Preserving Love

May 14, 2017 Background Scripture: Jonah 2 Lesson Passage: Jonah 2 In last week’s lesson, the pagan sailors feared for their lives because the raging storm was threatening to destroy their ship. They each called upon their god and woke Jonah from sleep and urged him to do the same. (It is a sad state of affairs when pagans have to remind the man of God to pray!) Jonah didn’t bother to pray but instead gave them the solution to their problem: Jonah needed to be removed from the ship. They reluctantly threw Jonah overboard and the storm ceased. Last week’s lesson closed with God sustaining Jonah’s life by engulfing him in the belly of a large fish He had prepared just for that purpose. (It is worth noting that it was over two thousand three hundred years after this that man invented the first submarine with an inner environment where human life could survive in the depths of the sea for that amount of time.) Today’s lesson focuses on God as the author of salvation for all who put their trust in Him. The lesson opens with Jonah inside of the fish and in prayer without being prompted to do so. From within the great fish, Jonah prayerfully reflected on how God had answered his prayer and delivered him from a sure death in the sea. Jonah knew that God’s love was preserving him from what should have been a quick death in the stormy water. At this point, Jonah offered God all that he had and that was the fruit of his lips as a sacrifice of thanksgiving. It is not clear if Jonah expected to continue to live or he was thankful because he did not want to die by drowning. In other words, I don’t know if Jonah’s prayer was a thanksgiving for sparing his life or a thanksgiving for giving him a more desirable form of death—after all, he is still in the belly of the fish and not riding on the back of a dolphin. Perhaps God revealed to Jonah that he was going to continue to live beyond his current situation. For three days and nights, Jonah was neither drowning nor being digested by the fish. He knew God was preserving him. That would indeed evoke a prayer of thanksgiving when his previous situation of hopelessness in the sea outside of the fish is considered. There are some situations we just have to talk to someone about. So Jonah talked to God. God preserved Jonah inside the fish while he prayed. However, when Jonah proclaimed that salvation comes from the Lord, then the Lord commanded the fish to vomit Jonah out on dry land. We don’t know if the fish was on or at the dry land during Jonah’s prayer or not. But we do know that it did not vomit Jonah out into the sea but Jonah was preserved because he was vomited on dry land. Jonah’s declaration that God is the author of salvation was as far as he needed to get in that prayer. Just as God was saving Jonah from the sea, He was also willing to save the Ninevites from destruction. He is the author of salvation and He preserves us to the point where we can respond to His offer of salvation. Jonah was now ready to do the bidding of God and carry God’s message to Nineveh because God had preserved him. Robert C. Hudson March 27, 2017