I always wondered about the story of Jonah. How could a man live in a whale for three days, be spewed out and live? Not that I didn’t think if God wanted it done then….it would be done.
But I now understand….
, walks through humanity doing all the damage he can and that damage is spiritual. Now, we can go to Jonah and his story. Jonah 1:15 So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging.
Another is….He will go to great lengths to pull His child out of hell…not matter how far we try to run from Him. A third is, if a similar story, such as a man being in the belly of a whale for three days and living, doesn’t sound possible, then….see what is being said.
Here, the story instead of being about Jonah and the whale is about Jonah and Satan.
Ezekiel 32:2 “Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say unto him, ‘Thou art like a young lion of the nations, and thou art as a WHALE IN THE SEAS: and thou camest forth with thy rivers, and troubledst the waters with thy feet, and fouledst their rivers.’
So now we see who or what the “whale” is. The Pharaoh is a type for Satan, the seas and waters are symbolic of humanity. God tells us that this whale…who has feet
God instructed Jonah to take His Word to the wicked but instead he tried to flee…away from the Lord. So “he paid the fare” and “went down into it,” it being the ship. The fare he paid to go down and into the depths and away from the Lord was costly indeed
. 1:4 But the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.Our Father sent the Holy Spirit after His reluctant and obstinate child and it frightened those with him…so much that they prayed to their gods
but through all this the eyes of Jonah were still blinded for….”and he lay, and was fast asleep.” The fellow passengers on this ship sailing to hell said…
1:14 Wherefore they cried unto the LORD, and said, “We beseech Thee, O LORD, we beseech Thee, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for Thou, O LORD, hast done as it pleased Thee.”
That reminds me of Christ casting the devils into the herd of swine (false teachers) and the herd running headlong into the sea….humanity, where they are today. [Mark 5:6-13]So, they tossed Jonah out and the seas (humanity) became calm…but it wasn’t over for Jonah:
1:17 Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.Where was Jonah? He tells us what that fish is..….
2:1-2 Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish’s belly. And said, “I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and He heard me; out of THE BELLY OF HELL cried I, and Thou heardest my voice. This “great fish” which has incorrectly been translated as a whale is none other than Satan. There is nothing about “a whale” either in the Hebrew of Jonah or in the Greek of Matthew 12:40. The “great fish” was specially “prepared” by it’s Creator. ~ E.W. Bullinger
Satan and his workers are the leviathan in the seas of humanity… Psalms 104:26 There go the ships: There is that leviathan, whom Thou hast made to play therein.Genesis 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.Whales # 8577 a marine or land monster, i.e. sea-serpent or jackal: dragon, sea-monster, serpent, whale.
God created them, the serpent, the dragon and his men to “play therein,” the “therein” being in humanity. And…it was good. This is part of God’s great plan. 2:3 For Thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all Thy billows and Thy waves pass over me. 2:5 The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. What despair. We have all heard the expression that there are times one must hit the bottom before waking up and climbing out of the pit. This is what Jonah is describing. He, as others of God’s children, are deep in the bowels of hell, deep in the claws of Satan who is prince of this world. Souls are drowned in the worldly lusts he offers them while the “weeds” wrapped about him are the “tares” in this world keeping him “compassed about” so God’s children drown in his filth. But….God sends His Holy Spirit. Will they listen? Jonah did…..
2:6 I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast Thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD My God. As Jonah was in this terrible place….so was our Lord: Matthew 12:40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.What is that "whale's belly," the same one Jonah was in? Peter tells us.... 1 Peter 3:18-20 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
One of the lessons contained in this story is….when God instructs us to take His Word forward then….TAKE IT FORWARD!
