What Happened in the Stomach of the Fish
Bible passage: Jonah 2:1-4
“1. From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. 2. He said: "In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry. 3. You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. 4. I said, 'I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.'”
There is a word called ‘hormesis’. This is a term coined by German pharmacologist Schultz after discovering ‘a phenomenon in which small amounts of poison paradoxically cause yeast to multiply.’ Even small amounts of harmful substances can have good effects.
So, in a way, therapeutic drugs are called ‘microscopic amounts of poison’ and in fact, pharmacology is a study that deals with poisons. It is said that the word ‘hormesis’ began to be used in earnest after the results of a survey on the effects of space radiation exposure on Apollo astronauts were announced in 1970. It was expected that space radiation would cause great harm to the health of astronauts, but surprisingly, a new discovery was made that exposure to small amounts of radiation paradoxically enhances immunity and inhibits aging.
Even though it is a toxic substance, it kills people if used in large quantities, but if used in small amounts, it can have good effects. Jonah, who appears in the scripture, encounters the most despairing moment in his life. After disobeying God, he encounters a storm, is thrown into the sea by sailors, and ends up in the ‘belly of a fish.’ If you think about it from a human perspective, it seems like God is doing too much. No? How does God throw living people into the stormy sea to become food for fish? However, in modern terms, this is called the ‘Hormesis’ effect. Although the suffering that Jonah went through was a tremendous suffering when seen through our human eyes, God allowed Jonah to undergo the minimal and most appropriate suffering that could truly change him and receive new blessings. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.
And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” Today, focusing on the scripture, we will learn how God transformed Jonah, a man of great suffering, from the belly of the fish to a new man of blessing.
1. God made ‘the belly of the fish’ a place where Jonah seriously sought God. Verse 2 of the scripture says, “and he said, “I called out of my distress to the LORD, And He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; You heard my voice.” Jonah refers to the ‘belly of the fish’ as the ‘depth of Sheol.’ To the Jews, the word ‘Sheol’ means ‘a place where the dead go’ or ‘a dwelling place for dead spirits’ and is a word used to express the ‘state of death.’ So, when Jonah says that he is now in the ‘depth of Sheol’, he is in a ‘desperate state, almost as if he is dead.’
From a human perspective, it is a completely hopeless situation in which there is no hope at all, but from God's perspective, the 'depth of Sheol' that Jonah suffered from is actually preventing the fall and deterioration of Jonah and preventing Jonah from becoming decayed. It has become a place of God's blessing that allows one's faith to grow several levels further. So, what was Jonah’s biggest flaw, which was the spiritual reason why he encountered a storm and ended up in the belly of a fish? That is, Jonah was a person who listened half-heartedly and did not listen seriously to the word of God. In Jonah 1:1, it is said that the Word of God came to Jonah. How much do we long for the Word of God to come to us? But the Word of God came to Jonah. And in verse 2, this is the moment when God’s plan for Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, the most powerful country at the time, is about to be realized through Jonah.
What a happy and touching moment it was when God chose Jonah out of many people and gave him the word to carry out God’s incredible plan. However, Jonah ignores God's words and goes to Nineveh, which is the opposite direction of God's words, as he thought. Jonah 1:3 says, “But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port.” It means that he neglected the Word of God and did not listen carefully to it. If you talk to parents who are raising adolescent children, they say that the decisive bad attitude is that they listen to their parents half-heartedly and do not listen attentively.
When they heard this, they tell him, “If you do that, you’ll be in big trouble,” but when he ended up doing it, he said, “So, Mom told me not to do it!” and he raised his face and said, “When did you do that? I have never heard anything like that from you. ” There are several symptoms of adolescence. Get angry and rebel over trivial things. Unlike in the past, children do not listen well to their parents and talk back to them. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” they say, refusing to let their parents interfere. However, if you think about it carefully, there are believers who treat God the way adolescent children treat their parents. I think that the ‘Jonah’ that appears in the scripture is exactly like a believer who was in adolescence.
Jonah, who had been listening to God’s words half-heartedly, went down to the bottom of the boat to sleep and was caught by casting of lots and the people on the boat asked, “What kind of person are you?” 3 Jonah’s answer to this is in Jonah 1:9 where he said, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.” I think even God was surprised to hear this. Is this really the attitude of someone who fears God?! He boarded a ship to Tarshish without listening to God's words, but now he said to people, “I fear the LORD, ” so how can this happen? There are people who are Christians only in appearance, saying, ‘I am a person who believes in God, I am a person who fears God’, but their actions are the same as Jonah in Chapter 1. Do you really listen to the Word of God? Do you really want God to speak to you? Let us check it briefly.
