Show Notes
Jonah 1:17-2:10
Pastor Stephen Lauer
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Pray together.
[00:00:02] Our gracious God, we thank you that you are rich in mercy, that you are a gracious God, that you supply all of our spiritual needs abundantly in Christ Jesus, your Son. We thank you that in him there is no sin of ours which you do not forgive and wash us clean of.
[00:00:26] We thank youk that by his almighty power you are working even now from heaven by youy Word and Spirit to change our hearts, so that we would turn from sins that enslave us and that beset us, that we would turn to freedom, to goodness, that we would turn to youo in love, in adoration, in awe and in praise.
[00:00:53] We ask, O God, now, as we turn to hear from you in your Word, that you would shed pour out this abundance of goodness and mercy on our hearts.
[00:01:05] We pray, O God, not that it would just be ideas that sound good and true, though we know your Word is full of goodness and truth.
[00:01:15] We pray most especially that in your Word we would see the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. We would see his kindness, his compassion towards sinners, his love for us, and that as we see his face shining, that we would see your glory brightly there.
[00:01:37] Bless us by your Spirit that we might receive a little more of Jesus today. And in his name we pray. Amen.
[00:01:49] I'm going to read God's Word now. You can turn in your Bibles or just listen along.
[00:01:54] I'm going to ask you to be seated, actually, because it'll be a little bit longer today.
[00:01:59] I have two texts to read. First, I'm going to read from Matthew, chapter 12, Matthew 12:38, 41. I know it's not printed in the bulletin.
[00:02:14] Read Matthew 12:38, 41, and then we'll turn over and read from Jonah 1:17 through the whole of chapter two.
[00:02:28] So first God's word from Matthew 12, beginning in verse 38, Hear God's word. Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered Him, saying, teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.
[00:02:44] But he answered them, an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign.
[00:02:49] No sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
[00:02:55] For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
[00:03:06] The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it.
[00:03:13] For they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And behold something greater than Jonah is here.
[00:03:20] And then turning over to the Old Testament, the prophet Jonah.
[00:03:26] We'll read Jonah 1:17 through the whole of chapter two.
[00:03:39] Jonah 1, beginning verse 17.
[00:03:41] And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
[00:03:46] And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
[00:03:52] 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.
[00:04:05] Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.
[00:04:12] 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.
[00:04:24] Then I said, I am driven away from your sight.
[00:04:29] Yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.
[00:04:33] 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.
[00:04:55] Yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.
[00:05:04] When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to you into your holy temple.
[00:05:13] Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.
[00:05:20] But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed. I will pay.
[00:05:29] Salvation belongs to the Lord.
[00:05:32] The Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land thus far. God's Word.
[00:05:48] We're going to look this morning at Jonah's prayer found here in chapter two.
[00:05:56] I want to consider first, the distress of Jonah expressed in his prayer.
[00:06:03] Secondly, I want to look at Jonah's tomb as he describes it in his prayer.
[00:06:09] And thirdly, we want to look at the answer that Jonah receives to his prayer.
[00:06:15] First, Jonah's distress.
[00:06:20] It's about a month ago that we looked together at the first chapter of Jonah.
[00:06:26] And you may remember that we did not read verse 17.
[00:06:31] We didn't read about the fish whom God appointed to swallow up Jonah. So where we left hard hearted Jonah was in his silence, head sinking down into the waves.
[00:06:46] We left hard hearted Jonah, who chose silence.
[00:06:52] Jonah, the prophet who knew God's goodness and mercy, whom God commanded him to go and preach repentance to the city of Nineveh. The prophet, whose job it is to speak, chose silence instead.
[00:07:10] He fled from the presence of God.
[00:07:17] When the storm threatened to destroy the ship and to sink the sailors and Jonah and kill them.
[00:07:26] The prophet again chose silence.
[00:07:31] When the sailors came and pled with him.
[00:07:34] Pray to your God, perhaps he will save us.
[00:07:38] Jonah again shirked the duty of a prophet. The duty of the prophet is to preach God's Word and to pray for deliverance for God's people.
