Salvation Is of the Lord

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Preacher: Greg Magazu Scripture: Jonah 1:17-2:10

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All right, I'll just let you guys know,
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Ross just texted me and sent his love, and all right, laptop is working, we're good to go.
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Last week we looked at Jonah chapter 1 and saw the sovereign God of mercy, how
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God is so sovereign over all things, from the storm to the casting of a lot to a great nation and even with a fish.
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We saw how we often don't understand that all things are from God and he shows his mercy in lavish ways even on those who are his enemies.
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Jonah was told to go to Nineveh and cry out against it, but instead he disobeyed God and went in the opposite direction to Tarshish.
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God however would not stand for this and he would use this rebellion for his own good purposes in the salvation of a group of pagan mariners and ultimately to teach his prophet a lesson he needed to know.
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The book of Jonah is a deep and complex story of how our God is so completely holy that apart from his revelation and sanctification we cannot comprehend even the smallest aspect of his character.
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Last week we left Jonah in the sea. The mariners reluctantly threw him overboard based on his instruction to them and then in a moment the sea went calm for them.
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As a result of this the mariners feared the true God of heaven and offered sacrifices to him and took vows.
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It seemed great evidence to say that this was a salvific experience for them. They came face to face with the true
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God and were changed. Additionally we talked about how Jonah is doomed if God does not act.
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He's in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, much too far from land to swim for shore and it is only a matter of time before he tires and drowns.
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Except once again because Jonah serves the merciful God he will not drown but God has prepared a fish for him.
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Let's go to our text this morning, Jonah 1 17 to 2 10. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow
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Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the
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Lord his God from the fish's belly and he said, I cried to the Lord because of my affliction and he answered me.
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Out of the belly of shale 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.
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All your billows and your waves passed over me. Then I said I have been cast out of your sight yet I will look again towards your holy temple.
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The water surrounded me even to my soul, the deep closed around me, weeds were wrapped around my head.
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I went down to the moorings of the mountains, the earth with its bars closed behind me forever.
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Yet you have brought up my life from the pit. Oh Lord my God when my soul fainted within me
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I remembered the Lord and my prayer went up to him into your holy temple. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy but I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving.
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I will pay what I have vowed, salvation is of the Lord. So the
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Lord spoke to the fish and had vomited Jonah onto dry land. We start with the last verse of chapter 1.
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Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
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Here we have what most people remember when they hear the name Jonah. Who was Jonah? He was the guy that was eaten by a fish and then vomited out again.
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This is what we love to tell our kids about and this tends to feel like the center of the story and in one sense it is and another it isn't.
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It is not from the perspective that this story, that in this story the fish incident gives Jonah time to reflect and repent of his disobedience to God.
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But the true message of the book is in the fourth chapter. In another sense this is the center because Jesus uses it to point to what he will do for us when he speaks in Matthew and Luke about the sign of Jonah.
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Jesus is pointing to his atoning work upon the cross, his death, and ultimately his resurrection.
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He points to this because it will be the only sign he gives but he points to this with the
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Pharisees because they are like Jonah and having contempt for those who are not like them. And we will come back and look at this more deeply later.
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Now Jonah will spend all of chapter two in the belly of this fish or whale or sea monster.
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The Hebrew word daga simply means water creature and in Matthew the Greek word is ketos which can be translated sea monster, whale, or large fish.
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Honestly this is all I'm going to say about the fish. Many commentators talk about people's skepticism on whether a human can survive in a fish for three days and what type of fish must it have been.
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But I look at it with all of the miracles and faith you must have to believe the Bible. This is going to be the issue we have?
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Seriously? The creator of the universe can't keep a man alive in a fish for a few days? So we're just going to move on.
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At this point I will also say for me this chapter is further evidence that the writer of the book is in fact the prophet.
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The details recorded in this book related in this chapter alone are just not the sort of thing that would be known by anyone else.
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Then when we consider it all it seems like something that was recorded by Jonah likely later in his life as he was reflecting on all of these events.
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And I also think this is strong evidence that ultimately Jonah came to repentance even after chapter four.
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But we'll discuss that when we get there. There we go.
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In verse one of chapter two we read, then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish's belly. Now for me the terror of this situation would have been rough.
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One of my biggest nightmares when I was a kid was falling into a crack in the earth and getting lodged between two sheer rock walls angling together.
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Being stuck between them barely able to breathe as the rock on both sides presses in on me.
