Joel Brooks: Last week, we did get to look at how Jonah was running from the presence of the Lord, but where can he flee from the Lord's presence? The reason we're studying Jonah is because, remember, Jesus said that we needed to. When Jesus was asked, by the people to give them a sign that he was the Son of God, he said, a evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, yet no sign shall be given it except for this, the sign of the prophet Jonah. Jonah points us to Jesus, and that is why we are spending these weeks looking at this book. We're gonna pick up where we left off last week.
Jonah chapter 1, beginning in verse 17. And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish 3 days and 3 nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish, 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. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me.
All your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, I am driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look upon your holy temple. The waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped around my head 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. Oh my Lord. Oh Lord, my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the lord, and my prayer came to you into your holy temple.
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 I have vowed, I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord. And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
This is the word of the Lord. It's with you. If you would, pray with me. Father, we thank you that in your relentless grace, you will not let us escape your presence. Lord, that you love us dearly.
You have given your son in order to save us and to bring us back to you. And, Father, I pray that we would come to a greater understanding of that. We would come to know you more and more as we look at this text, so that our lives might look more like Jesus, and that our lives will be spent in the adoration of Him. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
Okay. So recap. Last week, we saw how God had told Jonah to arise and to go to the Ninevites and to preach, and, Nineveh was 500 miles this way, and instead, Jonah got up and he went to Tarshish, which was 500 miles in the opposite direction. And then the Lord in his grace went after Jonah and threw violent storms at him, so that Jonah could not escape. And Jonah, he recognized that the storm is from God.
The sailors knew that the storm was from God, and so they asked Jonah, how can we make this storm stop, because we don't wanna die? And Jonah said, you need to throw me overboard into it. And last week, where we left off was they threw him overboard into this violent storm. And then what happened next? What happened next to Jonah had such a profound impact on his life.
He was so moved by it, later, he decided to write it down, but not just write it down, he actually wrote a poem about it. He he felt like he needed to to artistically express and to carefully think through every word and savor every word when writing out what happened to him. It could have such a profound effect on who he was and what God's called him to be. And I actually think that this was probably the first part of Jonah that he wrote, was he wrote this poem. And then after he wrote this poem, he probably wrote the story, to give the context to what we just read.
Now this poem came about as a result of Jonah being brought down to the lowest point of his life. And actually, this becomes a theme as you go through Jonah. You keep seeing how he keeps descending. Over and over again, you read the phrase, and Jonah went down. And Jonah went down.
Jonah was told to arise and go to Nineveh, but instead he went down. He goes down to Tarshish. He goes down to the belly of the ship. He's cast down into the deep. The deep then surrounds him.
And then finally, you come to chapter 2, verse 6, and you read once again that he went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever, And then it turns. Yet, you brought me up. You brought up my life from the pit. Finally, there's this turn where Jonah could go no further down. And it's at that point when he's at the lowest of the low, he is at the absolute bottom of his life, that God finally begins to raise him back up.
And this happened to Jonah, and I know it's happened to some of you. I've heard your stories and how the way you came to know the Lord is because the Lord sent storms into your life, and the Lord brought you to an absolute rock bottom, where you couldn't go any further down, and so you finally decided to look up. And that's what we see here. Now, I can't imagine how terrifying it would have been for Jonah to have been thrown into the ocean. Just a little something that, you know, I'll share, confess with you.
I'm terrified of the ocean. I really don't have any other fears that I know of in life, but I'm actually scared about getting in a boat and going out in the ocean. It's not that I'm really scared of the water, I'm scared of the drowning part of being in the water. And, even my first moments as a child, I remember being in a boat. I embarrassed the daylights out of my parents because a friend took us out in a boat and I literally got in the middle of the boat and I got in a ball and I just screamed the entire time.
So, so, so that's me. That is my phobia or fear is getting on a boat and being out in the middle of the ocean in a storm. But probably worse than that would be outside the boat in the middle of the storm. To me, this would be a horror beyond comprehension, and I know it was to Jonah. As he's in there, and we don't know how long he tried to stay afloat, but as as he would go way down into the valleys, and then he would be he would be cast way up on top of these mountains of water.
He had to be terrified. And finally, at one point, he can stay afloat no more, and one of these mountainous waves crashes down over him, and he begins to drown. Look at verse 5. The waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me.
Weeds were wrapped around my head. This literally makes me shudder when I'm reading this, and I'm trying to think of being buried under the water and sinking down, and you're losing your breath. It's the last little bit of oxygen you have and you're just trying desperately to get back to the surface for one last breath of air, but instead you're entangled in seaweed. And and you can't reach the surface. Instead, you're being pulled down.
