We can pray to God our Savior!
Jonah 1:17-2:10
Introduction:
We took about a month to work through chapter 1 of Jonah, but I expect to move
a bit quicker from here. Today we’ll cover all of Jonah 2. There is a lot to
learn in this little book, a lot to learn about God and a lot to learn about
ourselves. We’ve seen already the holiness of God, His wrath against sin, and
also His mercy and grace. We’ve seen how He was working in Jonah to mold him
into a more usable servant. We also see Jonah as a mirror that will expose our
own hearts that are so prone to wander and rebellious. Last week, we had a great
service by the team from Georgia, and Dr. Burnett’s message was an important
reminder that God has us here for a purpose: to be His witnesses, as we share
God’s story of grace with the world. God’s
grace to the world is a major theme of the book of Jonah… and Jonah struggled
with that very point.
Our text
today is a prayer of Jonah from the belly of the fish. We have seen prayer
already in the book of Jonah, but so far, not from Jonah! The pagan sailors first
prayed to their lifeless idols in the storm. That was futile. Then, they, not
Jonah, call on Jonah’s God for mercy. The storm ends suddenly when Jonah is
cast into the sea – and the sailors recognize God’s holiness, and His awesome
power and presence. They respond to Him in worship. Jonah’s prayer reveals that
finally, as Jonah is sinking into the depths, near death, as his life was
slipping away, he looked up and cried out to God…
The BIG Idea: In every situation in life we can pray to God our Savior!
Context: “I was sinking deep in sin…” (cf. 1:17). Two
weeks ago, we left Jonah in the fish’s belly. We know that the chapter
divisions are not inspired, and 1:17 is 2:1 in the Hebrew Bible, so, we’ll
start there today.
And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up
Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights…
We know
from Jonah’s prayer in chapter 2, that as he moved away from God, he was again “going
down,” closer to death. Then, tangled in seaweed, his life slipping from him,
he finally prayed to God… and God heard his prayer. Though the answer probably
wasn’t what he would have expected! What
would you have thought if you prayed to God for help, then looked and saw a
giant fish coming at you? “God, I said ‘Have mercy’ not ‘I’m sushi!’” God hears
the prayers of his people, and He is good and He does good… all the
time. True, the answers might not always be what we would expect, but we can
trust Him, always. In every situation in life, we can pray to God our Savior!
There is
some irony here. The Lord “appointed” a great fish to swallow Jonah, and
it does exactly as it was supposed to do, later it vomits him onto the land
when God tells it to do so. In chapter 4 the same word is used three more
times, as God appoints a plant to grow to give Jonah shade, a worm to kill the
plant, and a scorching wind to blow on Jonah. Nature obeys, precisely
fulfilling the role that God had for it. Only Jonah, the prodigal prophet,
resisted God’s call. First, he refuses to go to Nineveh, and only after a
storm, nearly drowning, and three days cramped in the fish’s belly, will he
reluctantly obey, Even then we’ll see that still his heart is not in it, at
least not in terms of having compassion for the Ninevites. Jonah had not prayed
since he turned from the face of God. He still had some lessons to learn about praying,
with thanksgiving, to God our Savior, trusting and believing Him in every
situation in life. At every moment, we can…
I. Pray to the God who saves: As Paul said, “In everything, by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God…” (2:1-7).
Then
Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, 2 saying, "I called out to
the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I
cried, and you heard my voice. 3
For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood
surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. 4 Then I said, 'I am driven
away from your sight; Yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.' 5 The waters closed in over me to
take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head 6 at the roots of the mountains. I
went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up
my life from the pit, O LORD my God. 7
When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to
you, into your holy temple.
Jonah’s
prayer begins with a general statement, “I called out to the Lord in my
distress, and he answered me…” He then addresses God directly, “Out of
the belly of Sheol I cried, and YOU heard my voice…” The two lines are
parallel, affirming that God heard Jonah’s cry for help. We see language like
this in Psalms of Thanksgiving, songs where the writer looks back and remembers
how God has delivered him or answered his prayers in past times of crisis. It
is praising the God who saves. Jonah realized that he had been running from
God, and he didn’t have any right to expect God to save him. Like the prodigal
son when he returned to the Father, “I have no right to be called your son…”
But God is rich in mercy. As he prays here, Jonah looks back on his near-death
experience, and recounts how God heard and answered his prayer.
Jonah makes
it clear that he knows that he is not an innocent victim, cast into the sea by
no good pagans. To his credit, Jonah doesn’t hold his situation against the
sailors. On the contrary, he recognizes God’s hand in his circumstances…
3 For you cast me into the deep, into the heart
of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your
billows passed over me. 4
Then I said, 'I am driven away from your sight; Yet I shall again look
upon your holy temple.'