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Just thinking about that helplessness and lack of air would totally freak me out if I thought about it for too long.
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That was before I knew the Lord, however. It says, then Jonah prayed.
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Before I was a Christian the thought of being trapped somewhere all alone fighting for your life was terrifying.
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Excuse me. But as I was thinking about this I was comforted by the fact that no matter what our circumstances are we can always pray.
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God said to Solomon concerning the temple, then the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said to him, I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice.
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When I shut up heaven and there is no rain or command the locusts to devour the land or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then
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I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.
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Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to prayer made in this place.
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Now if this is true of Solomon's temple how much more is it true of us who are the temple of the
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Holy Spirit? What a wonderful thing to pause and praise God for.
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How we so often neglect prayer to our God and yet when we turn to him he always hears.
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We are truly never alone when we belong to God. You know
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I sometimes have, some of you know about Melanie's cancer experience and one of the things she will say is the sweetest part of the whole experience was the communion she had with God during her treatments and later during her radiation treatments.
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And you see when she was going through her chemo treatments I was there the whole time. I took time off work,
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I was there the whole time she was sick and until she got better. But when she went through her radiation treatments and I can't remember she went through like 25 or 30 or something like that.
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I had gotten a new job and I couldn't take time off so she had to go through them completely by herself.
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And these radiation treatments required because they were radiating in her chest and as you can imagine there's a lot of important stuff in there so they kind of make sure they don't screw it up.
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And so they create a mask and they stretch it over her face and basically pin her head to the table so she can't move.
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And then the mask ends up hardening and so every time she comes back they would pin her head to the table, basically strap her down flat on her back after her phrenic nerve had already been damaged and she struggles to breathe on her back.
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And she'd have to stay like that, not moving for half an hour while they radiated her chest because if she were to move at all radiation could possibly radiate something that she really needs, you know like her heart.
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And so she had to go through this but she will describe this, and I got her permission to use this story before I did it, as one of the sweetest times that she went through in her cancer experience because they allow you to put on whatever music you want so she put on praise music and she just prayed to God the whole time and it was a wonderful experience.
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Anyway, excuse me. And so this is the wonderful thing that we have even in prayer.
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You know we think about it, we neglect it sometimes when things are going okay but we know that when things are desperate
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God will hear us. Jesus uses the same means to face the terrors of the cross.
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He went to the Garden of Gethsemane, told his disciples to pray and then he went away and did what?
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He cried out to his father. If prayer can be the respite for Jesus facing the greatest torment in history, let us never neglect it when we face the trials we have in our lives.
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Alright, so let's look at the prayer of Jonah. And it has kind of the structure of a psalm, so I'm going to call it the psalm of Jonah.
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And the structure is this. Verse 2 is the introduction. Verse 3 through 6a is the lament.
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Verse 6b is the proclamation. Verses 7 and 8, the testimonial. Verse 9a, the thanksgiving and vow.
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And verse 9b, the declaration. The introduction, the lament, the proclamation, the testimonial, the thanksgiving and vow, and the declaration.
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And for those of you taking notes, I will make sure I mention those at each section. This seems to be the result of Jonah's reflection on these events after they occurred.
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And it's a shift back and forth between what he's experiencing and feeling in the moment, and then summary of what
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God did or Jonah did as a result. So verse 2, the introduction. I cried out to the
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Lord because of my affliction, and he answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.
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Jonah here states and restates one of the most amazing realities that we have. He cried out to God, and God heard and answered.
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Ross often tells us that in Hebrew writing, the author repeats those things he wants to emphasize or that are important.
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So here Jonah starts his psalm by repeating the fact that he is in affliction, right?
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I cried out to the Lord of my affliction, out of the belly of Sheol I cried. And again, using the word
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Sheol as a place of the dead, right? He is looking at himself as dead at this point. He cries out to God, and God responds.
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This is the introduction and ultimately the summary of what happened to Jonah in the fish. How often we read past these things in the scriptures, but they're all over the place.
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Psalm 120, verse 1, in my distress I cried to the Lord, and he heard me. Psalm 118, 5,
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I called on the Lord in distress, and the Lord answered me and set me in a broad place.
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2 Samuel 22, 7, in my distress I called upon the Lord and cried out to my God. He heard my voice from his temple, and my cry entered his ears.
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And then Psalm 18, 3, I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, so shall
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I be saved from my enemies. How many Christian testimonies have some version of this?
