Jonah 2

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Jonah’s prayer from the belly of the fish.

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So go ahead and open up your copy of God's Word to our study in the Book of Jonah. Old Testament Book of Jonah, and today we're going to be in Chapter 2, and it's going to be a little different because we're going to try and cover the entirety of Chapter 2.
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And you may be wondering, how in the world are we going to do that? Because we just spent five weeks in Chapter 1. But it's simply just because of the nature of the narrative of the next three chapters here in Jonah that we really need to see the larger picture to be able to really comprehend what is being said here.
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So listen well, bear with me, and we're going to try and get through it. But what we've seen so far in Chapter 1 is we've been introduced to this prophet of Israel, Jonah.
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And God has come and He's told him exactly what He wants him to do. He wants him to go and preach to the
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Ninevites and call out to them, and he doesn't want to do it, so he disobeys. He hops on a ship, he starts heading the other direction from where God's called him to, and God stops him dead in his tracks.
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God brings a storm, and the storm is scaring these sailors, the mariners that are on the ship. Jonah's still asleep at the bottom of the ship, and they're scared to death, and what do they do?
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They wake him up, and they bring him up. Why are you sleeping? And then they cash lots to see on whose account this storm has come upon them.
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And at this point, Jonah, obviously, the lot fell on him, and he fesses up.
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Yeah, this is because of me. So Jonah knows good and well that this storm is because of him, right? And I didn't really talk about this much last week, but I find it interesting, and it's key to what we're going to talk about in Chapter 2.
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But have you ever wondered why Jonah didn't just fall on his face before God in the midst of this massive storm and repent?
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I mean, realistically, he could have. This great storm he knows is because of him. He knows that these sailors could perish in the midst of this, and this is his fault.
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You would think that, man, if I were Jonah, I can get rebelling the first time and hopping on the ship, but man, once I see this storm,
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I'm going to fall on my face before God. I'm going to call out to God. God, forgive this wretched, wicked servant of yours.
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I will obey. Why didn't Jonah do that? I will obey God. I'm going to have these sailors drop me at the next port, and I'm going to beeline directly to Nineveh.
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You know what would have happened if Jonah would have truly done that? God would have probably reneged from his storm, let the storm go away, and let
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Jonah go on his way to obey God, but Jonah doesn't do that. Instead, Jonah would rather die.
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Jonah would rather die than bend the knee to God's will in this moment.
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This is somebody that knows who God is, right? He lays that out to the sailors.
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He goes, he's the God of the land and the sea. He created everything. This is God. He knows who he is, but yet he's still willing to disobey
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God to the point of death. Because, I mean, think about it.
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From his perspective, he doesn't know there's a fish waiting for him down there. He's assuming certain death.
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You get thrown overboard out in the middle of the sea in a storm, you're going to die. You're going to drown. That's just what's going to happen, and he's assuming that, and he's not willing to submit to God.
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God's not going to let him off so easy, is he? God doesn't let him off easy there. As a matter of fact, look at the very last verse of chapter 1, verse 17.
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It says, And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
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Right there in that one verse, we could just stay here.
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We could stay here the rest of the day. We could probably stay here the next month worth of sermons. Because remember how
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I said at the very beginning of this series, if you were with us, this book isn't about Jonah. This book isn't about a fish.
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This book isn't about the sailors. It's not about Nineveh. This book is about God. It's about who
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God is and what God does. And so we're being able to see God in the midst of this, and this one section right here in verse 17,
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And the Lord appointed a great fish, that shows us who God is. God knew good and well what was going to happen.
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He knew good and well what Jonah was going to do. He knew when he was going to do it, where he was going to do it, so much so that he had appointed a fish.
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This is the way my brain works. I'm thinking of the origins of this fish. God had created a fish specifically to swallow up Jonah, and I don't know how long it takes a fish from being born to the point when it's large enough to swallow a grown man, but it has to be some amount of time.
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And God is so sovereign that he created the fish in the perfect timing for that fish to grow, and then places the fish in the ocean, in the
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Mediterranean Sea, of all places, right in the spot where the boat is going to be setting in that moment, in the midst of a storm, so that when
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Jonah gets thrown over, he doesn't stay out in the sea long enough to drown before the fish is ready to scoop him up.
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I know we all know that, but I want you to see the detail in it. God had appointed this fish.
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This is who God is. God is sovereign in everything, and what happens once he's swallowed by this fish?
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It says, Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Again, we could sit there forever.
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I've already mentioned the imagery, the foreshadowing, because Jesus himself later on references his time after the cross, before the resurrection, three days and three nights, with Jonah's.
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So there's imagery there, and we've already talked about it a little bit, but that's not what we're going to focus on today. That's not what I want us to necessarily look at.
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What I want us to look at is the fact that in Chapter 1, these past few weeks, we've seen a lot of things going on, right?