1 Thessalonians Chapter 5 says, ‘Rejoice always.’ Are you always rejoicing? He told us to be thankful in all things, but are you really listening and always being thankful? He told us to pray without ceasing, but do you really value the Word of God and pray without ceasing? Or maybe, like Jonah, we are just listening to it in moderation and neglecting it. I heard that the Bible reading competition or campaign began last week. Are you listening carefully and reading the Bible? King Saul is a representative figure of adolescence in the Bible.
In 1 Samuel Chapter 15, Samuel tells King Saul, “Hear what the LORD says,” and tells him to attack Amalek. He says this in 1 Samuel 15:3 by saying, “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”4 Although the Word of God was clearly preached and proclaimed, King Saul listened to it half-heartedly. 1 Samuel 15:9 says, “But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were not willing to destroy them utterly; but everything despised and worthless, that they utterly destroyed.” In the end, King Saul repeatedly neglected God's words, did not listen carefully, and acted according to his own thoughts, and was abandoned by God and ended up facing a miserable life.
But, do you know why the ‘depth of Sheol’ was a blessing to Jonah? This is because Jonah’s attitude completely changed after experiencing the ‘depth of Sheol.’ Jonah 2:1 says, “From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God.” This is the first time the word ‘pray’ comes out. Verse 2 says, “He said: “In my distress I called to the LORD, and He answered me. From the depth of Sheol I called for help, and You listened to my cry.”” Verse 4 is even more surprising: It says, “So I said, ‘I have been expelled from Your sight. Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy temple.’” Here, the temple symbolically represents the place where God is present. What is Jonah’s attitude? Jonah, who ran away in the opposite direction and ignored God’s words, saying, ‘No matter what God says, I listen to it half-heartedly, and I don’t want to live by what He says,’ how has his attitude changed now?
He confesses that he relies on and trusts God so much and wants to look at the place where God is present. 5 Jonah 2:7 says, “While I was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, And my prayer came to You, Into Your holy temple. The most foolish person in the world would be the one who suffers all the hardships and cannot discover any of God's will there. I hope that if you go through suffering like Jonah's 'belly of the fish', you will discover God's will for you in it, and that you will abandon the attitude of half- heartedly listening to God's word and meet God seriously.
2. The stomach of the fish became a place to experience the spiritual space. In verse 2, Jonah described the belly of the fish as ‘the depth of Sheol’, a hellish place where the dead go, but in fact as indicated in Jonah 1:17, the big fish was prepared by Jehovah God Himself. “And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.” It says that God did everything. If a large fish living in the sea happened to eat Jonah, he might be chewed by its sharp teeth, and even if he was just swallowed without being chewed and entered the fish's stomach, the sticky, dirty foreign substances in its stomach would clog his nose, eyes, and ears. His mouth would have been blocked, and moreover, there would have been no air. How could you have lived there without breathing for not even an hour, but three days?
Martin Luther, who initiated the Reformation, also said that the story of Jonah, who went into the belly of a fish and came out alive, was a false and foolish fable and could only be viewed as a lie, and even said, ‘If it wasn’t written in the Bible, I wouldn’t believe it.’ However, the Bible does not deal with the stories of the physical world, but is a Book that deals with the words of the Spirit of God, who is spirit. Therefore, if you do not use physical thoughts, but think spiritually, you will believe everything that is said. The shepherd explained the spiritual world in detail through a sermon titled ‘Dimension and Space.’ God created at least four heavens, including the physical heaven and the spiritual heaven. Deuteronomy 10:14 says, “To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it.” The sky is called space, and each sky, or space, has a different dimension. Therefore, things that are impossible in the low-dimensional physical space can be possible in the high-dimensional spiritual space.
First Heaven is the sky, physical space in which we live and is a one-dimensional world. Second Heaven is a space in which there is the realm of darkness where the enemy devil resides, and the realm of light where the Garden of Eden is located. Although it belongs to the spirit, it is a space at an intermediate level between the spirit and the flesh, and thus belongs to the second dimension. Third Heaven is a space belonging to the third dimension where angels live and where we will go to live eternally after we die. Fourth Heaven is the space where God the Trinity resides. It is the fundamental space that existed from the beginning when God divided space into four, and is a space belonging to the fourth dimension or higher. This is a space where only God the Trinity can reside, where something can be created from nothing and where solid, liquid, and gas can be freely converted.
It is a space filled with the supreme power of creation. We are currently living in the first heaven, the physical space, which is one- dimensional, but there is a way to experience two-, three-, and four-dimensional spaces that are higher than the first dimension. Like Peter, who walked on the water with Jesus, you can experience the spiritual space created by people of whole spirit. The reason Jesus was able to walk on water was because He was clothed with a spiritual space. When Peter also became one with Jesus in faith and obeyed His words, he was able to walk on water while also riding on the spiritual space created by Jesus. Although we are in a one-dimensional physical space, if we can utilize the three- dimensional spiritual space, we can experience amazing things that happen in the three-dimensional space. The problem then is how we can gain spiritual space and utilize it.
