04 | Jonah: Mercy in the Deep (2/2)

Ps. Steven R. Martins, founding pastor at Sevilla Chapel in St. Catharines, walks us through the book of Jonah with an exposition of Jonah 2:5-10.

Transcript

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The sermon series on the Book of Jonah by founding pastor Stephen R. Martins is brought to you by Sibila Chapel.

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I do wish I had the energy these children have. Coffee is the best I can do to match up to it. Well, good morning, grace and peace to dear brothers and sisters. I don't see anyone visiting for the first time this morning, so you all know my name, but it is a privilege to be able to be here to continue to preach the word of God unto you, unto Sevilla Chapel. This morning we're returning to our study of the book of Jonah. And if you recall, based on what we had covered thus far, Jonah is one of the minor prophets in the Old Testament. He is, in fact, one of twelve. And as we've seen, his ministry took place during the reign of King Jeroboam II, and was also a contemporary of the prophet Amos. And from what we can gather, it appears that Jonah was a prophet who was very much willing to proclaim favorable things unto Israel, but not so much the unfavorable. Because while he prophesied of conquered territories to the north of the northern kingdom of Israel, in which God would give these lands to Israel, God spoke through another prophet, Amos. He rose Amos to speak to the king concerning that very same territory being lost after its conquest because of Israel's unrepentant sin. And you might ask yourself, could God not have also spoken through Jonah as well? Jonah gave the first prophecy, that is recorded in Kings. Could it not have also been from Jonah that this warning of judgment would have also come? Was it not Jonah who first prophesied to King Jeroboam II? Well, could it have been? We're not really told, the scripture doesn't give us very much details, and we can only speculate. Yet our speculations wouldn't be unfounded. They're based on Jonah's story here in this book. And this book informs us that Jonah was sent to proclaim judgment to the great city of Nineveh, and that it really is the central focal point in context of the book of Jonah. And this is one of the great ancient cities of the world, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, in fact, one of the great wonders of the world at the time. And Jonah decided instead to turn his heel in the opposite direction and flee as far away as possible. So, whereas in the beginning he would have been very happy to give this favorable news to King Jeroboam II that God was going to give them the northern territories. And then he receives this message of judgment. You would have thought that he would have been happy to deliver this message of judgment to Nineveh, considering that Nineveh was amongst God's enemies, and yet he flees away as far as possible, because he knew that a message of judgment also meant an opportunity to repent and to find mercy. And why grant God's enemies an opportunity for mercy? Especially given the fact that God was raising up Assyria to judge the northern kingdom of Israel for their unrepentant sin. No, Jonah wanted no part of it, so he reasoned in his heart, and therefore he decided to leave. Well, if God spoke to the prophet Amos concerning the loss of the northern territory that Israel had conquered, you must have thought, given that this was a message that was not in any way favorable to the people of northern Israel, surely then God could have sent another prophet to Nineveh. And that was Jonah's reasoning. Surely God could raise up perhaps Amos, maybe God could send Amos, perhaps he could send some other prophet to that great city known for its wondrous architecture, but also for the blood that flowed through its streets. Because Nineveh was known for being a violent and brutal people. They were known throughout the ancient world for their blood-grueling cruelty. Well, we can only surmise based on the information given to us in the inspired text, but I think there's enough here to say that Jonah was anything but a humble and willing servant. God says, Go, and he says, No, I'm going the other way. And that was his decision, and that was the direction in which he went. He was willing only when it was convenient for him. And yet, in spite of this reluctance, we see here God extending his mercy, because it was God who called Jonah to be his prophet. You see, Jonah did not appoint himself a prophet of God. No one really in those days could appoint themselves a prophet of God. It was God who would appoint men to be his prophets, to be his spokespersons. And God's purposes would be fulfilled regardless of what man might attempt to thwart them. Only in this case, God would not allow Jonah to escape. God will accomplish all his holy will, and Jonah is a part of it. What happened thus far, so we can understand the context of where we are in the text this morning. The text tells us that he fled to Tarshesh, chapter 1, verse 3. But before making any significant progress, a great tempest arose upon the sea, sent by the Lord himself, verse 4. And when it became clear that Jonah was the culprit, in verse 7, the pagan sailors, much to their regret, because they didn't want to throw a man overboard, were compelled to throw Jonah overboard into the sea in order to save themselves. We see the chapter 1, verses 11 to 12. And upon witnessing the power and the glory and the majesty of God and their deliverance from the waves and the wind, these pagan sailors came to saving faith in chapter 1, verse 16. And as the