Jonah
doesn’t overtly confess his sin as the cause of his circumstances, but as He
says God is the one who cast Him into the sea, and who owns the storm, he is
implicitly recognizing the judgement, or at least the chastening, of the
Father. As his life was slipping away, perhaps in his last seconds of
consciousness, he remembered the Lord, and his prayer went up to Him, into His
“holy Temple.” (v.7). As Jonah
recognized God’s chastening, He looked up, seemingly with a repentant heart,
determined to cry out to God. The week I taught this part of Jonah to the AWANA
Sparks, the “big idea” we tried to emphasize was, “No matter what, no matter
where, talk to God, He is there!” Like the Father in the parable of the
Prodigal Son, the Father is always watching and waiting, ready to receive us.
Jonah
cried out to God in His Temple. The Temple in Jerusalem was a
tangible representation of the throne of God in heaven. In the holy of holies
was the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the tablets of Moses, the Ten
Commandments. A gold covered lid, the Mercy Seat, covered the box, with Cherubim
on either side. That place was symbolic of God’s presence, between the Cherubim
and above the mercy seat. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the High Priest
would sprinkle blood on the mercy seat. It is a striking picture: All humans
are guilty of breaking the commandments, we would have no hope of approaching
the Holy One. But God sent the Son, the Lamb of God, who shed his own blood for
us. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that the Son, our great High Priest,
entered not the earthly Temple, but heaven itself, and not with the blood of a
bull or a goat, but with His own precious blood. Remember what happened to the
Temple veil when Jesus died? It was ripped in two, from the top to the bottom.
Because of Him, in the name of Jesus, we have access to the God of Heaven who
made the sea and the dry land. In Christ, the way is open. And so, “No matter
what, no matter where, talk to God, He is there!” His mercies are new every
morning – that is truly amazing grace! And so, in every situation in life, we
can pray to God our Savior!
II. Pray
to the God who is: Idols can’t help,
the one true God hears our prayer (2:8).
“Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their
hope of steadfast love.”
The NLT
clarifies the sense well: “Those who worship false gods turn their backs on
all God's mercies.” Idols are vain, empty, powerless, unable to hear or to
help in time of need. Jonah is saying that choosing idols, “gods” that we make
up in our own mind, means that we are rejecting the chesed,
the steadfast love, the covenantal faithfulness of the true God, the God
who “is.” Yahweh is the God of Heaven who made the sea and the dry land. He is our
Creator, mighty and merciful. The Phoenician sailors had been idol worshippers
before the storm. The Ninevites had their false Gods. But the Jews? And modern
westerners like us? Does this warning even apply? We would never carve an
image, call it our God, and worship it… would we? Tim Keller says,
“An idol
is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, ‘If I have that, then
I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel
significant and secure’” (Counterfeit Gods, xviii).
Whenever we look somewhere else for our ultimate
meaning and purpose and fulfillment in life, we are worshipping the creation
rather than the Creator. Only God is God. I truly believe that God wants us to
enjoy life in His creation. At its best, we get glimpses of the way life should
be, the way life will be, in the New Heavens and the New Earth. But they
are only glimpses. Like C.S. Lewis said, we live in the Shadow Lands. The
future God has in store for us is more and better than we can possibly imagine!
The best part will be that the veil will be removed, sin will be gone, we’ll
know God and fellow-ship with Him without our vision dimmed by our fallen
nature. Because that is our sure hope, even as we live in this fallen world, in
every situation in life we can pray, with thanksgiving, to God our Savior!
III. When we pray to God, we will be moved to worship
Him: A prayerful heart is prepared
for true worship (2:9a).
“But I with the voice
of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay.”
Think of
the faith, and the hope, that is expressed in these words! Jonah is speaking
from cramped darkness of the fish’s belly!
The English translations all render this as a contrast with the
preceding verse: In contrast to those who give regard to worthless idols, Jonah
vows to praise and worship the true God. The implication is that he will
experience the chesed, the steadfast love, the covenantal
faithfulness of the true God, the God who is. That concept is at the heart of
God’s dealing with humans. He graciously chose a godly line, and made a promise
to keep them, and to one day bring the Promised Seed into the world who would
crush the serpent’s head, a Rescuer who would deliver a remnant from every
tribe and nation.
The Psalms
focus on worship, humans responding to God. Lament psalms show people crying
out to God, voicing their pain and confusion, pleading for deliverance. Hymns
are declarations of praise to the God who is, focusing on his nature and his
attributes. Thanksgiving psalms are similar in that they are praise, but they
describe how God has delivered and saved the psalmist or the nation and offer
praise and thanksgiving for God’s intervention. That seems to be Jonah’s
prayer here. He remembers how he cried out to God and how God answered. He was
still in the fish’s belly, but somehow, miraculously, he could breath, he was
alive. Only God could have done that! God was there, and God could hear his
prayers. Even if the answers to your prayers have not been what you would have
expected, can you trust that God is working, that He is present in your life?