[00:07:51] Not only did he refuse to preach the gospel, but he refused to pray for the salvation of. Of the sailors.
[00:08:01] Jonah chose silence.
[00:08:04] And so finally, when he's forced to speak by the sailors, he says, here's what you can do.
[00:08:12] I'm not going to pray for you, but you throw me over into the ocean, pick me up and hurl me into the storm, and the sea will be calm.
[00:08:23] So where we left Jonah was with his head sinking down, down into the storm of God's judgment.
[00:08:32] And the story picks up that God, not Jonah, pleading for help from God, but God came and appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah and to save him.
[00:08:48] Here, now, in the belly of the fish, Jonah finally breaks his silence.
[00:08:54] God reached out and saved him.
[00:08:58] And Jonah responds.
[00:09:01] He responds by calling out to God, muffled by the water, stifled in the belly of the fish, stifled in the belly of Sheol, the place of the dead.
[00:09:20] Jonah cries out to God.
[00:09:23] He breaks his silence.
[00:09:27] He cried out to Jehovah, the Lord, the true God, his God, he says, because of his distress.
[00:09:39] What is his distress?
[00:09:41] A storm threatened to destroy the ship and sink it. A storm that got worse and worse and worse as God pursued him graciously.
[00:09:54] But now his distress is the ocean.
[00:09:57] Drowning, suffocating, terrifying.
[00:10:05] In the heart of the sea.
[00:10:08] The flood surrounded him.
[00:10:11] The waves and billows passed over him. All the waves and billows passed over him. The whole ocean presses down on Jonah.
[00:10:24] Distress.
[00:10:27] Sinners rebel against their God.
[00:10:30] And God brings distress upon them.
[00:10:35] He chases them with trouble.
[00:10:38] He brings great distress into our lives. Why? That we would turn to him and be saved.
[00:10:47] And yet what do we do?
[00:10:49] We see the storm. We see it getting worse and worse.
[00:10:53] And we go down, down, down further and further. Into a rebellion and sin and distress.
[00:11:02] Jonah's hard heart is what kept him going. Down, down, down, down into the waves, down into the fish.
[00:11:13] He calls out in his distress, but he calls out to God.
[00:11:22] All your waves, not just the waves, not just the ocean, but all your waves pass over me.
[00:11:34] You, not the sailors. You cast me into the heart of the sea.
[00:11:42] These are your waves and your billows, O God, just as it was your storm.
[00:11:49] It is your ocean.
[00:11:52] It is your hand that is against us in our distress.
[00:11:59] You, O God, are pursuing us. The further we go, the more your grace comes after us.
[00:12:06] It chases us.
[00:12:09] It reaches for us. His hand is against us in the distress that we would turn to him.
[00:12:19] So Jonah says, it is your great fish that swallowed me up. Here I am, trapped and imprisoned.
[00:12:27] I must turn to you.
[00:12:31] You sent this storm and these waves upon me. This distress comes from you. You alone can save me from it.
[00:12:44] Your distress comes because of your sin. But it comes from God's hand.
[00:12:50] And he alone can deliver you from from it.
[00:12:55] Jonah's distress.
[00:12:57] Jonah's tomb.
[00:13:00] Jonah's in the belly of the fish.
[00:13:04] We love that story as children.
[00:13:10] It acts as his salvation, but it also functions like a tomb.
[00:13:17] The prophet called out in his distress, but he called out from the belly of the fish.
[00:13:24] Verse 2.
[00:13:26] Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish, where he was three days and three nights.
[00:13:37] From the belly of the fish, from the belly of Sheol.
[00:13:43] From place of the dead.
[00:13:46] He experiences a miracle from God.
[00:13:51] The fish came and swallowed him. God appointed that fish to be there when he fell into the water to come and snatch him up to save him from drowning somehow. Here he is, alive and breathing and praying. It's truly a miracle.
[00:14:09] But the greater miracle is the one we already looked at.
[00:14:13] The greater miracle is that this man's heart has been changed.
[00:14:18] Here he is, praying, crying out to God in repentance for salvation.
