I have to confess to you that getting started on writing this week’s sermon was actually quite difficult. I don’t know if it was that I was distracted and just couldn’t focus or if the text was particularly difficult or what it was. In all honesty, I’m thankful because I can probably count on one hand the number of times that that has happened to me; where I just haven’t been able to get started. So, what I did was I sat and I tried to ponder what it must have felt like to be in the stomach of this large fish for three days. One of my friends from college that I was talking to this week told me to go and sit at an all-you-can-eat catfish buffet and see if that helped. I was about ready to go find one if something hadn’t gotten stirred within me. However, as I sat and thought about the feelings that Jonah must have been experiencing, my mind wandered back to when I was about 9 or 10 years old. You see, when I was that age, my nights were filled with baseball. My parents and my friends’ parents would just drop us off at Phil Hardin Baseball Park, give us $5 for dinner, and come back when all the games were over. We would go even on nights that none of us had games. Obviously, it was a different time, but that’s how we spent many nights. Now, alongside the park, there was this creek that I never really paid much attention to, until one day one of my friends thought that it would be fun to go down into the creek and see what we could find/catch. So, we went down and spent a while seeing what was in there. Now, this creek was covered on both sides by a few rows of pine trees that completely blocked out all of the light from the baseball fields. And that wasn’t an issue during the day because the sun was out. However, after the sky turned dark, that was a different story. Also, none of us even thought about flashlights, not that we would have taken one if we had thought about it. As the sun went away and this creek was full of nothing but water and darkness and random sounds, I found myself getting terrified. I couldn’t even see my friends, much less a way out of there. I found myself actually praying to God that if He led me out of there then I promised I would never go in that creek again. I think we’ve all prayed something like that prayer at some point in our lives haven’t we? Now eventually, after what felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes, we found a little sliver of light and made our way out of that creek and never returned unless there was plenty of light still available.
Jonah’s prayer here in chapter two of this book is often thought of as a prayer of desperation like that made of a 9 year old stuck in a creek. A lot of folks think that the essence of Jonah’s prayer was “Lord if you’ll get me out of here then I’ll gladly go to Nineveh.” However, that’s not really what Jonah’s prayer was about at all. We’ll see next Sunday that he’s still not too keen on the idea of going to Nineveh and delivering a call to repentance. You see, nowhere in this prayer does Jonah try and strike some deal where his delivery from this situation would result in a readjusted attitude towards the will of God. I’ve probably read this prayer, this psalm, no less than 50 times this week trying to read it and meditate on it and prayer over it and the sentiment that I get is that it is primarily a psalm of recognition of God’s presence, God’s sovereignty, God’s providence, and God’s grace. (repeat)
Now, it’s not known whether these exact words were spoken by Jonah inside the fish or whether they were recorded afterwards, and it really doesn’t matter. From a few of the phrases about deliverance being spoken of as being in the past, we might be able to assume that it was recorded after the fact. However, I don’t want to focus so much upon the exact wording that Jonah chooses to use here, but upon the sentiment and attitude that is behind his prayer as a whole. If we look at the first words from Jonah we find his understanding of God’s presence. “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.” Now, when we see the word Sheol, that is a commonly used word in biblical poetry for the land of the dead. Some English Bible translations substitute the word Hades for Sheol. Either way, you get the point that Jonah knows that while he was in the fish’s stomach that he was as good as dead. As Jonah continues on, we find, “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.” A little further, “The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head…I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever.” These are the words of a man who seems to know that he has reached the end of his life, which wouldn’t be an unreasonable assumption given where Jonah currently was. However, there is acknowledgment all the way back at the beginning that we read, “and you heard my voice.” Jonah realized that there was no place that he can go that he was outside of God’s presence. And I’m not just talking about his attempt at fleeing, but I’m talking about in this life or the next, upon this earth or in the heavens, there is nowhere that is outside of the presence and sovereignty of God.
One of the things that is so impressive about Jonah’s prayer is that, as James Boice points out, there is an honesty to it that we don’t find very often. Jonah isn’t chalking all of this up to a difficult situation and a freak storm. He’s not trying to explain away the things that have happened to and around him. Jonah knows that God delivered him to that very spot, on that very ship, so that he could be tossed overboard and swallowed up by that very fish (and that’s not even taking into account the conversion of those sailors that we looked at last Sunday). Jonah knows that God’s providence and sovereignty are what have led him to that point in his life. He understands that nothing that he had done the entire time in his attempt at fleeing from God’s presence was ever for even one millisecond outside of God’s control. Jonah knows that there has never been a moment that he was outside of God’s power. And with that comes the acknowledgement that God both delivered Jonah into that situation of hopelessness and despair, and that He delivered Jonah out of that situation as well. “Yet you brought up my life form the pit, O Lord my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.” Now, I know that I said that I wasn’t going to focus on specific wording today, but I lied. But I promise this will be the only time this morning. Notice that in those words that I just read that Jonah speaks of his remembering God, but not God’s remembering of him. Why do you think that is? Well, as we’ve really focused in on during our look at the account of Jonah, it is because there is no such time as that which God forgets or forsakes His children. As I said at the outset of this book, while this is an account of a wayward prophet of God ultimately accomplishing God’s will, it is also a reminder to us that God’s will will always be accomplished regardless of our willingness to comply, and that we are forever in His sight.