text tells us, they offered sacrifices unto God and they made vows, the latter of which we could reasonably deduce as the forsaking of their pagan false gods and their confession of their total loyalty and servitude to the one true God of Israel. But as this took place upon the ship, Jonah himself was drowning. And when he believed that all was lost, a great fish, a dagal, as it is in Hebrew, swallowed him up. And what I previously mentioned was that this could not literally have been a great fish in the modern sense, nor a whale, because the Hebrew fails to identify it as such. And a whale also realistically could not actually accomplish this task due to the limitations of its throat, the size of its stomach, its feeding habits, etc. It must have been something truly great and wondrous. More literally understood from the Hebrew, it's a great sea creature. And from the belly of this dagadal, Jonah offers up a psalm of thanksgiving, which is what we find here in chapter 2. The last time I was here at this pulpit, I exposited verses 1 to 4 of the second chapter of this psalm of Jonah, the psalm of thanksgiving. And this morning we're going to work through the remainder of this second chapter, the rest of Jonah's Psalm, and then that final verse which transitions us back into that narrative. Now, prior to proceeding, I want us to remember that the book of Jonah is more about the prophet Jonah himself than about the specific word that God had given him, especially when compared to the writings of the other minor prophets. But even when man is the focal point, as Jonah is in this case, it's still ultimately all about God. And what we've seen from the beginning up to this point is that God is sovereign, not only over his covenant people, but over all nations, even Israel's enemies, and over the sea and the heavens and the dry land. We saw this with the tempest, we saw this with the message to go out to Nineveh outside of God's covenant people. We also saw that God is merciful and has a heart for those outside of his covenant people, which we see hinted at in Jonah's call to Nineveh, and which becomes all the more apparent in the New Testament and the progressive revelation of God when God opens the doors of salvation, the people of every nation and tongue. And then the thirdly, that God is righteous. He doesn't turn a blind eye to sin. And this is why mercy never comes before a pronouncement of judgment. It follows only where there is repentance of heart and humility. And yet we will learn still, as we work our way through the book of Jonah, that there is more here yet to draw from. Here then is the continuation of Jonah's Psalm. We're going to begin with verse 5 and work our way through each verse that follows. Verse 5. The waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Prior to this, Jonah had said that he had called out to the Lord in his distress. Chapter 2, verse 1. And in his distress the Lord answered him. Out of the belly of Sheol, which meant the abode of the dead, he cried, and the Lord heard his voice. Now he hadn't yet died when he called out to the Lord in his heart, but he was at death's door, already, and had already considered himself as good as dead. You're at the bottom of the sea, you don't know how to swim. You essentially assume, well, this is the end for me. This is my death. He assumed then, and therefore he uses this term of out of the belly of Sheol. He also said that it was the Lord who cast him into the sea, verse 2, into the heart of the seas, for it was judgment upon his sin. He recognizes this wasn't just a fortuitous or unfortuitous course of events that led him to being in the ocean in the midst of his tempest. No, this was judgment for his sin, for his rebellion, for his refusal to go to Nineveh and deliver the word of the Lord. And the language that he uses here in verse 2 echoes the judgment of Noah's day, when sinful mankind in their rebellion were swept away and they perished in the waters of the flood. All of creation belongs to the Lord. And both in Noah's day and in Jonah's, God uses the seas, the breakers, the billows, and the waves as instruments of his judgment. What else did Jonah say? He said that he had been driven away from God's sight, away from the land of the living, in other words, away from fellowship with God and his covenant people, away from worship in the temple. He was driven out, he was driven away from these things because of his sin. You cannot be in fellowship and be in sin. You cannot be in the presence of God and be well at peace with God while walking in sin. But where before he had run from God's presence, or at least attempted to flee from it, because you really cannot run from God. He now yearned for it. And so he looked toward that holy temple in Jerusalem, and which he mentions in verse 4. And that by saying that, by looking upon that holy temple in Jerusalem, that was the physical and geographic token or symbol which represented the salvation of the Lord. After these things, Jonah continues his psalm. He's recounting all this to memory, and he's and he's writing this down for us to understand it, to recount it with him. He says that the waters closed in over him to take his life. Here we are again, verse 5. And again we see water referred to here as the means of his destruction, the means by which God was executing judgment. For he says, to take my life. His life was being snuffed out. So before he's taken into the belly of this Dagadal, this great sea creature, which is very symbolic and also echoes the Ark of Noah's day, the vessel of salvation, we see here that his life is being taken from him, his life is being