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God brings circumstances that we cannot deal with on our own. In desperation we humble ourselves.
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In our humiliation we cry out to God for deliverance, and as our Savior says, all that the
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Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will by no means cast out. How often in sanctification do we have a similar testimony?
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We are hard to the Lord, or he wants to form something in us, cleanse something from us, reveal himself to us, or glorify himself in us.
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God brings circumstances that we cannot deal with. In desperation we humble ourselves. In humiliation we cry out to God for deliverance, and as our
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Savior says, I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bear much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.
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John 15, 5. In our story, Jonah has rebelled against God. God has pursued him.
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He has hemmed him in on every side so that he has no place else to go. Jonah has two options,
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God or death. That's it. And when you think about it, with everything we do in our lives, it really boils down to that.
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All our aspirations, our goals, our tasks, our families, our education, our vocation, adventures, exciting things, mundane things, sins, righteousness, all of it really boils down to God or death.
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That's it. Do we submit to God or do we die? It is a wonder there are two choices and not just one, death.
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We have such a gracious, long -suffering God that he gives us so much more than we can want, but oh how he must do so much to cause us to see it.
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So let's move on to the lament, verses 3 through 6a. Next we have the longest section of our psalm.
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For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me.
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All the billows and your waves passed over me. Then I said, I have been cast out of your sight, yet I will look again towards your holy temple.
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The water surrounded me, even to my soul. The deep closed around me. Weeds were wrapped around my head.
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I went down to the moorings of the mountains. The earth, excuse me, with its bars closed behind me forever.
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A few things to notice here. First Jonah is aware that it is God and not the mariners who cast him into the sea.
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He sees rightly that he is in the sea because he has sinned against his God. John Gill says, though the mariners did this, yet Jonah ascribes it to the
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Lord. He knew it was he whom he had sinned against and offended. Jonah then appears to quote
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David from Psalm 42 .7. All your waves and billows have gone over me. And in Psalm 42,
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David is facing a trial at the hands of enemies, but he sees all that he's going through is from the
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Lord. Here Jonah is facing a trial because of his own sin, but knows that God is the sovereign who is bringing this upon him.
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This first part seems to talk about Jonah being in the sea with the waves crashing around him as he's sinking.
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In the second part, it seems more like he's describing what it was like in the fish's belly. It felt truly like death to him, going down to the moorings of the mountains and the earth closing behind him forever.
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He is truly in a situation of zero hope outside of God. I mean, it's bad enough to be in the middle of the
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Mediterranean all by yourself. It's even worse if you're sinking under the waters. But what's worth still being inside a fish?
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And then that fish going down further. So even if you could get out of the fish, you're now too far below the surface to make it back anyway.
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I mean, this guy is dead. So in verse 3 and verse 5 and 6b, we have two descriptions of Jonah's trouble.
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Once again, repeating those troubles to emphasize the seriousness of it.
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Right in the middle, however, is verse 4, where Jonah says, Then I said, I have been cast out of your sight, yet I will look again towards your holy temple.
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Now this reminded me of some of my own struggles. A few times in my walk,
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I have really struggled with my salvation, wondering if I was really saved. And at times
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I felt like the man in the iron cage from Pilgrim's Progress. You remember him? The guy that thought he had sinned himself out of salvation and it was no longer available to him?
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The only difference is what we have with Jonah here. It's the same thing for me.
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Even in the midst of my struggles, even in believing that God's salvation was beyond me,
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I said to myself, ultimately, and both times this happened, Lord, whether I am saved or not,
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I will serve you for the rest of my life because you are worthy. And that's what he used to bring me back.
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And ultimately now I know that I'm saved, right? I know that when I sin, I might be punished, I might be disciplined, but I am his.
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This is the same thing Jonah is saying. He has no hope.
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He cannot save himself. There is no escape from his circumstances. In the middle of it all, he says,
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I have been cast out of your sight, but I will still look to you. It reminds me of what
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Peter says to Jesus when asked, do you also want to go away? And Peter's reply is, Lord, to whom shall we go?
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You have the words of eternal life. Also, we have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the son of the living
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God. There's no one else to go to. It is often in the middle of a great trial, either of faith or physically, that where we stand is made clear to us.
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So now we move to the proclamation, 6b. Yet you have brought up my life from the pit,
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O Lord, my God. Jonah declares in faith that it's God who saved him.