And that's what happens to him. And he finally, he goes down for the last time. That's what we see in verse 6. And this is his final descent that we have in Jonah. This is final descent here.
Now the Lord's gonna begin bringing him up. His rebellion has taken him to rock bottom in his life. You can't get despair beyond this. His death is absolutely certain. He says that he was in the belly of Sheol.
Sheol is the place where the dead go to await judgment. So he's not even thinking that he's gonna be rewarded for his life. He's as good as dead, and he is awaiting God's judgment here, now at the bottom of the ocean. What he's describing is, he got what he wished. The exact opposite of being in the presence of the Lord.
He's been cast away. But then, it's here, at this point, when his life is fainting away, when he's used up that last little bit of oxygen in that last final moment, he has the thought, the Lord. At that last moment, literally seconds before death, it says that he remembers the Lord. He remembers him. It took this much pain to finally get Jonah to that point where he would cry out to the Lord.
Now, we don't know what exactly he prayed here. I can imagine it wasn't a long prayer. It was probably similar to Peter's prayer when Peter was sinking in the waves, and he just cried, Lord, save me. It's good, it's direct, to the point, and the Lord answers it. And that's probably his prayer.
He just thinks, Lord, save me. And the Lord answered. Now I could not help, but think as I was studying this text this week, What will be my last thoughts right before my last breath? What will they be? Have you ever thought about what's gonna be the last thing you think about before you die?
I mean, that the Lord would actually bring Jonah to this point in his life, to where he gets to see what's really important to him and what would really happen. That's a tremendous grace that the Lord gives to Jonah here, to allow him to experience this. Jonah was taken to the depths in order to be shown what really matters. And Jonah at this point, he's not thinking about his career. He's not thinking about how much money he has saved up.
He's not thinking about his reputation. He's not thinking of any of those things. What will be the last thoughts you have before you take your last breath? Are you gonna wish that you worked just a little bit harder? Is your last thought gonna be, man, I wish I had gone to one more meeting.
I wish I had rushed off to just one more soccer practice. I wish I'd worked just a little bit harder in my life. I wish I'd saved just a little bit more money. That current thing that that you that stressful thing that you have in your mind right now, that thing that you brought in with you here to church, do you think you're gonna be thinking of that thing? That thing that has so occupied your mind over the last few weeks, is that even gonna be a thought when it comes to time to take your final breath?
No. We get to see here what matters in the end. Those of you who have been with someone that they love, and someone that you love, and you've seen them die. You've watched them die. You know what a sacred and fearful thing that is.
That's happened to me several times. I've watched people breathe their last breath. And it's a sacred moment. But you know that at that moment, even when you are with that person, they die alone. Ultimately, you can't go with them.
You can't take the next step with them. It's just them and their Creator. That's it. It's just them and the Lord. And the last seconds here before Jonah is certain that he is going to die, he's not thinking about the vacations he never got to take, or places he never got to see.
He's not thinking about his career, he's not thinking about his home, he's not even thinking about the regrets that he has over life. He's thinking about the one thing that matters, which is the Lord. What a grace that he was taken to this moment. So as he's making his bed in Sheol, he finds that even there, the Lord is there. And so he calls out to him.
Now up to this point, remember, all Jonah has wanted to do is to escape from the Lord's presence. That's all he has wanted up until when he was almost given that. And then he cries out, and the Lord answers. He answers even the prayers of a runner here. Even the prayers of one who was living in open rebellion of him.
As a matter of fact, if if Jonah hadn't run away and his life would not have fallen apart, he would not have called out to the Lord in this moment. For some of you in this room, you might think you've run too far, you've done too much, that it's way past time for you to ever call out to the Lord. Know that there there is always time, and that you can't ever go too far. Call out to the Lord and he answers, Even the prayers of the guilty. Alright.
So, God heard Jonah's prayer. But let's be honest, He didn't answer it, probably in the way that Jonah anticipated. Alright? Or Jonah would have wanted. Now, I was not there to hear, you know, Jonah's exact prayer, but it probably was not.
Lord, I'd love for you to send some giant terrifying fish to come and swallow me and keep me in its digestive juices for 3 days and then vomit me on land. That probably was not his prayer. I'm pretty certain of that. But that's what happened. Okay.
I probably need to address this whole, you know, Jonah being swallowed by a fish thing. Did this really happen? Did this not really happen? There is nothing in this story to indicate that this is untrue, or that this did not happen. There's nothing here.