Can you believe that He is good, and that He will cause every detail to work
together for your good and for His glory? That brings us back to the BIG
Idea: In every situation in life we can pray to God our Savior!
IV. As we pray to God, He will lead us to find our
place in His mission: And as we trust Him, He will use us to proclaim His
message to the world (2:9b-10).
“…Salvation belongs to the LORD!" 10 And the LORD spoke to the fish,
and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
Jonah
makes a profound theological declaration. Some have called it the most concise
and profound theological statement in the entire Bible: “Salvation belongs
to the Lord…” The language of 2:9b is saying that God alone is the
source of salvation. He alone gets the glory. Salvation is not
something that we can earn, or merit, or add to or complete. As Paul said in I
Corinthians 1:30, “He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus…” Jonah
couldn’t save himself. And he had no right to expect anything from God but
judgment. Neither do we. Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners. His sacrificial death provided redemption for all who believe. As
Jesus said in the Good Shepherd discourse, “My sheep hear my voice, and I
know them, and they follow me… I give to them eternal life and they shall never
perish…” (John 10:27-28). Jonah’s final declaration in the belly of the
fish may well have been part of his prayer of thanksgiving, but he also
reflected on that as he later wrote the words down in the document that we have
before us. So, he is testifying to his readers that the Lord saves,
that He is our Rescuer, He alone is the source of life – and the eternal
life for which we were created.
Notice
again in v.10 that God speaks to the fish, and it obeys. He told the fish to
swallow Jonah and it did, now, as Jonah voices his thanksgiving and worship to
God, affirming Him alone as the source of salvation, God speaks to the fish,
and it “vomits” Jonah onto dry land. The word translated vomit appears
only twelve (12) times in the Hebrew Bible. In every other case there is a negative
implication, an expression of disgust or judgement. In Leviticus 18, for
example, the word appears three times in a context warning the people not to
follow the abominations of the pagans in the land…
24 "Do not make yourselves unclean by any of
these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have
become unclean, 25 and the
land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited
out its inhabitants. 26 But
you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations,
either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you 27 (for the people of the land,
who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became
unclean), 28 lest the land vomit
you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was
before you.
That is quite a picture, and quite a warning! We’ll see that God was not finished with Jonah.
Though the prophet had realized his sin in running from God, and though he had
vowed to obey the Lord’s call and to worship Him, we’ll see that His heart
was not yet right with respect to the Ninevites. He did not long for their
conversion. In fact, he still hoped for their judgement! As he had seen his own
need for the grace and mercy of God, he still needed to learn to express that
same grace and mercy, even to pagans, like the men on the ship (for whom, it
seems, Jonah never did pray). And like the inhabitants of Nineveh, who were
about to face judgment from God. Jonah wasn’t there yet, and the fish “vomits”
him onto the land… God knows Jonah’s heart, and he will continue to patiently
work on Him. Just as he is working on you and me. We’ll see that God gets the
last word in this little book, and if we take it that Jonah was the writer, the
implication is that He finally understands…
What is God saying to me in this passage? The BIG Idea in this passage, in
Jonah’s prayer from the fish’s belly, is that in every situation in life, even
in the darkness, even when we can’t see the way, we can pray to God our Savior!
As Paul told the Philippians,
“…do not
be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in
Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:6,7).
What would God have me to do in response to
this passage? Jonah was at the brink
of death, and he finally cried out to God, and God was ready. In fact, the
answer must have been on the way long before Jonah even prayed. Help came… in the form of a great fish! Don’t
get distracted in debates about the big fish, that is not the point of the
story. The fish really has a small part in the book of Jonah. This story is
not about a great fish, it is about a Great God, a God who is real, not an
idea made up by humans. A God who has spoken, who has revealed Himself to us. A
God who is holy and just, and who is also merciful and gracious. A God who
works in history for our good… and for His glory. He is the God of heaven,
who made the sea and the dry land… and the entire universe! And He is the
Father, waiting for the prodigal to see His need and to turn homeward, and to
trust that God is the only hope… Have you been there? Maybe you are there now. No
matter what, no matter where, talk to God, He is there. He is right here,
and He knows your name… He loves you so much that he gave his only Son… Salvation
is from the Lord… And it is for everyone who will believe! That
God says “come.” He invites your prayers. In every situation in life we can
pray and give thanks to God our Savior!
AMEN.
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