Uh, this morning's text comes from Jonah. I'm going to begin in verse 17 of chapter one, and then we're going to read the entirety of chapter two, and then we'll be halfway through Jonah. And that's really surprising, that we're already halfway through a book where it took us two years for Luke and here we are almost halfway through Jonah, before we look at Jonah and read it and consider it, let's go to the Lord again in prayer. Let's pray, Father. We, thank you that you are merciful.
We, thank you that why we were yet sinners. You would send Christ to die for us.
And as we turn to this book of Jonah, I pray that you will open up our blind eyes to behold Christ all the more, to see how he has sunk down into the depth of the grave, not because of his sin, but for ours, but is risen, and that is our hope. Lord, I pray that you will soften our heart and hearts, that we will receive the truths of your word, that we will receive Christ this day by faith.
Lord, bless your people. Be merciful. We pray for Christ's sake. Amen, people of God, hear God's word for us this morning from Jonah, beginning in chapter one, verse 17, reading through the second chapter, 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. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God, from the belly of the fish, 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, for you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me. All your waves and your bellows passed over me.
Then I said, I am driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look upon your holy temple. The waters enclosed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped about my head and the roots of the mountains I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever, yet you brought up my life from the pit.
O Lord, my God, when my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love, but I, with the voice of Thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed, I will pay Salvation belongs to the Lord, and the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land. He who has ears let him hear the Word of God. Please be seated if you've been tracking so far, where we are in Jonah. Jonah has been in spiritual decline, and that was represented in what Jonah has been doing physically.
He the Word of God came to Jonah. He runs away from the presence of God, and he goes down to Joppa, and then he goes further down into the boat.
And it's all pointing us to Jonah's spiritual reality. He is physically going down, but spiritually, he is spiraling down, getting lower and lower and lower, and where our text finds us is. He is now even lower in the sea, sinking down to its very pits as he's been tossed into the water.
He has rejected the Word of God.
He has sought to no longer be in the presence of God, and he's also left the people of God. He's left Israel. He doesn't want the people of God to remind him what he should be doing as a prophet of God. So he's left the fellowship of the saints, and he isn't praying, and he's refusing to pray, even when others are encouraging him to pray, who don't even love God, and yet he refuses to do so. And as we consider Jonah again, I want us to not only consider Jonah, but consider our own lives and consider our own hearts. And I also might wonder if you might find yourself this morning in a sort of spiritual decline, maybe not necessarily rejecting God's word outright, but not really seeking it out, not seeking to meditate on it. Maybe you're here, but you're not just you're going to come and go and what's what's for lunch and what's going on, but to receive it and rest on God's Word.
Maybe not necessarily rejecting prayer and refusing I'm never going to pray to that God, but I'm not really praying, either I'm not really desiring to pray or to seek the Lord, and maybe not necessarily rejecting God's presence or just trying to run away or get on a boat from the presence of God, but I also haven't made gathering with God's people and being in his presence my first priority. When other important things come up in my life, I kind of wander over there.
Is it possible, like Jonah, you might have found yourself in a spiritual comfort zone. I think that's where Jonah was. He was in very much a spiritual comfort zone. As a prophet of God, he's he's willing to be obedient to God in certain areas of his life. Go after you remember, Jonah was called to go to the king, to his own people, and give a good message. And it's recorded in the Book of Kings.
He has no problem doing that.
I'll go to my own people, that's comfortable, and I'll give a good message. I'm happy to do that, but as soon as God is testing him to now go outside of his spiritual comfort zone into the world, if you will, even to his enemies and tell them the word of God Jonah, rather die than be obedient. And remember, the last time we looked at Jonah, he's somewhat apathetically, is just toss me into the sea. I'd rather be in there than go to Nineveh and be obedient.
I'll do anything for love. I'll do anything for God, right? But I won't do that. And that's what is happening in the Jonah. And sometimes I think that's true about our own lives. We say I love God. There's so much I will do about God, but are there things in our lives where we think I just won't do that?
