Jonah and Thanksgiving
And I think that is partly why Thanksgiving has become more and more a forgotten holiday, buried underneath Hallowe'en and Christmas. Thanksgiving has become forgotten because people have forgotten to give thanks. I think if you asked many people in the world what the point of the Thanksgiving Holiday is, they wouldn't be able to tell you. And if you told them it's about being thankful, they would probably respond: “What do we have to be thankful for?” And then they would give you a list of the problems in their lives, reasons they have not to be happy. The holiday itself--the stress and strain of the celebration and interpersonal friction which occur at family gatherings--might accentuate some of those complaints.
To human beings, grumbling comes more naturally than gratitude. And there can be some defense for grumbling--even in the best circumstances, people still have problems. We live in a fallen world where perfect happiness and perfect peace do not exist. And many people in the world do not even have the best circumstances. For everyone on earth, there are some good reasons to complain, and for some, there may seem to be many good reasons to complain. In light of that, can we still celebrate Thanksgiving? Can we still rejoice and be thankful, knowing all the problems of life?
Well, I believe we can. Because some of the greatest words of thanksgiving come out of the worst circumstances. We associate Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims who came to American in 1620. But the Pilgrims had far from ideal circumstances--living in the harsh conditions of a new world without proper food and faced with disease. During the Pilgrim's first year at Plymouth, over half of the entire group died. It was out of that scene of tragedy and desperation that the holiday of Thanksgiving was born. Or, go back further, to the New Testament. Some of the greatest words of thanksgiving and rejoicing come from the book of Philippians--a book written by a man under arrest, with a chain around one wrist, waiting a trail which might have led to his death. But if you want even further proof, there is one story in the Bible which gives it. The Bible contains a prayer of Thanksgiving which comes from the worst and most unlikely circumstance imaginable--a prayer given by a man inside internal organs of a large marine animal.
If you've been around the church for any length of time, you know the story of Jonah. Jonah was a prophet who ran away from God rather than carry a message that God commanded him. And so God pursued him and sent a storm which almost destroyed the ship on which Jonah rode. Jonah was thrown overboard into the sea where he was swallowed by a whale or large fish of some kind. And while he was in the belly of the whale he gave a prayer which we find in Jonah 2:2-9. “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. 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 passed over me. Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. 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. When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.”
When you think of Thanksgiving, you probably don't think of Jonah. Jonah didn't have a feast to eat--he was the feast that was being eaten. He wasn't with his friends and family; he was alone except for the whale. And yet it was here, deep underneath the murky waters of the sea, here in the darkness and stench and terror of a whale's stomach--it was here that Jonah prayed these words: “I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving.” In these dark and strange circumstances, Jonah offered praise and thanksgiving to God and promised to make a public testimony of his thanksgiving once he was able.
I believe if Jonah could be thankful, even in the belly of a whale, then we can be thankful, even in the worst circumstances, if we have the same source of thanksgiving which Jonah had--which was his faith in God. We can be thankful, even in the worst of circumstances, because God is real.
Jonah paints the picture of his situation in appropriately dark terms: he speaks of himself as being under the all the waters of the seas, standing at the gate of death, down in the depths of the earth at the bottom of mountains. He was far away from everyone and everything he knew, cut off from the world and everything in it. But one thing remained constant and certain to Jonah, and that was God. Note the picture in verse 7. Jonah felt his soul slipping away from him as if his life were oozing away in the darkness, but he remembered the Lord, and he prayed--and his prayer came into God's temple. No doubt as Jonah lay there in the whale's stomach, his mind went back to the temple in Jerusalem, the spiritual center of the Jewish religion. Even though he was far away from the temple, the temple was still standing and worship was still be offered there. But more importantly, the God worshipped there was still alive. He makes this point by contrast in verse 8, where he speaks of those that observe or worship “lying vanities,” most likely referring to false gods and idols. Those words can be literally translated: “worthlessnesses of nothingness.” (NET Bible) That strong language pictures just how useless and empty all false gods were. Perhaps Jonah remembered how the sailors on the ship had prayed to their various idols during the storm and how they had been utterly powerless save them. It is a terrible thing to put your faith and trust in lying vanities--but Jonah realized just how bad it was because there was something better. Those who trust in idols “forsake their own mercy,” he says. In other words, there is a true God out there, someone we can put our faith in--and if we put our faith in anything else, we are turning away from the true God.