If we enter into spirit and whole spirit, we will be able to utilize three-dimensional space. However, even if we have not yet entered into spirit and whole spirit, if we are filled with the Holy Spirit, who is God, we can wear three-dimensional space as long as we are filled with the Holy Spirit. Yes, you can. A deaconess from Headquarters church in Seoul, Korea was walking down the pedestrians’ sidewalk. But a truck was rushing towards the deaconess from the opposite direction. She didn't know if the truck broke down or the driver was asleep, but it happened so suddenly that the deaconess was so embarrassed that she only cried out to the Lord, “Lord! Lord!” In the meantime, the truck had to run over the deaconess and hit her, but miraculously, the truck stopped 1cm in front of her nose. It was a moment when a serious accident occurred without any movement, but a miracle happened.
It is said that at that moment, the deaconess's spiritual eyes opened, and an angel was seen standing between the deaconess and the truck, spreading his wings. Although it was inevitable that a major accident would occur in the physical space, a three-dimensional space was instantly created and they were able to be protected safely. One deacon's appendicitis burst and he developed peritonitis. The doctor said he needed to have surgery right away, but the deacon put off the surgery with faith and received the shepherd's prayer. His appendix had burst in his stomach, so it was a major surgery that required removing all of his internal organs, washing them, and putting them back in. After receiving the shepherd's prayer, he was cured with all the debris in his stomach disappearing. The deacon didn't vomit or pass out through feces, so where did the waste go?
The shepherd saw it with his spiritual eyes and explained it to us, saying that when he received the prayer of power, the door to the third heavenly space was opened and all the debris escaped there and disappeared. In the case of Jonah in the scripture, a four-dimensional space was applied. The four-dimensional space where something is created from nothing was put on the physical space called the 'belly of the fish', and the supreme power of God's creation was revealed. He was not harmed by the evil conditions in the stomach of the fish, and even if there were no air, it can create water in the stomach of the fish. He was able to survive for 3 days.
So, how was Jonah able to experience the fourth dimension in the hellish depth of Sheol? In verse 2, we can see that Jonah truly recognized the sovereignty of God and changed into a person who was conscious of God. So he says in Verse 2, “In my distress I called to the LORD, and He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; You heard my voice.” He cried out and prayed, and the belly of the fish was filled with the Holy Spirit. This is my first time seeing someone full of the Holy Spirit even in the belly of a fish. Looking at verse 9, the belly of the fish was full of gratitude. It says, “But I will sacrifice to You With the voice of thanksgiving, That which I have vowed I will pay. I will say, ‘Salvation is from the Lord.’” And in verse 4, we can see that he thoroughly repented. Verse 4 says, “So I said, ‘I have been expelled from Your sight. Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy temple.’” And he focused all his heart and thoughts on God and prayed. Verse 7 says, “While I was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, And my prayer rose to You, Into Your holy temple.” The saying that prayers reached the temple means that he thought of the ‘belly of the fish’ as a temple and prayed fervently. Just as Jonah was deep in the sea, in the belly of a fish, but prayed there while thinking of the temple in Jerusalem, the members of Nairobi Manmin Church also do not pray because they are too far away from home or because the situation is bad. Instead, they pray online wherever they are.
I urge you to please connect and participate in the daily Daniel Prayer Meeting at this church. If Jonah had a smart phone and an online connection at that time, he would have probably connected to the temple in Jerusalem and prayed while in the fish's stomach. However, since there was no Wi-Fi or a smart phone, he connected to the temple with his mind and prayed in the ‘belly of the fish.’ We love it because we can connect to the temple online. Lugari and Bumula Online local sanctuaries believers! Right now, you are worshiping as if you were worshiping in a temple that you are watching on YouTube, right? Although we live in a one-dimensional physical world ruled by the enemy devil, we should not live like people in this physical world, but like the people of heaven, a three-dimensional spiritual space. Do not live like the people of the first-dimensional world, being jealous, greedy, fighting, falling into trials and tribulations, getting sick, and not being able to do anything.
Instead, like the people of the third-dimensional heaven, like angels, love and serve one another, rejoice and be thankful. I hope that by praying, evangelizing, and living like this, you will fully enjoy the blessings, healing, and happiness that occur in the three-dimensional heavenly space that cannot be found in this world. Let's live on a higher level and say hello to the people next to us. Let's live on a high level. Let’s not live in one dimension, but in three dimensions. Americans and Europeans say they have a lot of money and live well, but they live one-dimensionally in the world of the flesh. Even after death, those people will either go to hell or, if they believe in Jesus, to paradise, or if they do well, they will go to the first kingdom of heaven. But what about us?
