhaps some might say that Jonah, as the Lord's prophet, ought to have been too intelligent and God-fearing to make the vain attempt to flee from the Lord's presence. Let us not deal too hardly with the prophet, for how often have we followed, like Jonah, the promptings of our natural will! It is easy to forget that truth so important for the practical life of faith, as expressed in Psalm 139:77Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? (Psalm 139:7): “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” It was this searching truth which Jonah practically forgot.
He appears to have reasoned somewhat thus: “God must have gracious intentions toward Nineveh, in charging me with this message of warning, and as a result the Ninevites will turn from their evil works and repent. God then will repent of the judgment announced to them, and I shall be exposed as a lying prophet.” The temptation in Jonah's case was not small, but where was his faith? Where was his trust in God, and the single eye and heart in the simple obedience of faith? Was not God able to take care of the character of His prophet?
Oh what a wretched thing is “self,” especially in the Lord's work and service! Rather let Nineveh perish with its millions of souls than the personal character of a prophet of God be impugned! In this dispensation of grace, the history of the church bears testimony to the sorrowful fruits of such unjudged pride in some, who were looked up to as servants of the blessed Lord. Oh, may we learn to be small before Him who was once the lowliest of all servants and who is now exalted to the right hand of God!
Jonah learned two important things in the fish's belly:
1. “They that observe lying vanities, forsake their own mercy,” and
2. “Salvation is of the Lord.”
The most deceptive of all lying vanities are not in the outer world, but within ourselves. Jonah, amidst the constant claims of his prophetic office, had not allowed himself sufficient time to learn, in the light of God’s presence, the insidious depths of his own evil heart, or he would not have tried “to flee from the Lord's presence” and he would not have found himself in the fish's belly. Jonah had to learn it at the bottom of the sea, where he had the “sentence of death in himself,” that he “might not trust in himself, but in God which raiseth the dead” (2 Cor. 1:99But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead: (2 Corinthians 1:9)). He had to have the same experience as the Apostle Paul afterward, though not in the higher and deeper Christian measure of the latter. But even to a servant of God like Paul, the Apostle of glory, that lesson could not be spared. As with Jonah, and even with the apostle, so with every one of us, the having “the sentence of death in ourselves” must be experienced, before that victorious triumphant certainty of faith can render us superior to surrounding difficulties.
Sooner or later, every one of us, like Jonah, has to spend a season “in the belly of the fish” (often even several seasons), to learn, like him, that hard and yet so important truth, that “they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.”
Salvation Is of the Lord
But there was another, no-less-important truth which Jonah had to learn in his prison. As we have seen, the first great truth had to be learned by him in the depths of the sea, when he was deprived of every human help. As soon as Jonah thoroughly had learned that lesson, the second was learned as a matter of course, that “salvation is of the Lord.”
When the Israelites had arrived at the Red Sea and every human way of deliverance cut off, then only the words were heard, “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will show to you” (Ex. 14:1313And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever. (Exodus 14:13)). Only when the converted but legal man in Romans 7, in the “belly of the fish,” has entirely come to naught as to his own strength, does he perceive that salvation and deliverance must come from the Lord, and he exclaims, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 7:2525I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. (Romans 7:25)).
So it was with Jonah. He must first learn that “they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy,” and then, that “salvation is of the Lord.” Immediately, “the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land” (Jonah 2:1010And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. (Jonah 2:10)).
What Jonah Learned Under the Gourd
Jonah now had to learn by the withering of his own heart in its disappointment what the tender pity and mercy of God's heart is. This he learned under the miraculous gourd. The Lord had prepared this gourd for Jonah’s comfort—a gourd that came up on one night. However, Jonah’s comfort from the gourd was short-lived. “God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement [or, silent] east wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live” (Jonah 4:88And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live. (Jonah 4:8)). In reply to God’s question about his anger, the prophet's language now assumes the character of defiance: He replies, “I do well to be angry, even unto death” (Jonah 4:99And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death. (Jonah 4:9)).
But what was Jonah doing under the gourd? Was he not waiting for God's judgment, while God was waiting to be gracious? But the prophet did not understand as yet that voice of grace. The gourd had therefore to be stripped of its leaves, so that the prophet, deprived of its beneficial shadow, might learn by his own suffering his need of that sympathy which he lacked so much and had little known how to appreciate.
The Heart
Even to the most excellent of God's saints this exercise of conscience and heart cannot be spared. The conscience may be reached “in the belly of the fish,” but the heart must be touched by the withering of the gourd. It was God's intention that the heart as well as the conscience of His prophet (as of all His servants) should be exercised. There are believers whose consciences have been truly exercised, but from want of exercise of heart, they know but little of the sympathy of Christ. Jonah understood as yet very little of God's tender mercy; he had therefore through suffering to learn his own need of it.
“Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night and perished in a night: and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons which cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?” (Jonah 4:10-1110Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: 11And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle? (Jonah 4:10‑11)). Jonah mourned over the gourd’s sudden decay, because it deprived him of the relief which that it had provided for him. And should not God have pity on a city like Nineveh, with its thousands of babes [God knew their number] that could not discern their left hand from their right, and so much cattle? But now God had reached Jonah's heart, and his heart was to be broken and to be melted under the sense of God's grace and mercy.
The fact that the prophet himself wrote this book, thus recording his own sin and shame, proves how thoroughly not only his will, but also his heart, had been broken and humbled under the sense of the grace of such a God. May we too receive the instruction which God intends for us also, for the things that happened to Jonah are written for our admonition.
J. A. von Poseck (adapted)