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I just condensed an awful lot of a story, and we've seen a lot there in Chapter 1, but in the midst of all of Chapter 1, there's been one activity, one practice, one thing that has been noticeably absent.
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Everybody's ears are working. They're like, what's the one thing? What is it? I'm going to leave you hanging now. You see,
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God has spoken to Jonah. Jonah has communicated and spoken to the mariners, but Jonah has not once spoken to God.
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Jonah has not gone to God. Jonah has not prayed. He has not been in prayer and communication with God.
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And have you ever noticed how in your life, when we're running from the will of God, when we're running from what
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God has called us to be or to do, the last thing we want to do is pray? Praying is extraordinarily difficult.
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We do not want to go to God. And it's not as though God's not speaking to us.
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God is speaking to us. We don't want to hear it. And so in order to not hear it, we don't want to speak back.
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We don't want to communicate with God in any fashion, and it's because we know we're wrong, don't we? We know that we're wrong.
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We know that once we actually go before God in prayer, that our sin is exposed.
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All, all of our intentions, all of our lies and deception, everything that we're able to convince our wives of, our husbands, our children, our neighbors, our coworkers, our pastor, everything that we're able to deceive with gets exposed when we go before God.
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We know He knows our hearts. We know He knows us, so we don't want to communicate with Him. We do not want to talk to God, because we know that once that gets exposed, we only have one option, and that's to submit.
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And that's the last thing that we want to do, right? When we are in rebellion against God, when we are in unrepentant sin, we don't want to submit to God.
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And if we go to Him, then we're going to have to submit, because we will have to bow the knee. We don't have an option.
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You see, that's what prayer is, is going before the throne room of the Almighty, isn't it? It's going to God.
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And if God is light, then what happens when you go before light, when you go into the presence of light?
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All the things that are growing in the dark shadows and corners of your mind and heart, all of those sins that are growing in the darkness, they get exposed.
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And this is precisely why we as Christians are commanded to pray without ceasing.
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Right? That's what we're called to do, is pray without ceasing. That's not what Joan is doing here. That's not what we're doing at times in our lives when we're in unrepentant sin.
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The reason we're called to pray without ceasing is so that we give no opportunity for that bacteria, that sin, to grow in those dark, shady corners of our lives.
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We can't give any opportunity of it. The light has to be shed on it. And when we go before God, that's what happens.
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And it's hard to do that when we value that sin more than we value obedience to God.
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And more than that, it's hard to do it when we value that sin more than we value God himself, which is what's happening when we choose not to go to God, which is what's happening with Jonah here when he refuses to bend the knee and go to God.
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Yet, thank the Lord that he doesn't allow us as children to stay in that state very long, does he?
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He's not going to allow Jonah to stay there. He's not going to allow Nathan to stay there in those moments when
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I'm there. He's not going to allow you to stay there. God chastens those that He loves, doesn't He? God chastens those that He loves.
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You can either submit to His will at the onset of His command.
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What do I mean by that? Just like Jonah there in the first three verses of chapter 1 when God tells him where to go, he could have arisen and gone straight to Nineveh and obeyed
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God. Just as when you open up God's Word and you see a command in Scripture, when you see an imperative that God has laid out for you,
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His child, and you choose not to obey it, you can choose to obey it in that moment, can't you? You can submit to God's will when you hear a sermon or you hear a lecture or you hear about God's truth and you can respond in that moment, which is ideally what
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Jonah should have done. Or, you can submit to His will from the ship during the storm.
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You can bow the knee on the ship during that first storm that God brings into your life to chasten you and guide you and bring you to it, but there are often times when
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I don't do that. I'm in the midst of that storm and my
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God, my Creator, my Father is chastening me, and what do I do? I'm a rebellious child that bows my back and says,
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I dare you to bend my will because my will is going to be stronger than yours, and that's what Jonah was doing. I'd rather die than submit to you,
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God. But you can bend the knee there. You can submit to His will. Or, you can submit to His will from the belly of a fish at the bottom of the ocean.
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Either way, you will submit to His will. You don't have an option.
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If you're His child, He will not allow you or me to continue in outright rebellion to Him.
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He won't allow it. But we will submit to His will, and this is what's happening right here with Jonah in chapter 2.
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So let's look at our passage. Let's read through it as a whole before we break it down here. Jonah 2, starting in verse 1.
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It says, Then Jonah prayed. Ah, now prayer enters the scene.
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Jonah's finally praying. He's finally going to God. It says, Then Jonah prayed to the
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Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying,
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I called out to you, Lord, out of my distress, and He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.
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For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the sea, and the flood surrounded me.
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All your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, I am driven away from your sight.
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Yet I shall look again upon your holy temple. The waters closed in over me to take my life.
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The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped about my head. At the roots of the mountains
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I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever. Yet you brought up my life from the pit,
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O Lord my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.
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Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what
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I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord.