Thankfully, our patient, long suffering and full of steadfast love God not only awakens Jonah, but my hope for us that awakens us this morning and awakens not only Jonah, but I pray again, wakens us up this morning to see the peril of disobedience, to see the peril of sin in our lives and what our sins deserve, and wakens us up to The presence of God, not only that we might see him, but long for him, and long to be where he is, and then, out of great gratitude, be used for his plans. So we have peril presence and plans.
It's very similar to even what we just confess in the Heidelberg of that guilt, grace and gratitude. But I'm going to put to you throughout that I don't think maybe that Jonah actually sees his guilt like I really hope that Jonah would see his guilt. I think that's sometimes a picture of us, and I'll talk more about that. There are times in our lives where I think we can repent and we can pray and we can say the right things, but it's actually not sinking down into our hearts like we ought to. And I think that's actually I want Jonah to be, maybe more repentant than he is, but we'll see God working in his heart, like I said, as I pray that God will work in our hearts. Now verse 17, before we get into Jonah's prayer, it says, 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. This is the one verse that everyone knows about Jonah. That's it. Verse 17. This is the verse, right? This is the verse that people think about when they think of Jonah. And as one professor told me, it's newsworthy because it's unusual.
A man eating a fish, not too exciting.
A fish eating a man that's exciting, right? That's newsworthy and well, what kind of fish was it? What could do such a thing? We don't know. It doesn't tell us. But what we do know is that this is indeed a miracle. God is preserving Jonah, somehow giving him oxygen, somehow protecting him from fluids in a stomach. We also know as that theologian John Calvin said that God is going to use this fish, almost like a hospital for Jonah to come into to be spiritually healed and then be recommissioned into the service of God.
So it's almost like Jonah is going into the womb again to be reborn, if you will.
And so we come to Jonah's prayer in verse one and two. Here, in chapter two, Jonah had to be put in a situation of this great peril. God put him in this situation where his life is in danger, and it's to wake him up, not only to his physical danger, but to the spiritual realities that are around him. It says, I called out to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me out of the belly of shield. I cried.
You heard my voice.
He wasn't praying before, but he's praying now. And isn't that often the case when difficulties happen, but when when you see things on the news or real tragedies, you'll say, Well, you know our our hearts and prayers are going out. It's in distress that people find themselves in prayer. And that certainly has happened in the case here in Jonah, his distress in this peril has got him praying. We know. We don't know exactly what it's like to be in a belly of a fish, but he can pray.
He's praying now and verse 17, as we just looked at right before chapter two is short, but it must have felt like an eternity for Jonah as he's sinking further and further down into the water before this fish swallows him, the panic of the storm had no effect on him, neither did the sea. But now Jonah is in the sea, and he feels that distress.
And it's then that the Lord is awakening up, awakening Jonah to his danger, and Jonah also begins to see that God is over these events, that these are not just random occurrences. Verse three, for you, cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas.
Now, did the sailors cast Jonah into the sea?
Or God?
Yes, right, and God often, and ordinarily accomplish His plans through ordinary means. God's plans. This was God's plan. God ordained it for this to occur, but God used these sailors to cast Jonah into the heart of the sea so that God might deal with Jonah's heart. And he goes on in verse five, the water is closing over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped about my head, at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever, yet you brought up my life from the pit.
O Lord my God, Jonah's sinking in the depths of the sea are to direct him and again to us to what our sins deserve. Jonah rightly deserved to be cast into the sea for his rebellion against God. And as the Scriptures say, The wages of sin is death, and that's what the ocean and the seas represent in this historical account, sinking further and further down into sin, to death. And that's what Jonah deserves. That's what we deserve for, often our rebellion against God, and the hope that God is seeking to awaken in Jonah is not to just have Jonah be free from his circumstances of sinking down into physical water, but to be free from his sin. Don't just free me from the water, but free me from my rebellion. Free me from myself. I got what I wanted. I wanted to be free from the presence of God, and now I've been hurled away.