Over and over again in this prayer, in different words, Jonah affirms his faith in Jehovah, in the living and true God. He might be lost and dying and far away from everything familiar, and yet he knew that God remained the same.
And we, too, can be thankful in the worst circumstances, because God is still alive. This fact is every bit as true today as it was in the days of Jonah. We mentioned before how Jonah's mind went to the temple of Jerusalem, as the spiritual center of his religion. But it wouldn't be that many years until that temple would be destroyed by the Babylonians--yet God still remained. It was from Rome to Philippi that Paul wrote: “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.” Paul died; Rome fell; Philippi became ruins--but the Lord is still alive. In the two thousand-some years since the last book of the Bible was written, the world has changed completely; our world would be unrecognizable to anyone from the first century. Everything has changed, but God is still alive. Someday this world is going to be destroyed and everything we know will melt in a fervent heat, but one thing will remain; Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
And that is why we can be thankful, why we can be happy, no matter what happens. No matter how bad things are; no matter what things are swept away; no matter where we are; there is one thing that remains constant. It may seem that situations are so dark that we have little to be thankful for, but we always will have at least one thing and that thing is the most important. We live in a fallen world, and no one is immune to tragedy. Terrible things happen in life. But for those of us who believe in God, we know that no matter how terrible things are, yet everything is not terrible. Tragedy and sorrow and suffering are real, but they are not all there is. No matter how dark the sky, there is one light always shining. Mountains and continents may collapse, but one thing will always be standing.
There may not seem to be much to be thankful for; it may look as if there are few reasons to be happy--but there is always at least one reason. When Paul and Silas were in Philippi, they were attacked by the mob, publicly flogged, and thrown into jail. They were only human beings; they didn't enjoy pain, humiliation, or privation anymore than anybody else would. And yet there in prison, they prayed and sang praises to God--because while the mob and government could take away many things from them, they could not take away God and their faith in Him and so, even there in prison, they still had one reason to rejoice and be thankful, just as Jonah did in the belly of the whale.
In John Bunyon's famous Pilgrim's Progress, he pictures a fire burning in a fireplace--a fire which continues to burn brightly, even though someone is constantly throwing water on it and trying to put it out. And the reason that fire continued to burn was that it had a secret supply of fuel being pumped into it. If we believe in God, we have a source of joy and thanksgiving which all the very real pain and suffering and injustice of life cannot put out.
But I realize someone might object: it's true that God is alive, no matter what--but what good does that do us? To know that one thing remains unchanged even when everything is changing--that's all well and good, but how does that help us? There's a novel in which a man, in the midst of a war and seemingly on the brink of death, looks up at the stars and remembers that they will still be shining long after he is dead, and that gives him a sense of peace. And that's all very well in its way, but the stars are also distant and impersonal. They cannot help us. We have a similar sense of peace and a greater one, because we know God will remain, even after the stars are gone--but we also have a greater and more personal realization as well. We know that we can be thankful because we can call on God.
This is, of course, very clear in Jonah's prayer because it is, well, a prayer. In verse 2 he 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.” Verse 7 repeats this thought: “When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.” In verse 8 he speaks of those who worship idols as forsaking “their own mercy.” That is to say, he realized that God could hear his prayer and have mercy on him--something no idol could do. It wasn't just that God was alive, out there somewhere. Jonah was able to call out to him in prayer and trust that God could hear him, that God would hear him.