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He says, O Lord, my God. He owns his God. Isn't that such a critical thing?
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We must own our God as our God. Jacob said to God, if God will be with me and keep me in this way that I am going and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on so that I come back to my father's house in peace, then the
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Lord shall be my God. Genesis 28. And also consider David's testimony before Saul when he was about to face
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Goliath. Your servant has killed both lion and bear, and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living
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God. Moreover, David said, the Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, he will deliver me from the hand of this
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Philistine, 1 Samuel 17. David knew from experience and trial that he can trust
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God, and because of that he was braver than Saul's whole army who had been cowering before Goliath for the previous forty days.
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He had seen God deliver him from trouble, and it was not his skill or his strength he was trusting in to face
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Goliath. He was trusting in his God to deliver him. When we look to Jesus, what do we see?
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We see the same thing, personified. Then the sun was darkened and the veil of the temple was torn in two, and when
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Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, he said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.
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Having said this, he breathed his last. Jesus wasn't just facing the threat of death and a fish, but death itself.
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He perfectly trusted and committed himself to his Father's will. That trust has been built over his whole life on this earth, and as he was supported and protected by his
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Father in heaven, Isaiah says, therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name
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Emmanuel. Curds and honey he shall eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good.
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Jesus knew and had proved his Father over and over again. There is a point in each of our children's lives when they must own
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God as their God and not their parents' God. For those with young children, I don't mean to discourage you, but when your child accepts the
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Lord and is baptized, that is really only step one on their journey. In fact, most likely your prayers for your children will increase after salvation rather than decrease.
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You want to see Christ formed in them in some way. You want to see fruit, and often that comes through trial.
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Your children need to experience God working, and that is often done in trials. These can be hard because as parents we want to protect them from everything, but we have to be careful that we don't protect them from God's purposes for them.
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For those who have older children, it is almost as great a day when you see your child really walking with God through a trial as it is to see them get baptized to begin with.
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To finally be able to say, I truly believe they know God. Let's move on to verse 7 and 8, the testimonial.
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When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer went up to you into your holy temple.
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Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. Here we have
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Jonah's testimony of the goodness of God and the conclusion of those who do not submit to him. When our soul faints within us, when we are overcome with grief and sorrow, not at difficult circumstances but due to our sin, we see the consequences of it, but much more than that, we see and sense the wrath and displeasure of God.
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When we grieve because we look at that old rugged cross and remember what our Savior did and it cuts us to the heart that we have sinned against him.
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When we couple that sense of God's displeasure with the realization that we are lost without him, that is what it means for your soul to faint.
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That is also when we learn the greatest lessons, which are those that cause us to see our dependence upon God, our need for him, and how we must forsake our own desires and wants in order to pursue his and him.
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Tim Keller says of this, Jacob was not prepared to lead the family of God until he had been forced to flee from his home, experienced years of mistreatment at the hands of his father -in -law, and faced what he thought was a violent encounter with his aggrieved brother
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Esau. It was only then that Jacob met God face to face. Abraham, Joseph, David, Elijah, and Peter all became powerful leaders through failure and suffering.
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Countless Christians can attest to the same experience. It is only when you reach the very bottom, when everything falls apart, when all your schemes and resources are broken and exhausted, that you are finally open to learning how to completely depend on God.
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As is often said, you never realize that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.
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You must lose your life to find your life. It is at this point, with the earth with its bars closing behind me forever, that Jonah prayed to God and cries out to Him for deliverance.
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He also here states the truth of these situations. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy.
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In our translation, mercy is capitalized, and I must say I wholeheartedly agree with it. The word in the
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Hebrew is hesed, and it simply means favor, love, and kindness, or mercy. But where does that favor, love, and kindness, and mercy come from but from God?
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We can also see worthless idols as statues, or we can see them, as we will learn in chapter 4, when
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God seeks to teach Jonah deeper lessons. It can mean things that we put our hope in more than God. Again, Tim Keller says, when placed into the context of the entire book of Jonah, however, this prayer has a sobering aspect.
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In verse 8, Jonah says that those clinging to empty idols forfeit the grace that is theirs.
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Jonah rightly says that idolatry blocks people from receiving grace, but what people is he referring to?
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In the context, he's saying that pagans who worship literal statues and idols forfeit the grace of God.