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And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon dry land.
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This is the reading of God's word. This is the passage we're looking at today. So let's stop here for a second.
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Let's go to him. Let's ask that he would illuminate our minds to it. Lord, we come to you again.
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We thank you. God, we know that your word is pure. It is perfect. It is true.
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It is exactly what we need, God. And in our frailty and in our weakness, sometimes it's hard for us to comprehend these truths.
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And we know that we must have the illumination of the
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Holy Spirit to guide us and direct our thoughts and our hearts towards this truth and to be able to understand it,
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God. So I pray that you do that in our hearts and minds today. Guard me from error, Lord. If I say anything that is not according to your word,
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I pray that you would strike me dead right here on the spot. God, I pray that you would speak through your word today.
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In Christ's name, amen. All right. So some of you in this room this morning,
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I would assume, very well may already be in this third category of God's chasing in your life.
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Now, I don't mean that you're in the belly of a fish in the bottom of the ocean, because obviously you're here. But you get what
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I'm saying. The words of Jonah in this prayer may have resonated with you.
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I hope they did in some fashion, in some way. But they may have resonated with you in a very unique way.
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Because the discomfort and the anguish and the hopelessness that Jonah is expressing in this prayer probably rings true in your life.
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If it doesn't now, it has at one point, or it will at some point. It's this idea that this harsh reality is all too common in the life of a believer.
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Because God chases those that he loves, right? And you may feel as though you've been hemmed in.
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God has hemmed you in. There seems to be no means of escape for you. You feel like,
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I've been trapped by my own sin. Jonah must have thought that in the belly of the fish.
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He must have realized in that moment, in those three days, you know what, I did this.
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And now instead of dying, and a quick, easy death, now I'm suffering, and God won't let me die.
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But I'm hemmed in, I'm trapped. You can imagine how trapped you must have felt.
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He must have felt in this fish. But you can understand that in your own life. There have been times where you think, my sin has brought me to this.
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I brought myself to this point out of my rebellion against God, and now I'm hemmed in. Now I'm trapped.
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And I hope this morning through God's word to bring you some good news today. You are trapped.
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You're trapped. There's no means of escape on your own terms.
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There's no way you're going to escape it. You can't. You see, Jonah tried to escape God's chastening on his own terms.
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God brought a storm, and Jonah says, I'd rather die than submit to this chastening. And we seek to do it on our own terms, so what does
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God do? God puts him in a position that is inescapable. The ship is easy to escape.
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The belly of a fish at the bottom of the ocean, not so much. And you may have felt that in your life at times.
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That there's no escape. You have the suffering and anguish of death, but without the release.
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There's no relief. So this seemingly torturous act that's going on with Jonah here was actually a great act of mercy from God.
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A great act of mercy from God. Because God knew
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Jonah's breaking point, didn't he? God knew good and well that Jonah wasn't going to submit to the storm.
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He knew this servant. He knew good and well that he was going to have to be taken to the bottom of the ocean and encapsulated in a prison without escape to bring him to the breaking point.
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And if he knows his breaking point, then God knows our breaking point, doesn't he? He brings us to that breaking point at times so that we will submit to his will.
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And this is great news because it means he truly loves us. Because he chases those that he loves. And if he didn't love us, he wouldn't be chasing us.
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He wouldn't have brought us to the point of submission to him because he would just allow us to continue on in our unrepentant state and our unregenerate state because he wouldn't love us.
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But he does love us. He knows what's best for us. And he wants what's best for us. And what is best for us?
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To be at the center of his will. To be in obedience to him. Jonah's best place was to go to Nineveh and preach what
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God has told him to preach. That was the best position and place for him. And now he's not in that place.
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He's trapped. So all that being said, building this up, what does submitting to God's chastening look like?
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What does it look like? How do we know when we are truly submitting to this chastening?
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How do we get some level of relief? Well, I think we see a glimpse of that in Jonah's prayer.
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I think we see some insight here. So that's what I want us to do now is to examine this prayer in chapter 2.
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So I have to say, before we jump into it, I desperately tried. You know me with my bullet points.
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Jeremiah's laughing back there. He knows. I desperately tried to put bullet points to this thing to make it palatable, right?
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I did. I slaved over it for many hours, and I could not accomplish it. But there's a reason for that, because sometimes scripture just doesn't break down into a simple formula.
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Some passages do, but some don't. And I believe this prayer is one of those times. I think there's a reason it doesn't break down into that formula.
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And the reason is, is Jonah's not being strategic or systematic here in this prayer. This man is calling out from a place of helplessness and distress.
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And so this prayer, truly, as you read through it, you can hear the heart of Jonah calling out to God.
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And when I say helpless, I don't mean hopeless. We're going to see Jonah does eventually acknowledge that he's not hopeless.
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So let's just walk through this prayer. It's going to be a little different than my normal sermon. I want to just walk through it with you as its natural progression, okay?