snuffed out. Because the deep sea is no place for man to live. We see this all the time in the news of people who drown, people who go out to swim. And it's just a very unfortunate event. People are we're not designed to live in the sea, to live in the water. We can swim, we can go out fishing, we can do all sorts of things, and we can even do construction and lay down pipelines in the oceans and so forth. But man cannot actually live there. I mean, you take a goldfish, for example, and you toss it onto the dinner table or into the living room floor, and that fish is going to die. It's going to expire. Why is it going to expire? Because it's been removed from the law environment in which it was designed to live and function. And in the same way, though in reverse, Jonah had been thrown into the sea. He had been removed from the law environment, that is above the sea, in a boat in which he can still breathe and function, in which he was designed to live and function, and he was thrown out of that law environment into one in which he was not designed for. And death was the only natural result to be expected. So in poetic fashion, he says that the deep surrounded him, which could mean not only the literal depths of the sea, but also that darkness had enveloped him. The farther down one sinks in the sea, the less light reaches the depths. That's why when you look at these documentaries about these deep sea creatures, which we're still discovering, it's pitch black down there, and the only light you see in the documentaries are usually from the lights that are on whatever kind of machine or robot they send down there into the depths to examine it. There's no light that can reach down there. The farther deep it goes, the darker it becomes. And this would have been frightening for Jonah as he sinks deeper and deeper away from the light, because God is light. And Jonah must have felt as though he were being pulled away from that light, as if he was being pulled away from the light of God. And for a prophet of God, for a servant of God, for someone of God's covenant people, that must have been very frightening. That must have been absolutely terrible for him to feel. As the Apostle John wrote in John chapter 1, verse 4, in him was life, and the life was the light of men. He was speaking, of course, of the Son, Jesus Christ, who in Jonah's day had not yet been revealed. But the same is true of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, of the triune God. Nowhere in Scripture, even when we limit ourselves to the Old Testament text, do we find God associated in any form or fashion with darkness? God is always associated with light. God is light. Just as he is life. And there was very little light in Jonah's situation, just as his life was ebbing away. He was descending into darkness and he was descending into death. He must have felt like he had been cast out from the presence of God. He says that weeds were wrapped about his head. The Hebrew word soup is used here, meaning rushes, water plants, or marsh and riverbank vegetation. So contextually, it most likely refers to marine algae, such as kelp or seaweed. And for kelp to be wrapped about his head means either that Jonah was using hyperbolic language to emphasize that he was drowning in the deep, or that he had actually sunk deep enough for marine algae to actually touch him. Well, I think he means both. On the one hand, he had descended deep enough to consider himself as good as dead, a lifeless corpse, and on the other hand, he was literally entangled in kelp. The imagery of helplessness and hopelessness is conveyed here rather vividly. He wants us to understand this was my plight. Not only that I was in the depths, but I was actually intertwined and wrapped in kelp. And then we come to verse 6, which continues the imagery of what Jonah endured. To 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. Now here we do have a clear case of hyperbole. For Jonah says that he went down to the roots of the mountains, and by this he means that he had descended as deep as could possibly be conceived, as deep at that time as he could possibly imagine. And in those times it was believed that the foundations of the mountains lay in the depths of the earth beneath the sea. Now we know this from a reference in Ecclesiasticus, which is from one of the apocryphal books, 1619, which is written in Jerusalem around 200 to 175 BC. This was just the common understanding at the time that the roots of the mountains were beneath the earth, beneath the sea. And it's there in the depths at the roots of the mountains that Jonah says he came to the land whose bars closed upon me forever. And by this he means that he had descended to the land of the dead, whose bars like iron gates would hold him prisoner forever. It was as though we had reached the gates of Sheol, the abode of the dead. And once those both those bars closed behind a man, they remained shut forever. Now none of us can relate to that because we're all here and alive, but we can imagine when the day comes when we do close our eyes and we fall asleep in Christ and we are therefore classified as dead. And we cannot say to ourselves, well, this is nice, I'd like to go back to my body and back to my life on earth. It's not possible. It's not possible. And that's what he's meaning, that's what he's saying here. Death here is a finality. Death here, it closes, and you can't come back, not by your own means, of course. Never again would he return to life upon the earth. Jonah was saying, as he reflected upon his ordeal, that he was being entombed by the sea. This was the point of no return. You know, surely