Jonah’s attempt to run from God was futile.  On a ship amid the Mediterranean Sea, while attempting to escape the command to preach to the Ninevites, he was forced to answer to God for his transgression.  God brought forth a storm that put the ship he was on in a dire situation (Jonah 1:4).  The crew eventually discovered that Jonah was the cause of their trouble and, as a last resort, cast him into the sea (vers. 1-16).  The time had come for Jonah to pay for his transgression.

Jonah 1:17 (ESV)
¹⁷   And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Sin always comes with a price.  While God is a sparing God, He cannot ignore sin.  His righteousness will not allow it (1 John 1:5-6).  Jonah discovered this the hard way.

How do we know that this account of Jonah is true?  After all, some liberal scholars interpret it as being metaphoric.  We know that this story is factual because Jesus referred to it as such.

Matthew 12:40 (NKJV)
⁴⁰  For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

For Christians, this settles the issue.  Jonah was literally swallowed by a great fish.  What kind of fish we do not know, but it was a harrowing experience for him, bringing to his mind thoughts of Sheol.

Jonah 2:1-2 (ESV)
¹  Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, ²  saying, “I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.

Sheol refers to the unseen realm of the dead.  It is not surprising that this ordeal caused Jonah to think of Sheol.  While this experience of Jonah’s first foreshadows the time that our Savior spent in “in the heart of the earth,” it also serves as a reminder that there is a price to pay for sin.

Sheol, or its equivalent, Hades, is the temporary price that one pays today for dying in unrepentant sin.  In Luke 16 we read of a man who lived in great comfort in this world.  He was rich in worldly goods but failed to acknowledge God in his life.  When he died, he went to Hades and was in torment (Luke 16:19-31).  For the one that dies in sin today, it gets worse.  In the end, death and Hades will be cast into the lake of fire and the torment will turn from temporary to eternal (Revelation 20:14).

Like Jonah, we cannot run from God.  Our sins will find us out and if we die in them, we will pay the price.  Unlike Jonah, the price we will pay will be eternal.  Jonah was able to repent while in the belly of the great fish (Jonah 2:3-10); and while there is a lesson we can learn from that on the importance of repentance, our repentance must precede going to the Hadean realm.  Once we die in sin, there is no passing from torment to paradise (Luke 16:24-26).  There is always a price to pay for sin.  Let us not be like Jonah and learn this lesson the hard way.

As you wind down for the night, think about these things.