That's what I would hope that Jonah would be saying, God, this physical reality that you had me in was to awaken me to my spiritual realities. I deserve death, but you not only save me physically, but I really need to see my heart. I need to see my rebellion against you, that I was in my spiritual comfort zone and I just wanted to do what I wanted to do and not follow your will. But I'm not entirely sure that that is what Jonah is being awoken to.
There's really no acknowledgement so far of a personal sin. He says he was driven away from God, but it doesn't say in here that I was the one that ran away. If you see, this is very different than like a psalm 51 where David says, I sinned against you, and I deserve to be thrown into the pit. I deserve to be sinking down. I didn't deserve to be saved. And see, there's no acknowledgement of Jonah's personal response.
Ability and what God has been doing so far. I want him to but I don't see it.
And like Jonah, I think there we can feel that we too have made bad choices in life, and sometimes those bad choices bring us to difficult places and to peril and to distress. You ever give in to sin in a various way or lust or lies or anger or covetousness, and it's brought you into some difficulty?
Well, God and His fatherly love sometimes distresses us, and none of us like to be distressed.
I'm sure Jonah wasn't loving being in the belly of a fish.
Fish smell bad enough from the outside, I can't imagine what they smell like from the inside, but God's purpose was not to destroy Jonah.
God's not cruel. God's not vindictive like we are.
God's purpose was to pursue Jonah, to to love Jonah, to, in some ways, give him a heavenly spanking that he might turn from his sin and turn to the Lord.
God distresses his people for the purposes of our redemption and our salvation, that God moves heaven and earth to accomplish his purposes and His will in our lives. And sometimes those things in our lives are deserving, like Jonah, but sometimes things happen in our lives that are distressing, like a job, and we can't necessarily connect it to something particularly we that we do, but in all of the circumstances and distress and difficulties in our lives, do you know what God's will for you is your sanctification? He purposely tells us that. It directly tells us that whatever distress you're feeling in your life, it's that you might turn and look away, not from your circumstances and and to just get away from those, but to turn to the Lord in some way, to see that this world isn't our home, to shake some kind of idol from our hand, in some way, to rest In the sovereignty of God more to look to Christ more. And the point so far is that there really are no accidents in life. He's ruling over it all, even, as we confessed again in the Heidelberg, not even a hair can fall from our head. And that should give us comfort that he's over it all.
And you're here today, and you're hearing this message, not out of coincidence, but for a very particular reason, that you too might repent of your sin and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.
That's why you're here to put off the old and to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. That's God's will for our lives, and that was God's will for Jonah.
So God is wakening Jonah up to his peril, but also restoring Jonah to a desire for his presence. God awakens Jonah, and it says in verse four, then I said, I'm driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.
And then verse seven, when my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to you in your holy temple.
Now if you look at this text in chapter two, what's very interesting about this prayer that if you had taken this prayer out of the book of Jonah, and I just like printed it in the bulletin, and I didn't give you any scripture references of where it's from, and I would ask, where do you think that this particular text is found? I think many of you might be tempted to say, Well, this sounds, I don't know exactly which one, but it sounds like a psalm, and it does, right? It very much sounds like a psalm.
And in many ways, it's just like a psalm.
It's a bunch of psalms that Jonah has pushed together and is echoing that I cried out to the Lord is echoing. Psalm 120 you cast me into the deep. Yes, it happened to him physically.
But that's also a quote from Psalm 88 being overwhelmed with waves is in Psalm 42 being cut off from the sight of God. Psalm 31 and I love that, and I think that's a good example for us to pray is to pray God's words back to him.
I want to pray more like this and and when I'm in distress and when I'm in peril, i Lord help the words of God to come back to me that I might pray.
It's a song of deliverance. He was in distress, and the Lord has saved him.