the crushing weight of the waters prevented any possibility of returning back to dry land. Even if he knew how to swim, it was of no help to him now. And yet, that word yet in our translations marks a remarkable reversal concerning Jonah's situation. And yet, God snatched him out of the jaws of death. He bent the bars that had closed in upon Jonah and rescued him before he could enter Shaol, before his body perished, and his soul passed on. Now it's wonderful because we see here Jonah's still alive and he's at death's door, and he's almost as good as dead, and God saves him. And that's and he uses this language of the bars being closed upon him forever. And we could really assume or deduce that God had bent these bars open in order to keep him alive. But you go to the New Testament and look upon those under whom these bars did close on. You might think about the daughter of Jairus, you might think of Lazarus, you might think of the saints who were later raised as a result of Jesus' crucifixion. These were men and women who actually died and whose bars of death had actually closed in on them, and there was no coming out of that. And God, through Christ Jesus, bent open those bars and brought them back to life. We see here the imagery of resurrection, the imagery which would compose or consist of that very sign of the sign of Jonah, which Jesus would refer to. And here we see that in the text of Jonah that God preserves Jonah's life by sending the Dagadol, the great sea creature, to swallow him whole and preserve his life. Now, again, this was not by chance. We had gone through this before. There's no such thing as chance. Chance is man's ignorance of God's workings and history and creation. This was not a mistake. This was divine providence. This wasn't some mistake in which, oh, you know, the sea creature looking for food happened to find something tangled in the kelp and decided to help himself to a meal. No, this was divine providence, God's hand at work. Even in the depths of the sea. This is what God was revealing to Jonah and what God reveals to us. Even in the depths of the sea, God is there. There's not a single place in all of creation where God is not present and where he does not possess dominion and authority. You know, I think of the plight that those astronauts had a couple of years ago, in which they were stuck up there on the International Space Station, and they weren't sure when they would be able to get back. And one of them happens to be a Christian, Captain Barry Wilmore, who we'll have the pleasure of being able to meet later this year when he comes to visit us in southwestern Ontario and Niagara. And just thinking about how what he must have thought and what he must have felt. And he's put his story in a book, a story that's that's now coming out and be published soon. And in that book, he explains how his hope and his trust is in God, and how he understands God's sovereignty, and that even in space, God is there. He is, as Jonah puts it, the Lord God. And not merely just Lord God, but if you look at verse 6, the exact phrasing Jonah uses Lord my God. He is my Lord my God. He is the Lord my God. He is mine and I am his. And that is beautiful to say. And we can say that as a result of our salvation. We can say that as a result of God taking us from the pit of sin and death and darkness and redeeming us and giving us life and adopting us as the children and bringing us into the light and giving us life and fellowship with him. We can say, yes, he is the Lord my God. And there is not a single place in all of creation in which he is not there. And there's not a single place in all of creation in which he does not have authority and power. What took place in what Jonah believed were his final moments, verse 7. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. When Jonah's life was ebbing away, as he was beginning to lose consciousness, we can only imagine, in those final moments, he remembered the Lord. The Hebrew word for remember here is a car, which means to recall information or events or to invoke. And in this case, it means that Jonah turned to the Lord. Jonah invoked the name of the Lord. He called out to him a prayer in desperation, a prayer of repentance, and a plea for mercy and salvation. He recognized he had sinned against God, and he recognized that the judgment God was visiting upon him was just. He had transgressed the law of God. And he repents and he pleads for mercy. He pleads for salvation. And his prayer was heard in God's holy temple. Jonah must have been amazed that a prayer uttered from the depths of the sea was heard by God. This was God revealing himself to Jonah. The God who dwells among his people in his temple in Jerusalem, that he is everywhere, and that he is sovereign, and that there is no place, no matter how dark and no matter how deep, or no matter how lofty and high, in which God does not hear his servants. The phrase here that's used conveys that God is everywhere. There's no place too far removed from his presence. And the phrase in which he uses here is akin to what we might say in English, from the heavens, God heard my cry. Well, of course he did, because God is everywhere, God is omnipresent. Mind you, I'm not saying that God is everything. That's an important distinction to make. We're not pantheists that God is all and all is God, nor do the scriptures teach such a thing. From the very beginning, scripture reveals a clear creator-creature distinction. God is God, nothing else is. There's nothing and no one like him. He's far above all creation, and all things have come forth by his command, by his will as an expression of his will. And it was his will here to save Jonah, to hear his cry for mercy, and to show him that even at the roots of the mountains, God can extend mercy there as well. Even at the gates of death, God can extend mercy there. Is anything too hard for God? Is anything too difficult for him? There is none. Take a look now at verse 8. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. What a polemical jab this is against the pagan systems of belief in Jonah's day. What Jonah is saying here is that those who trust in idols, pagans, in other words, and even those unfaithful Israelites who turned from true worship of the true God to things made by human hands into Baal and all these other idols, they give up hope when the time of testing comes. Idolaters, in other words, give up hope when the time of testing comes. Those who trust in idols of man's own making or in some aspect of creation, whether it's something conceptual, abstract, or physical, they forsake and abandon their devotion to those idols when they realize that they're powerless and incapable of doing anything for their worshippers. What could the gods of Babylon do for the Babylonians in their distress? What could the gods of Egypt do for the Egyptian people? What could the gods of the Assyrians do when judgment came to their gates, as we will see? Pagan sailors on the ship to Tarshish were actually quite quick to forsake their false gods when they were in the midst of the tempest. When they realized that after much prayer nothing was availing them, and therefore they turned to Jonah. After they witnessed the true power and glory and might of the God of Israel, their eyes were opened. They realized that the God of Jonah was real, and that the gods of their own making were nothing more than cheap parlor tricks and the products of man's twisted imagination? What idols stand in the high places of the modern West today? Karl Marx? Has he saved any man in his distress? Has his thought system, whether economic or cultural Marxism, rescued anyone? Has it in truth saved anyone over the course of the Western history? What about Charles Darwin? Has the theory of evolution done anything truly good for mankind? No, actually, there are quite numerous books have been written demonstrating how evolutionary theory has contributed to racism and discrimination, apartheid, the Holocaust, and more. What about rationalism? Has rationalism truly saved anyone? Name one idol in the modern West. Yes, even secularism itself, and make a case for how it has brought about the true human flourishing and salvation for mankind. And you will be hard-pressed to find even one example. In truth, you never could, because all idols are gems. No matter how intellectually sophisticated they may appear, no matter how lofty they may seem, or how respected they are by the masses, none of these things can transform an idol into a real God. I wonder if the Israelites, when they made the gold calf while they were waiting for Moses and assumed he was dead on Mount Sinai, thought we can make this gold calf into a real God if we just dance and sing louder and offer sacrifices and worship. What good did that gold calf do when Moses came down from the mountain? They realized, yeah, this is not really a real God. No, they're all shams. There's only one God, and this one God exists in three persons Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And he's revealed himself through creation, his general revelation, and through his son, Jesus Christ, and through his inscripturated revelation, his special revelation. Let us therefore not place our hope in anything other than the true God of Scripture. But if you think that believing the God of Scripture does not appear as outwardly respectable, impressive, or sophisticated as the modern ideologies of our age, is though it's not up with the times, so to speak, because that has been the most often the experience. I remember myself being in university and going through those trials, and I was at York University at the time, and several of my professors were naturalists and atheists, and you know, we were just in classes that had nothing to do with philosophy or you might call religion, if you were talking about religious studies. And just professors that love to make jabs against the Christian faith. But how outdated it is, but how antiquated it is, about how we have to get with the times and how it can interfere with how we go about doing business in the world. If we fall prey to that way of thinking, and we begin to lend an ear to what this world has to say, of trying to dissuade us from the true faith. And consider the words of J.R. Tolkien in the first half of his famous riddle from The Lord of the Rings, the first book. He goes, All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost. The old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. Yes, modern man is easily dazzled by what glitters from man's supposed ingenuity, whether that be intellectual fashion, technological confidence, or even sophistication. I mean, think about how many have fawned over Stephen Hawking during his time when he was alive and his quest to discover a theory of everything, a theory within the realms of physics that could somehow explain all of reality. That was his quest. That was what he would call God, though he would never call it as such. How many have taken the words of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates at face value concerning what to believe about reality simply because they're regarded as technological geniuses? When people found out that Steve Jobs was a Buddhist, there was suddenly a boon of Buddhism in the West. How