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And while that statement is true, we can't help but read it in light of Jonah's relapse into anger and confusion at God's mercy to the
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Ninevites, which we will see when we get to chapter 4 of the book of Jonah. In other words, despite his breakthrough here,
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Jonah has not grasped grace as deeply as we might at first think he has. There is still a sense of superiority and self -righteousness that will cause him to explode in anger when
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God has mercy on those Jonah sees as his inferiors. He sees the literal idols that the pagans worship and doesn't see the more subtle idols in his own life that keep him from fully grasping that he too, just like the heathen, lives only equally by God's grace.
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And so finally, the thanksgiving and vow, verse 9a,
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Jonah then declares, but I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay what
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I have vowed. This reminds us of the end of chapter 1 when the Mariners feared the
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Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice to the Lord and took vows. So what is all this sacrifice and thanksgiving and vows?
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In the Old Testament sacrificial system, the thanksgiving offering was part of the peace offerings and was meant to be a public thanks to God for his provision, done at harvest times or when blessings come.
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They were tightly tied to praising and glorifying God for deliverance. Look at Psalm 107, fools because of their transgression and because of their iniquities were afflicted.
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Their souls abhorred all manner of food and they drew near to the gates of death. Then they cried out to the
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Lord in their trouble and he saved them out of all their distresses. He sent his word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions.
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Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men.
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Let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving and declare his works with rejoicing.
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In the New Testament, giving thanks to God is amplified because of our great hope in Jesus. Hebrews 13 says,
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Therefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach.
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For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come. Therefore, by him, let us continually offer what?
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The sacrifice of praise to God. That is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.
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And Paul speaks in 2nd Corinthians of persecution for the gospel's sake, saying, When that he who raised up the
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Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus, and will present us with you, for all things are for your sakes, that grace, having spread through the many, may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God.
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Related to the vow that Jonas speaks of, Matthew Henry says, More probably his vow was that if God would deliver him, he would go wherever he should please to send him, though it were to Nineveh.
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When we smart for deserting our duty, it is time to promise that we will adhere to it and abound in it.
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How often, when God brings us to repentance about something, we feel compelled to bind ourselves to an even greater degree by making a vow.
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It is an overflow of love and thanksgiving to God. Lord, thank you for forgiving me and delivering me.
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Lord, I swear to follow you wherever you lead and to do whatever you ask. It is a form of praise to God.
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Think about our church covenant. We are bound to do everything in it as Christians, but for the love we have for God in this body, we commit ourselves doubly to our responsibilities.
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It is a way of expressing that. This is what Jonah was doing. Lord, if you deliver me from this fish,
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I swear to go where you send me and do what you bid me without hesitation. Now finally, the declaration, verse 9b.
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We have the last sentence of Jonah's psalm, salvation is of the Lord.
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John Gill says, this was the ground of the faith and hope of Jonah when at the worst, in the matter of his present praise and thanksgiving.
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There is one letter more in the word rendered salvation than usual, which increases the sense and denotes that all kind of salvation is of the
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Lord, temporal, spiritual, and eternal. Not only this salvation from the devouring waves of the sea and from the grave of the fish's belly was of the
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Lord, but his deliverance from the terrors of the Lord and the sense he had of his wrath and the peace and pardon he now partook of were from the
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Lord as well as eternal salvation in the world to come and the hope of it. All things are from the
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Lord and all deliverance is from him. If you are saved, praise God. If your cancer is healed, praise
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God. If you narrowly avoid a car accident on the way home, praise God. All salvation is from the
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Lord. This is truly the theme of the whole Bible. Look at Hannah's prayer, which she prayed when
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God gave her a son. My heart rejoices in the Lord. My horn is exalted in the
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Lord. I smile at my enemies because I rejoice in your salvation. No one is holy like the
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Lord, for there is none besides you, nor is there any rock besides our God. God says through Isaiah, it is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones in Israel.
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I will also give you as a light to the Gentiles that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth.
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Peter declares before the rulers of the Jews, there is no salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
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And then God tells Israel what they will say through Isaiah again,
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O Lord, I will praise you. Though you were angry with me, your anger is turned away and you comfort me.
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Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid, for Yahweh the
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Lord is my strength and song. He also has become my salvation. And finally, in the middle of God condemning
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Israel through Jeremiah for their idolatry and going after idols on the tops of every high place, God says, truly in vain is salvation hoped for from the hills and from the multitude of mountains.
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Truly is the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel. Salvation is of the
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Lord. Amen. This is the title of my sermon for a reason.
