The story of Jonah and the whale (or the “big fish”, which is actually closer to the Hebrew word used in the story) is one of my favorite stories in the Bible. We can learn several lessons from Jonah, centered around the theme of God’s love and mercy and his plan to restore and redeem all things.
What does the story of Jonah and the whale teach us? The story of Jonah teaches us that God is on a mission to restore and redeem ALL things, that God wants everyone to turn to him (even those we might least expect), that he will challenge us but also protect and guide us, and that we cannot mess up God’s plan for our lives, no matter how hard we rebel.
What is the main message of the book of Jonah?
The main message of the book of Jonah is that God is in control, on a mission to restore and redeem all things, and that we are given a part in that mission. In the story of Jonah, we see a prophet who does the opposite of what God wants him to do, and yet God walks with him, protects him, and uses him in a profound way to accomplish his plan for redemption. As with Jonah, so too with us: no matter how far away we try to run from God, God can still reach us, guide us, and use us in his grand rescue mission.
Jonah’s Prayer
After God sends the storm and Jonah leaps overboard to save the crew of the ship, Jonah finds himself inside the belly of a whale and he prays. There are some lessons that we can learn from Jonah’s prayer:
- Jonah calls on God for help in times of distress (2:2).
- Jonah clings to hope even when he is in the depths of despair (2:3-6).
- Jonah remembers God when God seems far away (2:7).
- Jonah turns to God and trust him, for salvation comes from God (2:8-9).
Jonah’s prayer provides for us a model of faith in times of distress. Even though Jonah is in the depths of despair, his hope remains in God. He says, “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you” (2:7). Recalling those times when God has already shown up for us helps to strengthen our faith during those times when God seems far away. When we turn to God, trust him, call out to him in times of despair, and remember those times when he has pulled through for us before, then we can cling to the hope that salvation does indeed come from the Lord.
7 Life Lessons from the Book of Jonah
- God is in control.
- God loves and cares for you.
- God loves everyone.
- God is on a mission to restore and redeem ALL things.
- God has no problem removing you from your comfort zone.
- God can use us even when we do the opposite of what we’re supposed to do.
- You can’t mess up God’s plan.
God is in control.
The story of Jonah and the whale is ultimately a story of a God who is in control, a God who has a plan and who uses us to help him work out that plan. No matter what Jonah does, God uses Jonah and his decisions to bring about his plan for rescue and redemption.
When God first tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach repentance, Jonah runs in the opposite direction, trying to go as far away from God’s plan as he can. God uses this rebellion, however, to accomplish his goal: the repentance and redemption of Nineveh.
In fact, it is quite appropriate and even poetic that Jonah fled to the sea in order to avoid God’s command to preach repentance to Nineveh. One of the gods that the people of Nineveh worshipped was Dagan, a fish-god. This means that Jonah’s whole ordeal at sea actually strengthened his case when he went to Nineveh and told them that they needed to change their ways or they would be overthrown.
When Jonah gets spit out onto the shore outside Nineveh by a great fish, the people of Nineveh would have paid attention. This was a prophet who was delivered to them by something that they associated with the divine. God (YHWH, the God of Israel the God, the one true God who created the cosmos and is in relationship with human beings) uses Jonah’s rebellion to get the attention of the people of Nineveh. He knows how to get them to sit up, so to speak, and listen. In all the details of the story of Jonah, God is in control. There is no small detail, no act of rebellion, that God does not use and redeem.
God loves and cares for you.
Something that struck me as I was telling the story of Jonah and the whale to my classes at school was that God sends the whale to help Jonah. When you think about the story, it makes intuitive sense that the whale is sent to rescue Jonah. But we can get caught up in the details of Jonah’s rebellion and what seems like an angry God.
But, in fact, both the whale and the storm were sent to help Jonah. God didn’t send the storm because he was angry at Jonah, despite what the other sailors on the boat thought. God sent the storm in order to stop Jonah from running away. It was the only was he could get Jonah to turn around and go back to Nineveh.
So when Jonah leaps from the boat in order to save the crew, God sends a whale to rescue him. All of the obstacles that Jonah encounters are there to help him and to get him back onto the path that God has planned for him.
We can generalize this lesson for our lives too: Jesus promises us that God will provide for us (Matthew 6:25-34). We may not understand the obstacles in our lives, our challenges and losses, but the story of Jonah shows us a God who provides for us, who protects us, and who guides us, even in the storms of life, and even when we are trying to run away from him.
God loves everyone.
The people of Nineveh are the archetypical bad guys. Nineveh is the capital city of Assyria, a longtime enemy of Israel. The people of Assyria were known for their idolatry and their cruelty (Nahum 3:9). This is the city that God tells Jonah to go to and to preach repentance.
This is an excellent example of loving our enemies, of praying for our enemies, and for wishing them good. (We do not have to wish our enemies victory and success, but we ought to wish that they would turn to God and that God would love, protect, care for, and guide them.) Even though Nineveh is the enemy of Israel, God still loves them and wants the people of Nineveh to turn to him. This is why he sends Jonah.