And, and just hear me, Jonah being swallowed by a fish is far more plausible than Jesus rising from the dead, which is the center of our faith. And so miracles happen, and I believe absolutely that Jonah was swallowed by a fish in order to be preserved. The author certainly is not embellishing the story here. I mean, notice how how plainly he tells this. He simply says, this is the dramatic moment.
He simply says, and the Lord appointed a fish to swallow up Jonah. I mean, that's it. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish 3 days 3 nights. It's just told matter of fact. There's no embellishments.
There's no vivid descriptions. It's just really low key. Yet if they were to make a movie of this, this is 30 minutes. I mean, this is like, this is lots of slow motion, you know, camera action. It's epic music happening the entire time.
This is where you would pull out all the emotional strings here, but we're just simply told it happened, and and then the story moves on. And the reason we're told that it happened is because this was one of the signs that points to who Jesus is. It's a miraculous sign that points to the real death of Jesus, who was in the grave for 3 days and then was brought back to life. Now, because this really happened, there's a number of things that I think we can pull out from this story that teach us about prayer and how God chooses to rescue us. And so, we're gonna look at 4 or 5 of these.
We'll see how long we have. The first thing that we can learn about prayer and how God rescues us is this. It's one we've already seen. God listens to the prayers even of the rebellious. He listens to the prayers of the guilty.
He listens to the prayers of those who are running away from him. Despite all of that, God still hears, and he still rescues. That's good news. The second thing we learn is this, that God was answering this prayer way before Jonah ever prayed it. Way before he ever prayed it.
God did not wait to hear Jonah pray this prayer, and then try to come up with an answer for it? I mean, if so, that was one heck of a coincidence. Alright? Okay, Jonah, I hear you. What can I oh, there's a fish?
Let me just pull this fish over here, and let's work this thing out. God's not working on the fly here. This fish was likely created before Jonah was born, and God had this fish there right at that moment. Jonah's entire life, even his rebellion, was completely in God's control here. God had answered, begun answering that prayer way before Jonah ever prayed it.
Jonah might have felt like everything was spiraling out of control, and that God was nowhere on the scene, but God was working, working behind the scenes. Never is there going to be a time where God says, wow, I didn't see that one coming. He's never gonna do that. Or, Gosh, if you'd just given me a little more time, I could've come up with something. I make the mistakes sometime of, thinking of God, kinda like my mom when I was younger.
Maybe you guys did this, you know, you would tell your mom, hey mom, could you help me like with my science project? And she's like, sure, I'd love to. When's it due? It's this morning, like, you know. And you see that look, and your mom's like, why didn't you tell me before?
And like, you're scrambling. You're getting, like, cotton balls, or just like glue, anything. You don't even know what it is, but you're off to school, and then after you create it, you then have to try to figure out what it meant. But God's not like that. He's the one who, when you ask, even though it's last minute, he's like, I knew you would ask.
I knew this day would come, and I've already been preparing an answer for you. 3rd thing we see here is that God often rescues us in the absolute last possible moment. This seems to be a theme throughout the Bible, not just here. But God waits until your crisis actually becomes a crisis. Like, it reaches its absolute peak to where it cannot get any worse.
And it's at that last moment that God comes in. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were not spared before they were thrown into the furnace. It was only after. God didn't rescue Daniel before he was thrown into the lion's den. It was only when he was thrown into the lion's den.
The Israelites were were not, you know, rescued until pharaoh's army literally had them pinned up against the Red Sea and they thought their doom was certain. And then, that's when God rescues at the last possible moment. And in retrospect, it's the most beautiful, amazing thing to see God answer that way, but nobody wants to live life this way. Nobody wants to actually live that. When you're in that moment, it's in retrospect that we're like, how amazing that God would do this?
But when you're living it, it is so hard. But when we read stories like this, we have to remember, have faith. Have faith that even when your life seems to be spiraling out of control, it's not out of God's control. 4th. God's deliverance can feel like torture.
God's deliverance can feel like torture. God could have rescued Jonah a 1,000 different ways. Alright? I took time to just think through a bunch of them, and pretty much all of them looked better than this one. Alright.
Every one of them. I could have had another ship come by, you know, just rescue Jonah. He, you know, could have had like a happy little dolphin or something, you know, flip or pull them up to the surface. I mean, there's literally thousands of different ways, but he chooses to get some terrifying, terrifying fish. And then what Jonah thinks is his last possible moments of life is an open mouth of a giant fish coming after him.