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So just follow along in your Bibles here. Let's look there. Let's start at the beginning. Then Jonah prayed to the
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Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, I called out to the
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Lord. When you've been trapped, when you've been hemmed in by God, there's no means of escape.
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This is your first and only option.
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The truth of the matter is it's your first and only option at any time, in any circumstance, in any moment.
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But when God pushes us to the brink of breaking our will, this is the absolute first and foremost place where it has to start.
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He calls out to the Lord even when he didn't want to. Even when we don't want to, we must call out to God.
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It says, out of my distress, this place that we're brought to the end of ourselves.
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Have you ever felt that distress? Have you ever felt that level of being trapped?
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I think all of us can understand that in some way or another. But out of his distress, he calls out to God.
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And here, as he goes on, we see great hope in this distress. Look, and it says, and he answered me.
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God answered him. Out of this distress, this rebellious prophet, you know God could have just sent him into the belly of that fish and said, you know what,
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I'm going to let you suffer for a few weeks down there, and then you're going to die. And I'm going to get another prophet to go do my will.
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He could have done that, but he doesn't. He brings it to the point of breaking, and he calls out to God out of his distress, out of the pit.
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He calls out to the Lord, and what does God do? God hears him. He answers him.
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And he answers him even in the darkest of places. We've been in those dark places before.
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This is a dark place for Jonah. And we're going to see later in this prayer that there are weeds wrapped about his head.
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He is encapsulated. He is imprisoned. We've been there. But out of our distress,
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God comes to us in the darkest of places. If you just look at it, it says, out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.
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This word Sheol, we see it in the New Testament, and it can be referring to hell.
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But any time it's used in the Old Testament, this word Sheol is actually, it just means that it's the place of the dead.
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It's a place where departed souls and spirits. It's referred to, the
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Hebrew people, when they use this word Sheol, they're just talking about death.
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That's all this is, is he's talking about death. What Jonah is saying here is that he is in a place that is without hope.
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He is in a place that is just utter and complete despair. It's as if he has no hope of living.
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Now some commentators, some scholars, believe that Jonah actually died in the belly of the fish. I don't hold to that.
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I think that he's alive. I think this is a miraculous situation that's going on. And I think Jonah's alive, and I think he finally calls out to God, which is interesting, because I also think that he didn't pray this prayer until after the third day.
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Because notice at the end of the prayer, we'll get to it, God immediately releases him when he calls out to God.
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But, irregardless of that, from his perspective, he's a dead man walking.
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Well, not walking, he's laying in the belly of the fish, right? But he is a dead man.
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He knows he's a dead man. He thinks that his demise is inevitable. And instead of a quick, easy death by being thrown into the water in a quick drowning, he's having to suffer through it.
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There's a big difference between that, right? There's times where we can stand bold and be like, alright, bring death on.
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But then, in the midst of our suffering, maybe I don't want to die. And this is where God has brought
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Jonah, and now his demise is inevitable, out of Sheol, out of the place of the dead,
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God. This is a death sentence to me. This is my grave. This is where I end, here.
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This is what Jonah's saying. But this also is a testament to the fact that Jonah's perspective, our perspective, is not
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God's perspective. Jonah's sure he's going to die.
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God has a different plan. God sees the bigger picture. He knows it, and it's not God's perspective. There are so many times in my life where I am convinced,
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I look around at my circumstances, and I pronounce the inevitable.
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It drives my wife crazy. Every time, she's like, hey, let's look at it from where I'm optimistic.
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If this thing happens, then maybe that'll happen. And if we do this, maybe that'll happen. And I don't want to hear any of it, do I, babe?
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In the moment, I just want doom and gloom. I'm like, this is inevitable. We're trapped. It's never going to happen.
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I'm dead. This whole thing is over. And I think that's kind of what Jonah is doing here. And he's just being honest in his prayer, right?
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That's his perspective. That's all he can see in this moment is the doom and gloom. Because, let's face it, if you're in the belly of a fish at the bottom of the ocean with weeds and seaweed wrapped around your head, that's probably all you can see.
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That's not what God sees. When you're in that moment of despair, and you are the one that has brought yourself to this demise for your rebellion against God, and God has you in the pit, and he's brought you into darkness all of a sudden, you look around and go,
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I brought myself here and there's no escape, and there legitimately, from your perspective, is no escape.
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Just as I said a moment ago, you are trapped. From your perspective, but God has a different perspective.
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God is altogether different here, isn't he? The onset of this prayer, this is Jonah, and he's acknowledging this distorted perspective.
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As he goes on the prayer, he begins to acknowledge that his perspective can't be right. And this is what we should be doing when we're calling out to God.
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Calling out and holding firm to truths that we know. Truths that we may not be able to see in the moment, but we know them.