At the end of the book of Jonah, God reinforces this point when he chastises Jonah. Jonah is angry and upset at God’s compassion for the people of Nineveh, so much so that he wants to die (Jonah 4:3,8). So God sends a plant, in part at least to send Jonah a message. The plant provides shelter for Jonah for a little while, but then shortly after God send a worm to eat away at the plant until it withers and dies. Jonah expresses his anger and his despair – angry, apparently, about the plant. God replies, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
In other words, God create the people of Nineveh and he loves them. God shows care and concern for all of his creation, no matter how far they have strayed from him.
God is on a mission to restore and redeem ALL things.
In Revelation 21:5, God says that he is making all things new. This is the big story of the Bible: God’s mission to restore and redeem all things. We see this theme in the story of Jonah when God sends Jonah to preach repentance to the people of Nineveh. God wants to restore and redeem ALL things. Even those nations who are the enemies of Israel, even those who are known for their idolatry and their cruelty, are known and loved by God. God doesn’t want to lose a single one of them.
This is a story of God going to those whom the Israelites least expected, and inviting them to turn to him. God has mercy on the people of Nineveh and their city avoids destruction. God wants everyone, even those whom we least expect, to have a restored relationship with him. This will result in loving our neighbors as ourselves (the people of Nineveh “give up their evil ways and their violence”, Jonah 3:8) and loving God with all our hearts, minds, and strength.
What it means to be “overthrown”…
When Jonah delivers his message to the people of Nineveh, he tells them that, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4). The Hebrew word for “overthrown” here is haphak which could mean “overthrown” or it could mean “turned”. Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.
This is an interesting prophecy because it is ambiguous. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Nineveh will be destroyed. It could mean that Nineveh will be changed.
And, in fact, this is a rich and relevant prophecy that reveals a deeper truth about human beings’ relationships with each other and with God: If we, like Nineveh, live a life of cruelty and idolatry, we will be destroyed. This is a lesson that I reinforce to my children all the time: If you choose to argue, fight, put yourself above other people, etc., etc., then life tends to go worse not just for the other person but also for you. The natural consequence of a life of selfishness, greed, and enmity is destruction. When we choose kindness, when we choose to love our neighbors as ourselves and to love God with all our hearts, all our minds, and all our strength, then we are changed. This is a choice that all of us face: will we over overturned? Or will we be turned over? Will we choose God? Or will we choose our own self-will?
God has no trouble removing you from your comfort zone.
What God commanded Jonah to do was far from comfortable. God asked Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh, known for its idolatry and its cruelty, and preach repentance. Jonah might have feared for his life. He was supposed to go to Nineveh and tell them that in forty days they would be “overthrown” (or “overturned”…”turned over”). It was not unreasonable for Jonah to fear that this message would not be taken favorably.
When Jonah runs in the other direction, God sends a storm to stop him from fleeing and bring him back on track. None of the story of Jonah shows Jonah being comfortable. When God asks us to do something, we cannot expect that it will be comfortable. It might challenge us, stretch us, and it might even seem like something that is impossible.
But God doesn’t send Jonah into this situation without God’s own care and protection. God provides Jonah with what he needs, even sending him in the mouth of a great fish so that the people of Nineveh would pay attention to him and take him seriously. We can expect challenge and the unexpected in our lives, but we can also expect God to go with us.
God can use us even when we do the opposite of what we’re supposed to do.
Jonah is a prophet who does the opposite of what a prophet normally does. And he is a prophet who does the opposite of what God tells him to do. And yet, God uses Jonah to accomplish his plans, and he protects and cares for Jonah.
Normally, a prophet is someone who knows what God is telling them to do and does it. When God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, however, and preach repentance, Jonah runs in the opposite direction.
A prophet is also someone who knows helps other people discover what is the best thing to do, and someone who speaks for God. But when Jonah is on the ship headed for Tarshish and a great storm comes up, Jonah is found asleep at the bottom of the ship. He doesn’t speak until the sailors cast lots to discover who is responsible for the storm and the lot falls on Jonah.
Even when Jonah does go to Nineveh like God tells him to, and the people of Nineveh listen to his message and turn from their sinful ways, Jonah does not rejoice but instead becomes angry that God has spared them.
At every turn, Jonah seems to do the opposite of what a prophet is supposed to do, and he does the opposite of what God tells him to do. And yet, God protects Jonah (by sending the whale to rescue him), he provides and cares for Jonah (by providing a plant for shade when Jonah is sulking outside the city), and he uses Jonah to accomplish his plans.
This story is one of hope, grace, and mercy: Not only does God show mercy to Nineveh, by sparing them from calamity (Jonah 4:2), but God shows mercy to Jonah as well and walks with him and protects him even in his rebellion.
So too with us: God walks with us and protects us even in our rebellion. Even when we chose to run in the opposite direction of God’s plan for our life, God will walk with us, get us back on track, and make us part of his grand story of redemption and rescue.
You can’t mess up God’s plan.
No matter how far Jonah runs away from God, and no matter how hard he tries to avoid God’s plan for his life, God brings Jonah back on track. This should bring us comfort, knowing that we cannot mess up God’s plan. Even if we run in the opposite direction that God tells us to go, God can use our rebellion for his purposes and he can bring about restoration and redemption.