As Jonah sits in the stomach of that great fish, he has a lot of time to reflect upon things. You would be amazed, for those of you who don’t do this very often, at the work/self-reflection that you can get done simply by sitting in silence, without any distractions. As Jonah was sitting in the fish’s stomach without anything to distract him, he was left with only his thoughts. He seems to think back upon his recent experiences, “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.” No doubt this is a reference to the sailors crying out to their individual gods, pleading with them to stop the mighty tempest from destroying their ship and taking their lives. What a wondrous work we saw God do in transforming the hearts of these sailors from ones who looked to vain idols to ones who professed faith in God alone. Jonah cries out a message of thanksgiving for the newfound faith of the sailors. He cries out a message of thanksgiving for himself, that he is found in God despite his deserving to be placed outside of God’s covenant promises for all that he had done in his straying from God’s will. “But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!” John Owen, the famous Puritan, was fond of saying “that it's one thing to know the truth; it's another thing to know the power of that truth.” It's one thing to say as a kind of motto or catechism, “Salvation is of the Lord”; it's another thing to know that in the depths of our hearts and to stake our very lives upon it. Sometimes we need to experience something in order for it to really become truthful to us and for us. Sometimes we need to go through the trials and see the real power of God’s promises before it becomes much more than just mere words to us. I love teaching my children The Shorter Catechisms of the Westminster Confession of Faith. It's an extraordinary blessing; it's one that I never had as a child simply because my church didn’t teach it. Now, it’s not like we have study sessions revolving around the WSC, but Amy and I do like to teach them The Catechisms whenever we can. It's much more difficult learning a catechism when you’re an adult than it is when you’re a child, as many of you know. And what we’ve really noticed within our children is that it’s one thing for them to be able to respond to our question as to what our primary purpose is, but it is something altogether different for them to really know and live out that we are here to glorify God and enjoy Him always.
Well, what does it mean to say “Salvation is of the Lord”? What do you think that Jonah meant with these concluding words to his psalm? Does it mean that we contribute nothing to our salvation? I mean, yes, we do need to exercise faith and we need to engage in repentance, but these don’t contribute to our salvation. Salvation is of the Lord from beginning to end. If God doesn't save us, then we're not saved. That's what Jonah learned in the belly of this fish, that salvation is all of God from beginning to end. Although it may not be that he learned it for the first time as much as it is that he remembered something that he already knew quite well. However, even though he knew it, he needed to be taught it in the crucible of trial and suffering. What Jonah came to have a deeper and more fruitful understanding of was the grace of God. Saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Now, obviously Jonah hadn’t gotten to the Christ part of that statement of the reformation, but you get the idea. Jonah had realized that all of the good works, the keeping of the law, all of it wasn’t about our earning our salvation. It was a right response to the gift of salvation that God grants to us ever so graciously. In just a minute we’re going to sing the wonderful hymn Rock of Ages. To me, the most convicting and truthful line in that entire hymn is found at the end of the second verse. “In my hand no price I bring; Simply to Thy cross I cling.” Jonah had realized that his salvation wasn’t based on him, but on God, and he was thankful for that. We stand today just as, if not more, thankful than Jonah. We might be more thankful because we’ve seen what it took for God to achieve our salvation for us. We’ve seen the cross. We’ve seen the crucifixion. We’ve read the words of Jesus as he was nailed to the cross. We know that the price that should have been ours to pay to satisfy the wrath of God was paid and paid in full by Christ and Christ alone. We too are confronted with the presence of God, the sovereignty of God, the providence of God, and the grace of God.
Our text closes by telling us of Jonah’s being vomited or spat back onto dry land. We see that even this was a work of God. “And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.” Charles Haddon Spurgeon said this fish was an Arminian fish, “As soon as Jonah said ‘Salvation is of the Lord’ he spat him out!” For those of you who understand that little quip. However, what I want all of us to see as we now find Jonah put back upon the course that God had planned for him is the knowledge of God that he gleaned through his experience in the fish’s stomach; how he came to feel God’s presence, sovereignty, providence, and grace. We could say that all four of those were in play with his deliverance from the fish’s stomach back to dry land. But, as we’ll see next Sunday, Jonah’s heart still remains blinded by sin in terms of what he must do. For you see, to paraphrase John Owen’s words that I read earlier, it’s one thing to know something, but an entirely different thing to live it out. It’s one thing to say salvation is of the Lord, but it’s an entirely different thing to really mean it and put it into action. I want to challenge all of you this week to not only know the truth of God, the power of God, and the grace of God, but to live your lives as shining examples of the glorious and wonderful privilege that it is to be found in Christ Jesus. I want to challenge all of you to not just make God’s Word something that gives you comfort, but something that spurs you into action for the sake of the kingdom; seek first the righteousness of the kingdom of God.
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