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It is the central theme in the book of Jonah. God is the salvation of the mariners. He is the salvation of the
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Ninevites. He is the salvation of Jonah from the fish and from himself and his own idols. God is the author of this story.
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And if you are saved, it is because of him. Even if you are delivered from troubles, it is from him. The scary part is when you find yourself in trouble, it's also from him in one way or another.
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But to the one who is in trouble, I say, cry out to God because salvation is from him alone.
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So finally, verse 10, we return to the narrator who tells us, so the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited
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Jonah onto the dry land. Calvin says of this final verse of chapter two, but as for this deliverance of Jonah is an image of the resurrection.
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This is an extraordinary passage and worthy of being especially noticed. For the Holy Spirit carries our minds to that power by which the world was formed and is still wonderfully preserved.
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That we may then, without hesitation and doubt, be convinced of the restoration which God promises to us.
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Let us remember that the world was by him created out of nothing by his word and bidding.
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It is still thus maintained. But if this general truth is not sufficient, let this history of Jonah come to our minds that God commanded a fish to cast forth
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Jonah. For how was it that Jonah escaped safe and was delivered? Even because it pleased
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God, because the Lord commanded in this word at this day retains the same efficacy.
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By that power then, by which he works all things, we also shall one day be raised up from the dead.
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All right, in conclusion, we're going to go to three points. Jonah as the victim,
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Jonah as the recipient, and Jonah as the sign. And I am going through this way faster than I rehearsed, so.
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Most commentators view chapter two in the same way I do. However, Daniel Timmer took a different view of the
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Psalm of Jonah. He says, throughout the prayer, Jonah presents himself in language drawn from biblical
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Psalms. This in itself is not terribly significant, but when one compares the beliefs and behaviors that led to Jonah's present situation, the fact that he is careful to describe his experience in terms used by those who suffer unjustly at the hands of the wicked shows that his understanding of himself and of his circumstances is terribly distorted.
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A first example appears in the Orthodox language of the introduction, which is very similar to Psalm 120, which
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I read earlier, where the sufferer is being verbally attacked by deceitful, bellious enemies.
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While Psalm 120 makes no connection between its author's trials and sin, Jonah's use of its language in a context that is directly connected to his disobedience is tantamount to a rejection of wrongdoing on his part.
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So, Mr. Timmer looks at this as Jonah playing the victim. He is saying that Jonah is presenting himself like the
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Psalmist in Psalm 120, who is suffering at the hands of enemies and not due to sinful choices he has made.
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Before I talk about why I disagree with Mr. Timmer, I want to speak to this, because how often can we do this?
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Has there ever been times when you cry out to God and bemoan your circumstances, which are the result of your own sin?
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Again, I will use myself as an example. I had a situation a few years ago when
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I worked at Change Healthcare. I had a new boss who, without getting my side of the story, blamed the problems we were having with the products
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I had recently taken over on me. She changed my role, and as a result,
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I was pretty upset. And to my shame, I quiet quit, which is when you don't actually quit, but you just stop doing anything except what you need to to not get fired.
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The Lord convicted me of it. I repented and started doing my best. But because of that season,
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I had to face consequences. When layoffs came as a result of our company being brought by another, my product was not where it needed to be to prevent me from being laid off.
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When I was laid off, I knew it was the consequences of my actions, but I was tempted to be angry and blame others, or even
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God. And that's what Daniel Timmer is talking about with Jonah here. Jonah created this situation by fleeing from God.
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Had he just obeyed God and gone to Nineveh, none of this would have happened to him. And then he tries to present himself as the victim.
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Now, this is what Mr. Timmer is accusing Jonah of doing. Crying out to God for deliverance, but really not taking responsibility for the fact that his circumstances were due to his sin.
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I think this is ultimately true of Jonah, because as we will see when we get to chapter 4, Jonah has not truly learned his lesson and is angry with God for sparing the
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Ninevites. That being said, I think Jonah in chapter 2 does recognize his wrongdoing, and his repentance is sincere.
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But like all of us, we still need more sanctification. He has outwardly conformed to God's will, but in chapter 4,
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God will show him his heart. We should take a lesson from this as well. Where do we outwardly do the right thing, but in our hearts we're far from the
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Lord? Next, let's look at Jonah as the recipient.
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And what I mean by that is the recipient of God's grace. He says, out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.