There was no one else that Jonah could turn to. He was all alone except for the whale and, obviously, the whale wasn't going to listen to his cries. But he could call out to God and God was going to hear him. In verse 9 he makes a promise: “I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed.” That is a promise of things Jonah was going to do after he got out of the whale--go and offer a public sacrifice with thanksgiving. We might put it in today's language that he was going to go to church and give a testimony. Maybe along with this is the idea that he would carry out God's command and go to Ninevah. But the point is that these were things he could only do if he lived long enough to get out of the whale. And that could only be because he knew God had heard his prayer and was going to be able to deliver him, even from his dark and deep situation. Jonah was helpless, but he was not hopeless; he was lonely, but he wasn't alone. The fact that God was listening made all the difference in the world.
And we have access to that same hope today. God is still alive and He is still listening to the prayers of his people. Since God never changes, then what Jonah found in God we will still find in God--an open ear. And that means there is never a truly hopeless situation; there is never a dead end in our life; we never truly reach the end of our rope. Paul assured the people at Corinth that “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13b) No matter how bad things are, we have a way of escape, a secret passageway leading to a source of help, a line of communication with Almighty God.
I said before that no matter what happens, one thing remains standing, which is God--but the added truth is that we have a way to come to God. We have an anchor which goes down to the solid bedrock of world. God is not merely the unmoved and unchanging creator, but the loving, listening Father. That does not always mean that God will remove us from difficult circumstances or protect us from times of trouble. Those who have walked closest to God have experienced some of the worst troubles. But what it does mean is that we have someone to go to in the midst of our troubles; no matter where we are, we have someone with us. And that is a reason to be thankful.
In Philippians 4:6, Paul wrote: “Be careful [anxious] for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” Notice what Paul says--in everything, we can go to God and make our requests known unto him--and we do it with thanksgiving. We can be thankful that we have access to God; we can be thankful that God listens to our prayers; we can be thankful for the prayers that God has answered in the past. And that gives us the confidence in God's answers in the future. We have a line of communication with God, a relationship with God, where we can give him our gratitude and tell Him our needs. Having the possibility of calling upon God means that we are never alone, and therefore that we always have something to be thankful for, something to be happy about. And that leads naturally into the third point of Jonah's prayer: We can be thankful, because our life comes from God.
As Jonah prayed, he was very aware of his dependence on God. On one hand, it was God who had brought him into his place of trouble and danger. In verse 3 he says: “For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas.” If you go back to Jonah chapter 1, it is clear that God was at work in the story of Jonah, bringing Jonah into the position where he was now, so that he would be forced to face the reality of his own actions. But on the other hand, Joanh also realized that God had protected him. In verse 6, Jonah speaks of how he was trapped down in the very depths of the earth, and then he adds: “Yet hast thou brough up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.” He was thrown into the ocean during a storm, far from shore or any place of safety. He ought to have died. He had been devoured by a large animal. That should have been the end of Jonah. And yet here he was, alive. That was proof that God was working in his life.
Jonah repeats this thought in the final words of his prayer in verse 9: “Salvation is of the LORD.” Jonah knew that it was by God's help that he had been saved out of the sea and kept safe. And he knew that if he was saved from the whale and brought back safely to the land, it would only be through God's help. He realized that he was fully dependent on God for his life. And this is actually ironic if you think about the story of Jonah. The main thing we know about Jonah is that he ran away from God. In some mad way, he tried to get as far away from God as he could. By getting on the ship, he was saying that he thought he could live without God, could somehow escape God's notice. But now he admits that his life is entirely dependent on God, and whether he lived or died was in God's hands. Salvation, deliverance was of the Lord. And that was why he was thankful, why he promised to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Because he realized that his life came from God and so it was right and proper that he give thanks to God for that life.
And that is, in the end, the reason why we celebrate Thanksgiving--because we realize that our life comes from God. Being thankful does not merely mean being happy; it does not mean looking for the good in everything and seeing the glass as half full. If we give thanks, that means we give thanks to something or someone. We give thanks to God because we recognize that our life comes from God. The Book of Lamentations was written in a very dark time in the history of the Jews, and it is a song of sadness and regret for all the troubles that the land was experiencing, but in the midst of it Jeremiah gave this proclamation: “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:21-23) He realized that they were dependent on God and his mercies and so he was thankful.