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That's why we remind ourselves of those truths. And then what does God do? Even in his blindness, and in his despair,
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God doesn't reprimand Jonah for this. God doesn't say, you know what? If you're not going to trust me, if you're going to be in such despair,
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I'm just going to leave you there longer. Let's let you marinate in that fish for a while. That's not what
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God does. No, he hears his cry. He hears his cry. Well, look at verse 3 with me.
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It says, For you cast me into the deep. Jonah's saying, it wasn't the sailors that threw me over the ship.
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It wasn't my decision to go into the water. Jonah's acknowledging in his prayer here, while he's trapped, you did this,
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God. My sin may be the cause that has brought me here, but you drove me into the deep.
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You're sovereign. You're in control. You are the one that has brought me here. And Jonah's not doing this to bring accusation against God.
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He's not in the belly of the fish going, you did this to me. How dare you do this to me.
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I thought you were loving. That's not what Jonah's doing here. No, he's acknowledging God for who he is. He's acknowledging what
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God is doing in his life. Isn't he? That's what Jonah's doing here.
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Into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me. All your waves and your billows passed over me.
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That section's a little, it's so poetic, sometimes it's hard to comprehend what Jonah's really praying here.
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What's Jonah talking about? I think what's happening here, I think what God is doing in this moment is he says that he's in the seas, and the flood has surrounded him, and the waves and billows are just passing over him.
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Everything is above him in a way. I think what we see here is the fact that God has removed his perceived presence from Jonah.
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God has removed his perceived presence. Not his presence, for God is everywhere. God is with us at all times, but for a time and a purpose,
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God removes his perceived presence from us. I know that because of verse 4.
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Look at verse 4. It says, Then I said, I am driven away from your sight.
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Have you ever felt those moments where it's as if God is nowhere to be found?
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It may be in a situation like this when your sin has brought you to the pit, and it's dark, and you call out, and it seems as though my prayers feel meaningless.
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I'm praying. It's as if those words are not making it to God because God has abandoned me.
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Your waves and billows are crashing over me. I know they're up there, but they're not here with me.
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You've removed me from your presence, but He hasn't. God hasn't removed
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His presence. He's just removed for a moment that perceived presence.
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We don't know that He's there. We don't see that He's there. And sometimes, not always though, hear me out, this is not always the case.
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Sometimes God does this with us at times that things are going well, but sometimes
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God does this to us because of unrepentant sin in our lives.
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Not always. Just because you don't feel God's presence right now does not mean that you have unrepentant sin in your life at this moment.
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But at times it does, and this is what's happening with Jonah. We, like him, we seek to run from the presence of the
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Lord. Think about Jonah back in verse 3 and verse 10,
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I think, in chapter 1. Jonah makes no bones about it. He says, I'm running from the presence of the
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Lord. I want to get away from the presence of God. I want to get away from His people. I want to get away from His influence.
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I want to get away from His Word. I want to get away from Him. I need to get away from Him because every time I'm confronted with Him, then
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I'm confronted with my sin, and I'm exposed, and I'm in His throne room, and I see and the light sheds light on that beautiful bacteria of sin that I've got growing in the corner in the darkness over here, and we don't want to go to God.
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We don't want to be before God, and so we want to run from His presence. But then it's almost as if, it's almost as if God is up there saying,
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Okay, I'll tell you what. I'll give you a glimpse of what it feels like to be cast out.
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You want to be away from my presence? Let's see how you feel when you do get cast out.
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Now, we're never cast out. If we're in Him, we're never cast out, but that perceived, that perceived presence of God is what we're talking about.
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It's kind of like a, it's kind of like a child who gets upset and throws a fit because it doesn't like your rules and decides to run away.
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You know, one of the best things you can do with a kid that decides they're going to run away? Help them pack their bag. Right?
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All right, let's pack your bag. All right, so what's your plan? Where are you headed? How much money you got? How are you going to survive?
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See you later. What does that typically do? Why don't you want me to stay? Don't you love me?
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Right? It's almost as if God is just removing that sense of presence from him. He's packing our bag.
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Oh, you went away from me. Well, let's see how that goes for you. You're at the belly of a fish at the bottom of the ocean and you're trapped.
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Right? That's what God does and He gives us just a bit of a glimpse here. So what should be our response when we experience these moments of God removing
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His perceived presence from us? What should be our response? Is our response to lose hope?
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Is our response to throw up our hands and just say, well, you know,
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I give up. There's nothing I can do anyways. God's sovereign. He's going to do what He wants. So I'm just going to stand here and just wait for God.
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I'll just lay here in the belly of the fish and God's going to kind of do it. If I die, I die. If He releases me,
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He releases me. Is that how we're to respond? No, of course not. Should our response be just better, more obedience?
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Should our response be in the belly of that fish, in the bottom of that pit, to be like, okay,
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God, I know I didn't obey you over there. I don't really want to bend the knee on that one, but I will obey you from here on out and I'll obey good.