From the pit, which is interesting, because he he's still in the fish, right? He hasn't been spit out on the land yet, but he's thanking God at least I'm not in the water. At least I'm not sinking in the pit. I think he's trusting that Lord is going to to save him and spit him back out on the land.
God had rescued him from Sheol, which is the place of the dead.
And this is also echoing Psalm 139 where it talks about how even in the place of the dead, it's not a place that's hidden from God. God's even over the living and also the dead. And in verse four and seven, as we read, Jonah, mentions the temple. Jonah is far from the temple, and what's significant about the temple? Why does he mention the temple? Well, there's a lot of things significant about the temple, but what I think Jonah has in mind, what's significant about the temple is this is where God promised he would be. This is where God's presence would be, specifically at the temple. And in the Old Testament days, if he wanted to be where God was, is that's you, where you went to the temple, where he was in the Holy of Holies. And that's where people would go to to worship God. And Jonah is longing to to bring me back into the presence of God. I want to be back. I don't want to run anymore. I want to be home. I want to be amongst the people of God. I long to see the temple of God.
And I don't know if this is what Jonah has in mind, but the temple was also significant, because the temple is also where the sacrifices happened. You remember the sacrifices were for the atonement for sin.
That were you on. You had a lamb that would be slain, and his blood would be poured out, and the blood of the lamb would would be sprinkled on the mercy seat, and so the people's sins would be washed away, and they they wouldn't bear them. It was put on the lamb.
As you know, that's all pointing us to Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, and then Jonah is recommissioned, and God purposes him again for his plans. In verse eight and nine, those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I, with the voice of Thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay Salvation belongs to the Lord. We see Jonah recommitting himself he was in distress, God saved him and says, Alright, God, I'll obey your will. I think that's what's going on here in the text. And everything he is saying is true in this text. But it seems to me, he still sees the sailors and maybe even the Ninevites as the idolaters and not himself.
He contrasts himself with those who pursue vain idols.
And that's the irony that although he was asleep and he in the boat, and he didn't see it, but the it was the sailors who were praying and offering sacrifices and vowing to God, and he wasn't. He was asleep.
Jonah is spot on when he says that salvation belongs to the Lord. But I also, I don't think he understands that salvation not only can come to him. He was a member of Israel, a prophet of God, but even to the Ninevites or even to the sailors.
He just thinks that God's grace belongs to the members of the the covenant community, who who are right in their theology, who are right in their good profession.
I feel like Jonah in this text is like the unmerciful servant in the parable that Jesus told, he is joyful and thankful that his debts have been forgiven.
But then he will go around and we'll see in the next text, and he will grasp his other debtor and anger. See, I don't know that he's grasping the enormity of his own debt and the love that has been shown to him.
Jonah has changed. I believe that, and God's waking him up, but I think not as fully as I would have hoped, and I think that's also the case for us.
I think sometimes God shows us our sins, and maybe you even feel repentant to a degree. But ever felt like looking back, I didn't quite understand it. I didn't maybe, fully hate my sin like I ought to hate it. I think Jonah.
A picture of us in that way, God awakening us, but the process of sanctification, of of more and more and more, and that is to be a picture of our life, every day, repenting, every day, praying and seeking the Lord, every day, repentance and faith, because I don't yet understand my sin before a holy, holy, holy God.
And I can be stingy with the grace I want, grace for me. And I can make my sins minimal and but I'm very good at making other people's sins great and large and no grace but justice for them. I'm very good at that.
We're good at that. Jonah's good at that, and I think that's what he's doing here.
We have no way, shape or form deserve the salvation of God.
We haven't married it. We haven't earned it, but the Lord gives it to us freely, as Ephesians two, eight and nine reminds us, For by grace, you have been saved through faith.
And this is not of yourselves.
It is a gift of God, not of works, so that no man can boast.
Not even Jonah's cry of deliverance is an ability to boast in the Lord isn't waiting here in the text to just see what Jonah is going to do as he's sinking down into the sea and thinking, Jonah, would you, if you would, I will send that fish. No, the Lord rescues and saves him.