[00:14:27] Miracle of the change of heart. Miracle of the fish. But still Jonah is trapped, imprisoned, entombed. Three days and three nights of a living death in the belly of the fish as the waters pressed in on Jonah.
[00:14:48] Now this tomb presses in on Jonah.
[00:14:55] We're told by the prophet that his life was threatened by the waters.
[00:15:02] Verse 5. The waters closed in over me to take my life. Or we could translate it, as most of the translations do. My soul. His soul is threatened.
[00:15:17] The waters closed in over me to take my soul. Not just a storm and waves and threat of drowning, but trapped in a fish head, wrapped in seaweeds, unable to free himself.
[00:15:35] As the fish swims, it swims down from the surface, down into the ocean. And the deep surrounds him.
[00:15:44] Down, down, down to the bottom of the ocean. The roots of the mountains.
[00:15:51] In a fish, underwater, entombed.
[00:15:56] The prophet here gets a glimpse, a taste.
[00:16:02] Those are nice words.
[00:16:04] He gets a dark shadow of the grave.
[00:16:11] It's not just in water, trapped in a fish. But here. He feels what it's like to be dead and buried underground.
[00:16:22] Of course. We dig holes six feet down. We put the body in, and then we pour the dirt in over and we pack it down.
[00:16:33] In those days, they would dig a hole or find a cave, place the body in the cave and roll a stone over the entrance to the tomb.
[00:16:45] Jonah went down, down into the roots of the mountain, down into a cave.
[00:16:55] And as he was down there, the bars of the earth closed over him.
[00:17:02] A prison.
[00:17:05] And there he was entombed for what felt like an eternity.
[00:17:11] As he was there in his tomb, he felt his life, his soul, fading away.
[00:17:19] There he was cut off from the land of the living, but cut off from the sight of God. You cast me into the deep.
[00:17:30] Then I said, I am driven from your sight.
[00:17:35] The place of Sheol is the place of the dead.
[00:17:40] But for the Old Testament saint, it held a mystery. To be dead is to be where you are cut off from God.
[00:17:50] Psalm 115. 17. The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any who go down into silence.
[00:18:01] Psalm 6:5. For in death there is no remembrance of you.
[00:18:06] In the grave who will give you thanks.
[00:18:12] Silence.
[00:18:14] Entombed. The place of the dead.
[00:18:18] Jonah refuses.
[00:18:20] He refuses that silence. He says, I cannot be cut off from God.
[00:18:26] No, Lord, save me.
[00:18:29] Save me from being cut off from you forever.
[00:18:35] But he doesn't die.
[00:18:39] Why did Jonah not die? Why does God spare him? In the belly of the fish, God delivers his soul from the pit.
[00:18:51] Verse 6.
[00:18:53] Here he was entombed in the earth, its bars over him forever. Yet you brought up my soul from the pit.
[00:19:04] Why does God deliver him when his life was fainting away?
[00:19:11] Why does God hear him from his holy temple?
[00:19:18] Because Jonah's God did not abandon Jonah.
[00:19:21] When Jonah fled God, Jonah ran from God's presence. But God didn't leave Jonah.
[00:19:32] Jonah will confess the truth of what he knows about God. If you look at chapter four, verse two, a truth that's a summary of that great truth that God revealed from Mount Sinai in Exodus 34.
[00:19:46] That God is a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness.
[00:19:56] Jonah says in Jonah 4:2, I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful. Slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.
[00:20:10] Jonah's life is spared because Jonah's God spares the lives of sinners.
[00:20:18] The God who forgives and saves sinners in his mercy appointed a great fish to deliver Jonah.
[00:20:26] He did it for Jonah, for the Ninevites, for the Israelites, for you and I. That we would have a picture of how it is that God would save sinners from the grave.
[00:20:40] In his mercy, the God of mercy appointed the greater prophet his son.
[00:20:46] He sent that prophet to drown in the storm of his wrath against sinful mankind. And he did not send his son a fish to deliver him as that greater prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ, faced the storm of God's wrath. He was not silent, but he pled with his Father.