many worship at the altars of secularism because of how intellectually sophisticated it appears? Oh, I'm irreligious, where nothing we do is religious. And yet all that is gold does not glitter. And though we may appear to be wayward according to the spirit of the age, not all those who wander are lost. Are we not considered fools of this world and yet we are wise in Christ? Has not God done this radical reversal in the world? Outward cultural prestige is not the same as truth, wisdom, and enduring strength. The world today often assumes that whatever is newest, most academically fashionable, or most culturally celebrated must therefore be intellectually superior. Well, that is quite mistaken. Tolkien, in his riddle, was echoing the truth of Scripture by turning that assumption upside down. There may indeed be many who would say that the Christian faith is perhaps ancient and outdated and embarrassingly out of fashion with the intellectual trends of our current century. But what is old is not necessarily weak. In fact, the roots of the Christian faith extend not merely to antiquity, but to the very beginning, to the very structure of creation itself in the created order, in the eternal God who brought all things into being, who created the heavens and the earth. Frost may kill shallow growth, and in fact, how many religious systems, from ancient times to even today, even those that consider themselves irreligious, have already passed into distant memory. Idols are either forsaken for true faith in the God of Scripture, or they're abandoned only to make for an ever-rotating succession of new idols, each one trying to succeed where the past one failed. Jonah's faith, however imperfect, is ultimately in the true God of Israel. And this is why he concludes his psalm with verse 9. But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed, I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord. In contrast to the wayward pagan, to the blind unbeliever, Jonah lifts up his voice in thanksgiving to the God who truly saves, to the God who truly delivers. You put an atheist out there on a sinking ship and his dying breath, he's not going to call out to Darwin. He's not going to call out to the laws of nature. He might actually call out to the true God. You put a Christian on a sinking ship and he's not going to call out to any other God. He's going to call to the one true God of heaven. Jonah, as he says here, will worship God through sacrifice in accordance with the law of Moses. He will fulfill his vow to the Lord, his vow to serve the Lord as his prophet. For salvation belongs to the Lord. And he bestows salvation upon those who call upon him. This is how Jonah ends his psalm with a bold declaration, one which every unbeliever scoffs at, yet one which none will be able to deny when that final day draws near, that only God can save. No other can, no other will. And that ought to grant us, that ought to give us great comfort. For if we have loved ones who are far from the Lord, we ought not to let go of that faith that God can and will save. When we stand before God on the day of judgment, we will either stand safe and secure in Christ, who redeemed us and forgave us and made us his own, or we will stand amongst those who worshipped idols and have now come to realize that there's no help to be found in what mankind has conjured up to replace the one true God. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Finally, we arrived at verse 10. And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land. The Dagadol, the great moraine creature, vomited Jonah up unto dry land. Now bear in mind again that whales are not capable of pulling themselves back into the seas once they've beached themselves. Every time you see the news of all the whales beach themselves, they often need assistance to get back into the water because they can't do it. And I highly doubt that this creature had committed suicide. And this must have been something extraordinary, an extraordinary event, because since the start of the book until now, God had chosen to reveal himself in an absolute power and glory and majesty, just as he did with his servant Job when the Lord answered him out of the whirlwind. But how do we discern this verse as a transition back to the narrative? Well, it's true that Jonah had failed in his calling by rebelling when he first heard the word of the Lord, and that rebellion took the form of turning away from the road to Nineveh and fleeing as far as he could to the Phoenician coast, off the coast of Spain. But to flee from God is as futile as denying your own existence. I can't deny my own existence. I'm here. I can't, that's it's it's impossible in the same way that fleeing from God is impossible. Fleeing from God is impossible. Yet when judgment came down upon Jonah, and when he cried out in repentance for mercy, Jonah was shown mercy. He was shown mercy in the deep. And this theme of mercy is going to continue through the rest of the book. God was merciful in chapter one, as we saw with the sailors on that ship. God is merciful with Jonah, as we see in this second chapter. And from the belly of the Dagadal, where he was miraculously preserved for three days and three nights, he was cast back upon dry land. He was given, in other words, a second opportunity to fulfill his prophetic calling. And in many respects, he was restored as a prophet of God. Just as we are restored in Christ Jesus to take up the mantle that we've been given. In Jonah's case, it was to be God's prophet and to go to Nineveh. In our case, it's to be God's representatives to whom whomever God sends us. Jonah was sent to Nineveh, we're