Salvations of the Lord. It's not of Jonah in any way. Jonah doesn't deserve it in any way, and neither do we. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
And we must do that, but remembering that our ability to do that, it's God's work in our hearts. God is working in Jonah's heart that he will cry, that he will cry out to the Lord. It's God alone who saves, not of us.
And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah up upon the dry land. And I'll end with this is, you know, I sometimes think that as Christians, if we just discard some of these miracles, especially that book like Jonah, right? Isn't this ridiculous? If we just discard these miracles Jesus feeding the 5000 I mean, right? They just had it stored in the cave somewhere, and then it came out and just appeared like through or the parting of the Red Sea. It must have been some kind of wind, shallow part of the water, fish eating a man and living. If we just disregard these miracles, then we can have more credibility in our witness, right?
Well, let us not be embarrassed.
But remember that is these miracles. That's our hope.
Because if we take away Jonah and being spewed out of out onto the beach, we also take away the miracle of Jesus standing triumphantly outside of his tomb. And you may remember that Jesus actually spoke about Jonah when we were in the book of Luke in chapter 11. Jesus said this generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign for the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. And what's Jesus saying there? He's saying, just like Jonah, that he would be buried.
He would be not buried alive. He would be crucified dead and then buried that Jesus too would find himself in the depths of the grave, banished from the sight of God in Sheol. Jesus wasn't crucified and dead and buried because he disobeyed.
He was without guilt. He was innocent. He is without sin, the spotless Lamb of God, but He hung on the cross and was laid in the tomb for our sins died for people who have failed to obey God's word. Died for people who failed in obedience to God, for idolaters and at the cross, there's no miraculous rescue to get Jesus out of and down from the cross at the last moment he is driven from the Father's presence, when all he knew his entire life was the father's perfect fellowship, and he was left for dead and experienced the full weight of God's wrath and curse on sin.
His body was.
Laid in a dark and lonely tomb for three days and two nights, and it appeared as if the tomb would keep him barred in forever.
But why have we gathered this day? Why are we even here? What are we doing? It's because we celebrate and we rejoice that Jesus Christ has burst forth from the tomb, from death, and is risen, and God's justice has been satisfied in Christ, who took away our sin upon himself that we might have life.
He took our punishment and our penalty and sunk down to the deepest parts of hell that you and I, by faith in Christ, might have life and we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus every single Sunday, because that is our hope. His resurrection is our resurrection. Jesus standing on the shores of Heaven is our hope that when we die, we too will stand on the shores of heaven.
You know, one day, Jesus will return, and there will be judgment on the living and the dead, and some of us will be alive still, maybe, maybe not us here, there will be people who are alive, and they'll be in distress. Most of us will be in the depths of the grave, but death will have no power on us because it had no power on him, and he will call us home.
That's our hope. This whole thing of Jonah is always pointing us to Christ, right?
Isn't that what the Scriptures are all about? It's always about Christ, and even Jonah does this prayer, and it's not perfect, but Jesus is perfect, and Jesus saves imperfect people, and all we must do is call upon the name of the Lord and be saved. And the Lord might still put us in difficult circumstances. He will do that, but it's all that you might be driven to the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved from your spiritual peril, that you might long for more of His presence and even now be used for the purposes of his plans and going out into all the world and proclaiming the gospel to all who will listen.
Salvation is from the Lord. So let us come to him today in faith and with thankfulness.
Let's pray, Father, we thank you for giving us your Word.
Lord. I pray that you would awaken us up to our sin more.
I think we often are in a slumber over it.
We get in a spiritual comfort zone. And Lord, I pray that you will help us to repent, to long, to be more in your presence, to seek you and the fellowship of believers.
Lord, I pray that you will use us for your will, that we will not reject it, but follow you, Lord, we thank you that you're merciful to us. And it's in Jesus' name we pray, Amen.