[00:21:11] Let the cup pass from me, but not my will, but yours be done.
[00:21:20] And there as he hung on the cross, Jesus drank the dregs of the storm of God's wrath.
[00:21:27] He drank all of it for the sake of sinners. Jesus cried out from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me on the cross? Jesus was cut off from the love of his Father.
[00:21:47] He was cast away from the sight of the Father.
[00:21:53] He was cut off from the land of the living. Instead of a fish bringing life, the Father prepared a a new tomb cut out of the earth.
[00:22:04] And there his Son's body was placed.
[00:22:08] And a stone, a bar of earth, rolled over it.
[00:22:13] And there Jesus spent three days and three nights in the belly of the earth so that he could save Jonah and all sinners who call on his name.
[00:22:28] We looked at Jonah's distress.
[00:22:32] Jonah's two God answers Jonah, deliver me from the waves, from the deep, from the grave.
[00:22:44] Jonah's desire is what?
[00:22:47] It's not just that he would be saved, his life would be saved. That he wouldn't die a death that he knew he deserved of drowning.
[00:22:55] His desire is to return to God.
[00:23:00] He was cut off from God's presence because he ran from God's presence, but his hope.
[00:23:08] Verse 4. I am driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.
[00:23:15] He doesn't just want to be saved from the bad stuff, the storm and the wrath. He wants to be in God's presence again.
[00:23:25] Let me come back to your holy temple. Hear my prayer from your temple and bring me back before your throne where I may worship you again.
[00:23:37] And God answered him.
[00:23:39] God answered him first with assurance that he had heard his prayer and he would do as Jonah had asked. Verse 7. My life was fainting away. I remembered the Lord. And my prayer came to you into your holy temple. As Jonah poured out his heart in prayer before God, repenting of his sin and pleading with God for mercy and salvation.
[00:24:07] God gave Jonah an assurance in his heart. Jonah knew God. God has heard my prayer. He will deliver me.
[00:24:20] Out of that assurance.
[00:24:22] Jonah proclaims, yes, I will again be in God's temple. That's what you find in verse nine.
[00:24:30] But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. I will be in God's temple offering sacrifices, paying my vows to God has forgiven me. He will save me and restore me into right relationship with him. My rebellion and my sin. He's going to cast. He's going to leave that in the heart of the seas.
[00:24:51] He's going to deliver me and bring me back to Jerusalem, back to be with him.
[00:25:00] What's the ground?
[00:25:02] He has this sense of assurance. He confesses, God will save me. Why?
[00:25:10] Because of who God is. Verse 8.
[00:25:13] Those who don't worship God, those who put their trust in empty idols, turn away from God's steadfast love. They turn away from the God who is loving and merciful and compassionate. The God who loves sinners and forgives them and saves them.
[00:25:31] My God, verse 9 is the God of salvation.
[00:25:36] Salvation belongs to the Lord.
[00:25:39] My God will hear me. My God will save me because he promises to do so even when I run from him, even when I disobey my call as a prophet. Even when I fail to turn to him in prayer and seek his help. Even when I persist in running from him.
[00:26:00] Even when I sinned the worst possible sin I could think of, sinning.
[00:26:05] And I find myself entombed in the bottom of the ocean in the belly of a fish. God will forgive me and save me, because that's who he is.
[00:26:18] Now. This is God's answer to all sinners. Every sinner, not just Jonah, not just the Israelites, not just those who are Christians, who are baptized, but any sinner who turns to God and cries out for forgiveness and salvation. This is God's answer. I will save you. I will forgive you.
[00:26:42] And in order to show that seal, that deliverance, salvation, God did something.
[00:26:51] His answer is found, pictured in the very last verse of our story.
[00:26:57] The Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
[00:27:05] God spoke to the fish, and the fish sent Jonah back into the land of the living.
[00:27:15] Jonah trusted God's promise. He believed God was who he said he was. A God who forgives sinners.
[00:27:21] And God did, in fact, forgive him and save him.
[00:27:28] You want certainty of your salvation? Will I be saved when I turn to God?
[00:27:35] How can I know?