It's terrifying. And it gets worse when he gets in there. Now he's stuck in the belly of this fish in darkness, likely seasick, probably can't move around at all. He's just a terrifying, gruesome experience. And that's what God's deliverance of him looked like.
I mean, this is the thing that, you know, children's Bible stories, they love. You know, they love drawing these things, that and, you know, Noah's Ark, which is about the destruction of all mankind. And then you have this and it just looks so happy. And it's like, this is miserable, people. It's a horrifying experience.
I can only hope that for most of the time, Jonah was passed out, that he wasn't conscious during this. But we do know that during the times that he was, he called out to the Lord. He had a lot of time on his hands. Maybe this is the 5th point. You could put this as a 5th point, that God doesn't often deliver instantly, but often it's in stages, and it's over time.
Being stuck in the belly of this fish might have been torture, but it also gave Jonah plenty of time to think and to pray. There's not much to do inside of the belly of a fish, Alright? There's no TV. There's no internet phone. You probably can't even move your arms.
I'm just, I've never been there. I'm just imagining. All you could do is think and pray in the darkness. And that's what Jonah does. I mean, he prays.
I mean, this is the first time he really prays here. It's amazing what happens when God removes all the distractions from your life, and brings you to such a place. How prayer then becomes natural. Being swallowed by a fish, let's be honest, is probably the best thing that could happen to most of us. Because then, it would force us to remove all distractions, no matter how painful that is, and to just be left between our thoughts and the Lord.
When's the last time that God's had your undivided attention? Does God need to send a few storms into your life? Does he need to send a fish to swallow you just so he can have a few quiet moments with you without any distractions? Do you know what by far the most productive part of my sermon writing is? In the week when I'm preparing a sermon, the most productive part is not when I'm going through all the commentaries.
It's not when I'm trying to analyze the sentences, or listening to maybe some other sermons. By far, the most productive part is when I do nothing. Is when I create space, I close my computer, I turn off my phone, and I annoy everybody else around me, because I'm doing that. But then I just get away, and I either go on a walk, or I go on a hike, or something, and I just say, Lord, I've read this, but will you speak to me and show me what this means? And you remove distractions, and you begin to hear to the Lord, and your heart begins to cry out to Him.
This is Jonah essentially finally saying, speak, your servant is listening. And this is something that we have to fight for, or we're never gonna have. Alright, so Jonah, now he's in this belly of this fish, all these distractions are removed, and so he begins praying. And we don't have time to go through all of this, but what he prays are the Psalms. Almost every line in his prayer here comes from a different line of the Psalms.
So as bad as Jonah has looked to this point, you can't deny that he has at least put God's word in his heart, and then when he reached the lowest low, all of a sudden it gushes out. Finally, God's spirit just ignites that, and what he's been putting in his heart all along finally comes to the surface. And he quotes from Psalm 18, Psalm 31, Psalm 42, Psalm 69, Psalm 86, Psalm 139. He combines all of these Psalms into this one gorgeous prayer. And then finally, we get to verse 8, which if it's not starred and highlighted, or whatever you do in your Bible, it should be.
Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. Now, this is only 5 words in Hebrew. They're actually extremely hard to translate. Depending on what version you have, they might vary a lot. Some of you are like, that is not at all what my Bible says.
Because the translations can vary. Mainly it centers around 2 possible translations. And what I think is, like any good poetry, it's not just one meaning, but usually it can have a couple of meanings, and I think that's what we have here, is these two different translations. This probably means both. One way you could translate this verse is this.
Those who cling to worthless idols will abandon their loyalty to them. Those who cling to worthless idols will abandon their loyalty to them. And that means that if you are clinging to a worthless idol, if you're clinging to money, or your family, or your reputation, or whatever it is, when a storm in life comes and it hits you, you're gonna look to that thing and you're gonna be like, this is no help to me. This can't save me. And you discard it.
You will abandon your loyalty to that idol when a storm comes. Because you realize it cannot save you. That's one translation. Another is this, Those who cling to worthless idols, forsake their hope of steadfast love. Which means that if you do choose when a storm comes, to cling to your idol, then you are rejecting God's eternal love, and there's no hope for you.
Your idol cannot save you. Your education cannot save you. Your wealth cannot save you. Your family cannot save you. All the things you've depended on, you've built your entire identity on.
When that crisis hits, it will not be there to save you. And ultimately, the crisis of death, when it comes, certainly, those things cannot help you. You'll perish. So so both of those things, I think we hold up when we look at this verse. The main point of both of them are this, when storms are sent your way, idols are exposed for what they are.