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Did God have to hear him? No. He could have left him in the fish to be digested and go on to judgment.
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Jonah had showed himself to be hard -hearted, self -righteous, and cruel. Tim Keller says, one of the messages of this book is that anyone, even a successful prophet or preacher, can be in the dark about grace.
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Jonah's fears, prejudices, and emotional breakdown all stem from his blindness to the reality of grace.
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In chapter 1, he runs away because he finds God's grace and mercy an inexplicable mystery.
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In chapter 2, in the belly of the fish, we find him wrestling with that same mystery. It is only when he has a breakthrough in his understanding about grace that he's released.
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Only then can he become a fearless preacher. The main purpose of God is to get Jonah to understand grace.
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Now, what is grace? Martin Luther says of God's grace, faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.
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Such confidence and knowledge of God's grace makes you happy, joyful, and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures.
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The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you freely, willingly, and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the
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God who has shown you such grace. Jonah is learning about God's grace as he goes through this ordeal, and we must also learn about God's grace, and we must truly ask ourselves if we're trusting in it by faith when we face basically anything that we face in life.
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Jonah is the recipient, and so are we. And finally, let's look at Jonah as the sign.
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So we're going to come back to the first verse again, or as our
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Savior calls it, the sign of the prophet Jonah. Matthew 12 says, Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying,
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Teacher, we want to see a sign from you. But he answered and said to them, An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet
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Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the
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Son of Man be three days and three nights in the hearts of the earth, in the heart of the earth. In the first chapter, we saw
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Jonah become a type of Christ by telling the mariners to throw him into the sea. He was willing to take the raging waves so that they would not have to.
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It is not a perfect imitation of our Savior, because as we have seen, the storm was his fault to begin with.
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In the grand scheme of things, he was just taking responsibility for what he did. So what does Jesus mean by the sign of the prophet
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Jonah? Setting the stage in Matthew, we have the scribes and Pharisees coming to Jesus.
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These Pharisees have already tried to trap him with the Herodians. They have also already accused him of casting out demons in the name of Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.
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They come to him in this instance, once again trying to manipulate and trap our Lord. They call him teacher or master in some translations.
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So they come trying to flatter him and seek to ask him innocently for a sign.
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But we know full well they don't believe he can do a sign. So we know their true motives are just to find a way to accuse him.
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Even more than that, it is insulting for them to be asking for a sign to begin with. At this point in Jesus' ministry, he has performed thousands of them.
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He has healed people. He's cast out demons and a host of other things before the crowds. And yet these
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Pharisees want another sign? It leads one to wonder, what sort of sign would they accept? I would imagine only one that would impress their father, the devil.
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Something like if Jesus called an army of angels to himself, destroyed the Romans, and restored the kingdom of Israel, while of course making the
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Pharisees important leaders in his new kingdom. Praise be to God that our Father in heaven has infinitely greater plans.
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So Jesus lays into them, without holding back, an evil and adulterous generation seek after a sign.
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Matthew Henry says it well. He fastens the charge not only on the scribes and Pharisees, but the whole nation of the
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Jews. They were all like their leaders, a seed in succession of evildoers.
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They were an evil generation indeed, that not only hardened themselves against the conviction of Christ's miracles, but set themselves to abuse him and put contempt on his miracles.
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They were an adulterous generation, as an adulterous brood so miserably degenerated from the faith and obedience of their ancestors, that Abraham and Israel acknowledged them not.
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As an adulterous wife, they departed from that God, to whom by covenant they had been espoused.
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They were not guilty of the whoredom of idolatry, as they had been before the captivity, but they were guilty of infidelity, in all iniquity, and that is whoredom too.
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They did not look after gods of their own making, but they looked for a sign of their own devising, and that was adultery.
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Jesus declares, no sign will be given except the sign of the prophet Jonah. A couple of things of note here.
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First, Jesus confirms the story of Jonah. If Jonah was a made -up tale to teach a lesson, it doesn't make sense that Jesus would have identified it as a type of his death, burial, and resurrection.
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Jesus believes the story is true, and so must we. Second, a whole lot of ink has been spilled over Jesus saying that just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the fish, so Jesus would be in the heart of the earth.
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People have theories that maybe he was crucified on Thursday instead of Friday, but I think John MacArthur sums it up well.
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But as in modern usage, the phrase day and night can mean not only a full 24 -hour day, but any representative part of a day.