If we live spiritually without looking at the world on this earth and without compromising with the world, wouldn't we be able to go to the higher levels of the 2nd Kingdom and 3rd Kingdoms of heaven and even New Jerusalem? I hope that we all live on a high level and become high-level people who can freely experience the healing, blessings, and answers that occur in three-dimensional space. 3. The belly of fish became a place of blessing that brought Jonah back to a better place than before. The ‘belly of the fish’ that Jonah experienced in today’s scripture was, as Jonah said, ‘the depth of Sheol’. However, through the experience in the ‘belly of the fish,’ Jonah was able to return transformed into a better ‘Jonah’ than before. Verse 10 of the scripture says, “And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.” God did not allow Jonah to remain in the ‘belly of the fish,’ but commanded the fish to vomit him out. Jonah, who had been in the stomach of the fish for three days, was completely transformed into a spiritual person.
No matter how strong the digestive power of a large fish was, it could not digest Jonah, so it had no choice but to vomit him out on land. In Hebrews 11:38, we find the phrase ‘men of whom the world was not worthy’ appears. This is an expression used to refer to people who were tested by the enemy, the devil, who rules the world, by giving them unimaginable hardships and pain and making them betray their faith, but they did not abandon their faith and love for God until the end and were victorious. Jonah was able to come out alive after becoming a person that the ‘belly of the fish’ could not bear and was not worthy, and he became a better person than he was, and was able to successfully carry out his mission as a prophet of God. Job was also subjected to a tremendous test by the enemy devil. Even though he had sores all over his body, his children all died at once when his house collapsed, and his friends came to criticize and rebuke him without any basis instead of comforting me, and he eventually threw away the evil in his heart and trusted in God, so he was able to become a person whom the trials and pain could not handle. By becoming a person that the enemy devil cannot handle, and a disease cannot handle, he was able to return to the position of a better person of 'Double Blessing', receiving double the blessings.
A woman named Ruth in the Book of Ruth lost her husband at a young age and became a lonely, unhappy woman without children. However, when Ruth continued to believe in God and served her mother-in-law Naomi until the end, she became a woman whom loneliness and misery was not worthy and couldn’t bear her, and she was blessed to become an ancestor of Jesus, a much better person than she originally was. Are there any of you who are experiencing hardships like those in the belly of Jonah's fish? Like Jonah did in the ‘belly of the fish,’ we must recognize God’s sovereignty and change into people who are conscious of God. Like Jonah, we must cry out in prayer from the ‘belly of the fish’ and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Like Jonah, we too must be filled with gratitude even in the ‘belly of the fish.’ So, I hope that you will become a person that the belly of the fish cannot handle, a person that the world cannot handle, a person that trials and pain cannot handle, and a person that the enemy the devil cannot handle, and return to a better position of blessing than before. God leading Jonah into the belly of Sheol was not because he wanted to kill Jonah.
So, because the stomach of the fish could not kill Jonah, it was a harsh hardship, but the ‘belly of the fish’ actually made Jonah stronger. If we can overcome the trials and training that come our way, we will become stronger through trials and suffering. So, Apostle Paul, who successfully overcame numerous trials and refinements, says the following to the suffering believers in the Corinthian church. 2 Corinthians 4:8-10, “we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.” Who persecutes me? Who is trying to knock me down? Who brings me down? Are you being bullied from all directions right now? But we must remember; If I do not be discouraged, I will not be abandoned; if I do not knock myself down, I will not be destroyed; if I do not discourage myself, there will be no one to discourage me; even if I am pushed around on all sides, if I do not knock myself down, I will not fall.
Rather than becoming discouraged or falling down, you can actually stand up stronger than before. Psalm 119:71 says, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, That I may learn Your statutes.” Joseph’s brothers tried to overthrow him in Genesis by selling him as a slave, and General Potiphar's wife framed him and tried to kill him, but rather than falling, Joseph became the prime minister of Egypt and emerged as a stronger person. If we are in the power of Christ, everything makes us strong. Conclusion ‘Jonah’ in the scripture experienced a tremendous misfortune called ‘the belly of a fish, the hellish depth of Sheol’ that he would never forget.
If it were like the rest of the world, this would have become a lifelong stress disorder and trauma, causing convulsions at the sight of water, being unable to sleep due to nightmares, and being unable to lead a normal life due to fear and anxiety. However, even though Jonah encountered tremendous hardships called ‘the belly of the fish.’
First, it became a place to abandon the attitude of casually listening to the Word of God and neglecting it, to seriously seek God again, and to absolutely obey the Word of God.
Second, by making the ‘belly of the fish’ a place to experience the space of spirit.
Third, the ‘belly of the fish’ became a place of blessing that brought Jonah back to a better place than his original state. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Even if you are in a situation like 'Jonah's belly of the fish', do not neglect God's Words, but listen to Him seriously and experience the space of the spirit. And I pray in the name of the Lord that you will enter a much better place of blessing than before. - END -