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And I'm going to do the best I can do. Should that be our response to God removing
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His perceived presence from us? Is it to go to church more often? Is it to do more good deeds?
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Is it to do all of these things? Of course none of these things. Have any of these things ever worked in your life? They've never worked in my life because I've tried all of them.
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I've done every single one of them from the pit. I can promise you that. And not one of them has ever shed light into my life, has never brought relief, has never brought back the presence of God.
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I've never been able to do that. And neither have you. So what should our response be?
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Look at the next part of that verse. It says, yet. What Jonah's saying is, even in this silence, even in the moment when
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I feel that you've removed your face from me, even in that time when experientially this is what
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I feel. He says, yet I shall again. This word again is
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Jonah proclaiming over and over and over again and again and again.
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I will do this over and over again. I've done it a million times before and I'll do it a million times more.
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He says, yet I shall again, over and over, look upon your holy temple.
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I don't feel you, God. I don't think you're here anymore. I'm not even sure if you're hearing my words.
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Yet, another time, I will look upon your holy temple.
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What's Jonah talking about? What's Jonah referring to here? Well, put yourself in the context of Jonah.
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He's a prophet of Israel. Jonah's talking about the holy of holies, isn't he? He's talking about a place where sacrifice is given for the forgiveness of sins, where an atonement is made, where the priest would go in and make an atonement for the people out of a sacrifice.
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That's what Jonah's referring to, your holy temple. Jonah would have understood that that practice of that priest carrying in a sacrifice is merely a picture, a foreshadowing.
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So what's Jonah looking to? Jonah, on the other side of the cross, is saying, yet again, over and over again and again,
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I will look to the Messiah, the one that God is and will provide for me.
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Because that's how he understood the holy temple. And that's what Jonah's looking to. He's looking at that foreshadowing of the
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Messiah. Because Jonah knew his own unworthiness. He knew that carrying out the law of Moses wasn't going to bring him any righteousness.
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That's not how he was saved. He wasn't saved by carrying out the ceremonies. That's not what the old covenant was.
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They knew good and well at this time, Jonah was very aware that these are just a sign that faith in the coming
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Messiah is it. And that's who he's looking to. His own unworthiness.
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Because if he had to base his standing with God down there at the belly of the fish, if you have to base your standing with God from that pit of darkness, and you had to base it on your feelings of is
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God truly here with me, or you had to base it on your own merit of worth to get yourself out of that pit, then we would be without hope.
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Jonah knew that. If it isn't for your holy temple, I'm without hope. I have nothing.
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And that's what Jonah was doing. It's exactly what we should do.
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When your sin has driven you to a pit of despair, the only thing for you to do is in that feeling of despair, yet, time and time again, look to His holy temple.
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Look to the atonement made on my behalf. I will continue to look because that's the only hope that Jonah had.
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To look upon His holy temple where that atonement was made, where it was accomplished, and where it was finished.
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This is how we should respond in these moments and, let's be honest, every other moment. If we would respond that way, we wouldn't end up in those moments, would we?
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But, we don't want to do that. So even though Jonah then makes this mental ascent, that I don't feel you, but again,
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I will look to your holy temple. I will look to the Messiah. I will look to Christ. That's what I'm going to set my eyes upon.
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That doesn't mean that Jonah immediately felt the presence of God again. Have you ever done that?
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When you're in a moment of hopelessness, you say, yet again, I will look to Jesus. I'm looking to Jesus. I counsel with some of you and you're like,
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Nathan, I'm looking to Jesus, but I still don't feel it. It's still not there. It's still not resolved. Something's not right.
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Well, the same thing with Jonah. Look at verse 5. Jonah says, the waters closed in over me to take my life.
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He still doesn't feel it. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped about my head.
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At the roots of the mountains, I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever.
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There's still a sense of hopelessness in Jonah here. He knows.
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He knows he's to look to Christ. He knows that he's to look to the Holy Temple. He knows
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God's presence isn't from him, but he feels as though he is in the deepest, darkest, most impenetrable prison that could be.
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When he uses this language, weeds that were wrapped about my head, a lot of Hebrew scholars believe that there were these certain weeds there in the
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Mediterranean Sea that divers, guys, would swim down in, and these weeds would get you so tangled up if you got too close to the bottom that you were trapped.
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There was no escape. You were drowning. And they think that this may be what he's referring to is these weeds wrapped about my head.
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And at the roots, verse 6, at the roots of the mountains. Think of a mountain.
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How easy is it to move a mountain? From our perspective, we're not moving no mountains, and if you're at the root of that mountain, and if you've been driven down to the land, and what he says here near the end of verse 6, whose bar is closed on me forever, it's as if he's saying,
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God himself has driven me to the deepest point, and then he's taken the key to the prison and thrown it out.