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To spend a day or a day and night visiting in a neighboring city does not require spending 24 hours there.
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It could refer to arriving in the late morning and leaving a few hours after dark. In the same way,
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Jesus' use of three days and three nights does not have to be interpreted as 72 hours, three full 24 -hour days.
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The Jewish Talmud held that any part of a day as is of the whole. Jesus was simply using a common, well -understood generalization.
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So the sign of the prophet Jonah was none other than the death, burial, and resurrection of our
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Lord. It is kind of interesting to think about it. Here, Jesus says, in effect, he will give no sign except the greatest sign ever given in all the world, the death and resurrection of the
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Son of the living God, God himself. He will not pander to the Pharisees, but he will give a sign, one that is so precious in the sight of a believer as to bring them to tears every time they think of it.
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As the hymn writer says, Alas, and did my Savior bleed, and did my
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Sovereign die? Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?
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Well might the sun in darkness hide, and shut his glories in, When Christ, the mighty
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Maker, died. For man, the creature's sin? But drops of grief can ne 'er repay the debt of love
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I owe. Here, Lord, I give myself away, tis all that I can do.
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Again, John MacArthur says, When a person is confronted with the living Christ and with his atoning death and resurrection, the matter of that person's eternal destiny is determined.
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To turn your back on Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for your sins is to show yourself to be the vilest of sinners, no matter how superficially religious or moral you might otherwise be.
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Now, in Pilgrim's Progress, we see what a true child of God is like when he sees the cross.
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If you guys remember Christian, he had a great burden on his back, right? The sin burden that he came to understand through reading
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God's Word, and he seeks to have it to be delivered from it. During the first two chapters, he continually asks and seeks ways to have it removed, right?
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He takes the advice of evangelists. He takes the advice of Mr. Worldly Wise Man. He goes to the town of Morality.
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He's doing anything he can to get rid of this burden. And even when he gets to the Wicked Gate, he asks
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Goodwill about removing his burden of sin. And I quote, Then I saw in my dream that Christian asked him further if he can help him off with his burden that was upon his back, for as yet he had not got rid of thereof, nor could he by any means get it off without help.
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He told him, Even at the house of Interpreter, where Interpreter is showing him all kinds of wonderful things, he asks multiple times if it's time for him to get going.
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He is so desperate to be rid of this burden. Then later we get to the cross, we read,
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He ran thus till he came in a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below in the bottom, a sepulcher.
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So I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up with a cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders and fell from off his back.
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It began to tumble and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulcher where it fell in, and I saw it no more.
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Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, He hath given me rest by his sorrow in life, by his death.
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Then he stood still a while to look and wonder, for it was very surprising to him that the sight of the cross should thus ease him of his burden.
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He looked therefore and looked again, even till the springs that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks.
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Then Christian gave three leaps for joy, and went on singing, Thus far did I come laden with my sin, nor could aught ease the grief that I was in, till I came hither.
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What a place is this! Must here be the beginning of my bliss? Must here the burden fall from off my back?
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Must here the strings that bound it to me crack? Blessed cross, blessed sepulcher, blessed rather, be the man that there was put to shame for me.
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This is the sign of Jonah. This is why Jesus referenced it.
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Jonah is a man who doesn't understand God's grace and mercy. The whole generation of Jews in Jesus' day does not understand the grace and mercy of God, and yet he shows it to them anyway.
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How often are we going back to meditate on this sign? Do we do it often?
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Do we do it when we're feeling cold to the Lord, when we are facing trials? This sign of the prophet
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Jonah is the center of the Christian life. Let us never forget it.
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Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we praise your great and holy name for all that Jesus has done for us.
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Lord, it does, I can barely speak of it without it bringing me to tears.
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For Lord, who am I, who are we, Lord, that your son should die for us, that his perfect, perfect head should be bruised with the thorns, that he should face a death that we never have to.
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That Lord, we will never be condemned because you condemned him. Lord, we will never suffer because he suffered all.
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Lord, we are your children because he is our elder brother.
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Oh, Lord God, we thank you. We thank you, Lord, for the sign of Jonah. I thank you,
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Lord, for all that you do and have done and will do in us. May we remember it even when we go through great trial.
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Father, when we find ourselves, whether it is because of our own sin or whether it is because of the circumstances you bring in our lives, that we find ourselves in trial and suffering.
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Lord, when we look to the cross, may we remember what you have done and may we praise you with the praise of thanksgiving.