Say you were desperately in need of money and you were walking down the street and found a couple big bills lying in the gutter, money which (after taking the proper precautions to try to find the rightful owner) you were able to keep to meet your needs--naturally, you would be happy. But then, imagine instead that a friend or a family member, knowing your need, had consciously and deliberately chosen to give you money as a gift to help in your time of need. In both cases, you end up with money and, in both cases, you would be happy--but in the second case you have something else as well, you have gratitude, gratitude that someone would chose to help you. As Christians, we realize that the good things that happen to us in life aren't mere accidents, aren't merely good luck, but are blessings that come from God. And that is why we can be thankful. Not merely happy, but thankful to God for the blessings he gives us. We can be thankful, whether the glass is half empty or half full because we believe that God is the one who filled the glass. We do not have to make the best of things, because we know that God is making the best of things for us. And that is why we can be thankful, even when things are not going well, even in the worst of situations. Because even the bad things that happen in life may be blessings which come from God.
We see this very clearly in the story of Jonah. Being in a storm, drowning in the sea, and being swallowed by a whale are very bad things. But they were gifts from God. God could have let Jonah escape and go to Tarshish and live out a peaceful life and die and go to Hell--God didn't need Jonah. But instead, God sent all that trouble into Jonah's life in order to get Jonah's attention, to try to bring him to a point of repentance. And at this point, at least, Jonah understood that and so was thankful. Of course, it not always (or even usually) as clear to us why bad things happen to us as it was to Jonah. But because we believe that God is in control of our life, we know there is some reason and so can be thankful. Paul told the Ephesians to walk in wisdom, “giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 5:20) Obviously giving thanks for all things does not mean that all things are good. There are many things in life which are not good, things which are bad or even evil, things which never should have existed. We cannot justify all things, we cannot accept all things, but we can give thanks for all things--for one reason and one reason only: because we know that God in His providence is working all things together for good, that God allowed those things to happen for some reason.
This is the moral of the book of Job. Job experienced great suffering and out of it, he cried to God, asking why it had happened. And when God appeared, He did not answer Job's question, at least not at that time. What God did was show Job who He was, and when Job realized just who God was, he was content.
And that's the important point to remember. When we give thanks to God, we build a relationship with God. Gratitude is a very personal thing. I mentioned before that verse from Philippians in which Paul says to make our requests known with thanksgiving. I've often wondered why God asks us to make our requests known to Him, since He obviously knows what we need better than we do. And God could simply give us everything we need without our asking and sometimes He does. But I think the reason why God commanded us to come to Him in prayer is because that is the way we build a relationship with Him. It is when we realize that everything we need comes from God that we make our requests with thanksgiving. It is a personal relationship with God in which we can ask for things and have gratitude for blessings received. Those who do not believe in God can be happy and can enjoy the good things of life, but they don't know where they come from and so their pleasure goes no where. One writer said that the worst moment for an atheist is when they feel thankful and have no one to thank. But as Christians, we realize that our life and all the good that we enjoy comes from God and so we can go to him in thanksgiving.
Jonah prayed out of the belly of the whale and God his prayer and had the whale spit him out on dry land. Jonah's testimony could have been that of David in Psalms 34:6: “This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and save him out of all his troubles.” Jonah had plenty of reason to be thankful and he had made a vow to God to make a sacrifice with the voice of thanksgiving. Yet, as we know, we find him a couple of chapters later sitting on the hillside, complaining and grumbling to God. Sadly, that is an accurate picture of human nature. Grumbling comes more naturally to us that gratitude.
And it is easy to remember all the reasons we have to grumble, all the problems and troubles we have. They surround us every day, perhaps every moment. And that is why it is good, every once and a while, to set apart one day to remember--to remember God, to remember that no matter how bad things are, God is still there, that we can call upon God, and that God is in control of our lives--and that therefore we always have something to be thankful for and we will always have Someone to be thankful to. Jonah's final realization was that salvation, deliverance, really, all of life, was of the Lord. And if we remember that, we can be thankful, even if we find ourselves in as dark and desperate a place as the belly of a whale.
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