sent into the world. Now, in a very general sense, we are prophets too, in the sense that we are proclaiming the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the word which has been revealed to us in the word of God. We're not going about saying, Thus saith the Lord. No, we're not, we're not, we're not doing that. We don't, we we're not believing in prophets with a capital P. We're talking about a very general sense of we're declaring the word of the Lord as been given to us in the Word of God. And God took us sinners, in which we blasphemed God and made us his own, and have, in a very general sense, have made us his prophets to go out to proclaim his word, to confront sin in this world, to call people to repentance and to lead people to Jesus Christ. And that's how I wish to close this examination of the text this morning. We've all sinned against God. We've all broken his holy law. And by sinning we've incurred the penalty, the wages of sin, which is death. Turning to idols doesn't free us from the judgment to come, nor does it save our souls from death. On the contrary, it actually binds our souls ever more tightly to the fate that awaits us, death in our sins. But in Christ Jesus, we find the love and mercy of God. We find a hope that can withstand trials and tribulations, even the worst of them, because unlike the idols of this world, whether ancient or modern, whether physical or conceptual, our God saves. He saves us from our sins, he saves us from our fallen nature, he saves us from death, he saves us from the judgment to come, and he does not save us as polished trinkets to be placed in a static display for all to see. This is the common conception. Oh, I'm saved. No, I just gotta preserve myself until Jesus comes back. No, he restores us to our true function. He doesn't put us somewhere for people to see and never be put to use. He restores us to our true function, to be his people, to worship him in spirit and in truth, to be his soul and light in this corrupt and dark world. God has saved us. Those of us who have turned from our sin and surrendered to him wholly in faith, and in saving us, he has shown us mercy. And having experienced these things, what we might call the wonder of the gospel, we're now called to go out and proclaim the gospel, the gospel that saves, the gospel of Jesus Christ to this fallen world. And as we do so, we tear down the idols that have captivated the heart of man by their glitter, that have deceived the mind of man into believing that they're the way, that have won man's interest simply because they are new, and that have excited the senses because they're young and fresh. Yet they're nothing but lies said in opposition to the truth. And we're called to proclaim that truth, the truth of the gospel. If they scoff, then they scoff. But not all will scoff. We'll find, as with the sailors upon that ship, and as we're going to see later in the city of Nineveh, that there are those who will repent and believe. May God grant us the privilege of witnessing that with our own eyes through our own gospel witness. Let us pray. Lord Heavenly Father, we thank you for your spirit, Lord, that abides in us and for the word in which you have given us. We thank you as we look at Jonah's Psalm of the great depth and understanding that he had as a result of your revelation to him of who you are: a God of mercy, a God who is everywhere, a God who is sovereign, a God who is righteous. And we can say that is our God, a righteous God who is the standard of all righteousness, a merciful God who does not turn away from those who repent and call out for mercy and grace, and a God who upholds his people and saves. Lord, we thank you for this revelation. And we say, May we not be like Jonah when he turned away from you and rebelled. May we instead be eager to put our feet on the path and serve you in what you're calling us to do, to discern what callings and giftings you've placed upon us, and discern how we can put that to use to serve you for your glory. You haven't called us to be idle, you've called us to be active. You haven't called us to be a nice little, nicely kept statue for all to see. No, you've called us to be actually involved alive in this world. You've called us to fellowship. And Lord, may we be obedient in that. But Lord, we also pray that you would forgive us if at any time we have bent the ear to the whispers of the enemy. If we have ever turned our attention to the idols of this world, if we have at any moment, even in our hearts, even for a moment, pledge of allegiance to another. Lord, forgive us and keep us, keep us secure, keep us sure, keep us firmly rooted. And when we find ourselves confounded because we don't understand or know how we ought to respond to the idols of this world, grant us wisdom. Grant us wisdom so that we may understand and be able to speak as the early church did. As every time the church was faced with opposition, so that we may be able to demonstrate that though the world may consider us to be foolish, we are actually wise. We are firmly rooted in you. Not because this comes from us, but because it comes from you. And Lord, we pray, may you bless our families. Lord, in this special day of Mother's Day, may you bless our mothers, all the mothers there who are sacrificing so much in love and thanksgiving for what you have given them. Lord, may you bless them. And Lord, for those mothers who perhaps have experienced loss, may you bring them comfort. May you bring them comfort in this time as well. In your name we pray, Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

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