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That's how he feels. This is Jonah in this moment. But then, you see the back and forth.
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You see Jonah fighting with himself just as we fight with ourselves of the intellectual knowledge that we know about God, but we may not feel in the moment.
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He says, yet. You brought up my life from the pit.
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Oh Lord, my God. He's acknowledging deliverance.
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Jonah, I don't think, is referring to release from the belly of the fish.
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I think maybe Jonah thinks in this moment, I'm still going to die down here because of my disobedience to God, but I have put my faith and trust in the coming
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Messiah, faith that God will provide for me, and even though my life may fade here in this prison under the mountains, under the bars that have closed on me, that God has delivered me from the pit.
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God has delivered me from eternal judgment. God has delivered me, and I put my faith and trust in that, and I know it, and I can affirm it, and I may not feel it, but I know it's true.
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I've been delivered from that pit. Oh Lord, my God. There's a personal nature there with Jonah.
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That's his God. My God, you have delivered me from that pit, from eternal judgment.
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So I may die here in this, of this prison of my own making, but I am ultimately delivered, and I am not without hope.
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There is great hope in that, even when you don't feel it. Look at verse 7. When my life was fainting away, he's dying in this fish, isn't he?
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It's amazing, he's not dead already. When my life was fainting away,
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I remembered the Lord. All those things
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I knew to be true about God, all those things that I can affirm, I'm going to remember them, and I'm going to speak them,
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I'm going to remind myself of them. It says, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.
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Even when it doesn't feel like he's hearing your prayers. All those things that Jonah just prayed, he probably feels like God may not hear them.
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But, he always hears the prayers of the righteous, doesn't he? He hears the prayers of the righteous, and it's because of Christ.
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It's because of Christ in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Him, as Ephesians 3 .12
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says. We have great confidence to come before God, and it comes before His holy temple.
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It comes before His very throne room. So when you find yourself in this pit that you created for the most part with your sin, and you don't sense the presence of God, and you begin to think, it's too late to come to Him now.
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I've made my bed, He's obviously angry with me. You ever felt that?
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I backed myself into this corner, my sin brought me to this pit, and I can guarantee you God's up there silently.
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That's why He's not talking to me, because He's mad at me, because I disobeyed Him again. Everybody's looking at me all holy like,
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I never think that. I thought that. We think that God is angry with us in this moment, but God is not angry.
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Remember that you're looking at yourself. You're looking at your circumstances in that moment.
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And if you were without Christ, and God was looking at you in that pit,
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He would be angry with you. If it were you He was seeing, He would hate you, for God hates the evil -doer.
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But God is not angry with us as children, because He doesn't see us. He doesn't see us because He sees
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His Son, the finished work of His Son. When God looks at you, if you're in Christ, then
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He is seeing His Son, the one that He loves. He's seeing His Son, and it doesn't matter what you've done.
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It doesn't matter how much you've rebelled. It doesn't matter the pit that you've brought yourself into, because Christ has already paid for that pit.
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He already paid for that sacrifice. He already made a sacrifice for that sin that you have committed time and time again, and continue to commit time and time again.
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He's already paid for it, and you have to call out to Him in distress. And that literally goes to the throne room of God, doesn't it?
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Because your Savior is making intercession for you, and you can boldly come before God, even from that pit, even from your sin.
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That's a great reminder, isn't it? I know you guys are probably looking at me like, Nathan, you say this a lot.
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Yeah, I'm a one -trick pony. That's all I got. And I'm going to remind you every single week. God's not looking at you, thank goodness, because if He did,
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He'd hate you. He's looking at His Son, whom He loves, and that righteousness.
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And so when you feel like God's presence isn't there, and you know good and well that your sin brought you here,
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God's not angry with you if you're in Christ. What God's calling you to do is to bow the knee, to submit to His will, and call out to Him.
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That's what God's calling us to do. Christ is making intercession for us.
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But if you're trusting in your own merits, if you're trusting in your own vain, empty idols, your schemes and plans to get you out of this pit,
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I can guarantee you in those three days, Jonah was thinking of all the things that he might be able to do to escape this trap.
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These vain idols that can release you from this. We think of it. We try and come up with ways to get ourselves out of this situation.
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But when we do that, and we trust in our own merits, what happens? Look at verse 8. He says,
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Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. Vain idols.
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You put your hope in something other than your Savior? You put your hope in anything other than Christ, the one and only hope that you have?
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You put your hope in anything other than God? Then what happens? Then it's going to fail you.
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It's going to forsake you. What is steadfast love, though? What is steadfast love? You want to know what steadfast love is?
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It's the love of the Father. It's the love of the Father seen through the sacrifice of the Son and experienced through the work of the
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Spirit. That's it. That's steadfast. Nothing else is steadfast.
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Everything else will fail. Everything else, anything and everything else will forsake you. So when you're in that pit, call out.