Once again, storms are God's grace to us. They teach us we shouldn't build our lives on sand. Instead, we need to build our lives on the rock of Jesus. The rock here is this. It's verse 9.
But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord. This phrase, salvation belongs to the Lord, is the central part of the entire book. It's the focal point of it all.
It's the reason Jonah is written, so that we would know that salvation comes from the Lord. And Jonah here is realizing for the first time, he was not saved because he was a good person. He was not saved because he was more righteous than the Ninevites. That he had done more good works. His salvation comes as a complete act of God's grace.
He was in the same boat as those sailors. He's in the same position as the Ninevites. The reason he is saved is because the Lord saves. Grace. The Lord planned his salvation, executed his salvation, applied his salvation, sustains his salvation, and then will someday perfect his salvation.
The Lord does it all from beginning to end. That's what we mean by salvation belongs to the Lord. So what is the sign of Jonah? Remember, that's why we're looking at this. What is the sign of Jonah here?
It's certainly, let's not forget the obvious, it is certainly that Jonah was swallowed up by certain death for 3 days 3 nights, but then He was essentially resurrected. Jesus was swallowed up, not by almost death, but by actual death, and then He was resurrected. So that certainly points to Jesus. But Jesus is the much greater Jonah. Jonah just felt like he was being swallowed up by death.
Jesus actually was. Jonah was sinking beneath the waves of the ocean, but Jesus was absorbing wave after wave after wave of the Lord's wrath, pounding him on the cross. Jonah cried out from what he felt like the belly of Sheol, and God heard his voice and answered him. But Jesus actually went to Sheol, and he called out to God and God did not hear him. God did not hear him.
Jesus was denied what Jonah was given. When Jonah was at the darkest point of his life, he called out to God, and God answered and rescued him. When Jesus was at the darkest point in his life, he called out to God, and God did not answer him. And so he's screaming from the cross, from the belly of Sheol, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jonah tries to run from God, lives a life in total rebellion to God, and yet he's given the sweet presence of God.
Jesus lives a life in constant pursuit of God, and yet, he has denied God's presence. And what we see here is what we call this beautiful exchange in the gospel. Jonah is being treated as Jesus deserved. Jesus was being treated as Jonah deserved. It's the gospel.
Our only hope is that Jesus took on the forsakenness that we all deserve, so that we would never be forsaken, That He was denied God's presence, so that we would never be denied God's presence. This story points us to Jesus. And it also brings us here to this table, and I wanted to be sure that we took communion today, to where we remember this beautiful exchange about how we are treated as Christ deserves, and He was treated as we deserve. This table here reminds us that salvation belongs to the Lord, and to the Lord alone. We're saved by his grace.
And so we do remember that on the night that Jesus was betrayed, In a very visual way, he reminds us of the sacrifice that's to come. And he says, this bread is my body, broken, given to you. This wine is my blood poured out for the forgiveness of many. This is how I'd love for us to take communion this morning. This table's open for every person running away from the Lord, who is then called out to him.
It's not for those who live a perfect life, but it's for those who have been saved by Christ, who even when they're at the bottom of the bottom, they still have remembered the Lord and called out to him, and he is indeed saved. So if you have trusted in the Lord Jesus as your savior, this table is for you. And I'd love for you to come and to just break off a piece of bread and dip it into the wine and take. We're gonna have 2 two lines down here, these center aisles. We'll have several stations up here, and after you take, if you would return to your seat using these outer aisles, just so we could get people moving.
Those of you who are in the balcony, maybe you could wait till till everybody's gone down here, just so we don't clog things up. And during this time, I invite you to, you could sing or you could pray. There's cushions up here. You're welcome to come up on stage if you wanna take some time and to, without distraction, kneel before the Lord and just say, I'm here and I want to listen to you. I wanna listen.
And I give you my life. I'm sick of running. If you wanna do that, come. Or if you wanna kneel at your pew, you're welcome to do that. But just take this time to call out to the Lord.
Let me pray for us. Our father, we are so grateful for the story of Jonah. There are no real saints in the Bible, no perfect people apart from your son, Jesus, and I'm thankful for that. Every person here can identify with Jonah and has run away from you. We thank you that in your grace, you pursue us, and you bring us back to yourself.
Not in a way that we would've pictured, wanted, but now looking back, we think thank you, Lord. Thank you for drawing me to yourself this way, and you indeed save, and we remember that in this moment, and we pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.