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Whenever you experience or remember God's great steadfast love, what's going to happen?
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You are going to joyfully obey Him. You're going to come out of that pit ready to fall on your face before God.
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Say, God, what do you want me to do? What do you desire from me, and I want to obey you because you are my
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Savior. You released me. You forgave me. That's when you want to obey
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God. Now, I have to say this. That's not going to be perfect because you're going to find yourself going from one pit to another pit sometimes.
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You come out. You're wanting to obey God with everything you have. But look at what happened to Jonah later on, which we'll deal with in a couple of weeks.
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Jonah obeys God immediately. He gets on dry land. He's like, oh, great. God released me. Yes, I will obey you. I go straight to Nineveh.
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I preach to Him. Then what does he do? Immediately, not a week later, he's angry at God for saving the people of Nineveh.
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So don't think you're going to have a perfect. You're going to go through this one experience of the pit, and you're going to say, now
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I'm going to be a perfect Christian because now I've experienced this, and now I'm going to obey at all times, and I'm always going to obey. It's not going to work like that.
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Life is typically you jumping from pit to pit to pit to pit to pit, and Jesus releasing you, releasing you, releasing you, releasing you.
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That's life. So don't get discouraged in the midst of that. But look at verse 9. It says,
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But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you.
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Thanksgiving. Jonah's thankful from the belly of the fish?
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How is that possible? How are we to be thankful from the pit? How are we going to be thankful? Because we know who
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God is. Because we know what God has done. We know who's brought us there, and we know the one that's going to release us.
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We're able to be thankful because we know there's deliverance. And even if there's not immediate physical release and deliverance from it, we know ultimately, like he said, you've delivered me from the pit.
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I'm ultimately delivered, so I can be thankful. So even if I suffer here in the belly of this fish for the rest of my life and die,
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I'm still thankful because ultimately I win. So I can have a thankful heart, and that's what
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Jonah has. But with a voice of thanksgiving, I will sacrifice to you what
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I have vowed I will pay. This is Jonah's desire of obedience because of what
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God has done for him. And then Jonah makes this great declaration.
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Salvation belongs to the Lord. You see,
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Jonah has quoted scripture throughout this entire prayer. We could spend another sermon on that, of all the other
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Old Testament scriptures that he's actually just repeating throughout this prayer. But here in this specific one, this is him quoting
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David from Psalm 3, the one that we did for Call to Worship. Where David makes this exact same declaration.
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He says, salvation belongs to the Lord. David makes this out of a place of desperation. As he writes this psalm, he's running from his own son
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Absalom. He's running for his life. He's running for his kingdom.
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He's in despair, but he declares that salvation belongs to the Lord. What both
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David and Jonah are doing here is they're acknowledging that there is no hope apart from God's saving power and work.
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Even King David needed God to deliver him from David's own son. Jonah needed
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God to deliver him. Salvation belongs to the Lord. God does what
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He wants. And as soon as Jonah makes this declaration, look at verse 10.
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And the Lord spoke to the fish. It's like God's like, okay,
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I created you for this moment. I'm done. You carried out what
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I had ordained for you to do. He spoke to the fish, and it vomited
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Jonah out upon dry land. You know,
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I find it interesting here that God could have said, all right, fish, now just spit him out.
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At least go to the surface and spit him out. And He could have done that, and He could have been like, hey,
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Jonah, you know, you were the one that brought yourself into this. Now I'm going to release you, but you're going to have to work real hard to swim to shore.
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You have to work hard. It's time for you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and work hard now, Jonah. I've released you from it.
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Now you do your part. He could have done that, but He doesn't. No, He immediately plants
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His feet on dry land. He immediately delivers him to safety. Instantly.
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If you find yourself in that pit today, God is willing and able to pick you up and place you on solid ground.
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He delivers. He's the only one that can. He's the only one that will.
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And it doesn't depend on you. And there's nothing you have to do. What you have to do is respond to this
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God in proper fashion. And when you respond to this God in proper fashion, you will instinctively love and desire to obey
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Him. And it's not work. My burden is easy and my yoke is light.
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Right? It's not work. So all you have to do is humble yourself and call out to Him.
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He is the only, only means of escape from anything and everything.
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And ultimately sin that wreaks such havoc in our lives. So now we are going to prepare to go to the table.
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If you are in Christ, if you are a baptized believer, then this table is for you.
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We are going to partake of these elements in remembrance of what Christ has done on our behalf.
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For you have delivered me from the pit. And we need to be reminded of that week in and week out.
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It's all about our Savior. That's our only hope. So let's worship Him through this means.
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I'm going to pray for this. And Pastor Jeremiah will be on this side and I'll be over here. You can grab the elements just like we do every week.
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Come back to your seat and take them in your time. Pray as a family. Pray individually. And then we'll come back together and sing the doxology and a benediction.
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Let's go to the Lord in prayer now. Lord, You are our