[00:27:38] God's answer is, look to my final word.
[00:27:42] The last prophet that I sent, the greatest prophet, my very son.
[00:27:50] I sent him to the cross and he went, and he died for sinners. I sent him to the tomb, and he went. And his body was in the tomb for three days.
[00:28:01] He died. He was fully dead.
[00:28:04] He was enclosed and barred, entombed in the ground.
[00:28:11] And I raised him from the dead.
[00:28:14] You want certainty? Look to my son. Not in the ground, but my son, who I raised from the dead.
[00:28:20] And I've seated him on the throne of heaven.
[00:28:24] And so you can know that your sins were paid for, because I raised him from the dead, and he is alive forevermore.
[00:28:34] God commanded the fish. It spat Jonah out of the ground. God commanded the body of his son to come alive again. And it did.
[00:28:42] And he did so because he accepted the sacrifice of his son.
[00:28:48] And so Jesus comes to you as that greatest prophet, that final prophet who died and rose to save sinners like you.
[00:28:59] And he says to you, fear not.
[00:29:03] Are you a great sinner? Have you rebelled greatly against my Father in heaven?
[00:29:10] Fear not, because I am the first and the last. I am the living one. I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Jonah thought he would die forever. Jesus comes to you and he says, I am alive forevermore.
[00:29:30] I bore death and I conquered it, and I have the keys of death and Hades. Jesus now has power over death.
[00:29:42] Sinners have rebelled against God and they deserve death. Jesus came and took that death for you, and now he has the power over death.
[00:29:53] And what do you do with keys you unlock and you set free?
[00:29:58] Jesus comes and he says, I came to set you free from death.
[00:30:03] That's God's answer to Jonah's cry for help. And that's God's answer to your cry for help. Dear sinner, have you cried out for mercy, for forgiveness, for freedom, for deliverance and resurrection? God's answer is, look to my son. And Jesus says, I will raise you from the dead. Let's pray.
[00:30:29] O Lord our God, what wonderful news we have from the bottom of the ocean, from the belly of the fish, from the belly of the earth, that Jesus broke free and has risen.
[00:30:48] O Lord our God, we confess yet again, as we already have several times, that we are miserable sinners, that our hearts are just as hard as Jonah's. We've been saved and delivered, and we turn back again and again to our sins.
[00:31:07] We turn back to awful and miserable things.
[00:31:10] We turn our back on you. We run from you, just like Jonah.
[00:31:15] But we thank you that you are stronger than our wills. Your power is greater than our sin.
[00:31:24] And we ask, Lord Jesus, that you would pursue us where we are in our sin and misery, that you would come and find us, that you would set us free, that, like Jonah, you would turn our hearts in faith and in repentance to you.
[00:31:38] Help us to see you not in terror, but in love, as the one who came and bore wrath and terror and anger, and has left for sinners who turn to you only love and mercy and compassion.
[00:31:55] We thank you, Lord Jesus, that these things are true and sealed not only in your blood, but in your resurrection, and that you are alive forevermore. We ask, Lord Jesus, that this new life would fill our hearts. You put your spirit on our hearts, that we would be filled with your presence, that we would know that you are with us and we with you at all times.
[00:32:20] And we ask that we would live out of this safety and this protection that you give us, that we would live in this freedom, that we would live in love, in justice, in goodness, and in mercy, and in walking humbly before our God, Lord Jesus. We ask many other things.
[00:32:39] We have many needs as a people, not just individually, for our spiritual needs, but we have needs as a church. We ask that you would bless our congregation here as well as your church around the world, purifying us, filling us with your spirit, that we might serve you, bless one another, and that we might be a witness to the world who's watching.
[00:33:04] We thank you for the families that you have given us. We thank you for the fathers that you have given us. We ask that you would bless them as they seek to serve you and their families and their wives faithfully, strengthen them, keep them from evil. And we ask that we would receive their leadership and their protection and their care.
[00:33:24] We ask, oh God, that you would be with those who have all kinds of needs, that you would provide financially for our families and for those especially who are struggling. Grant better work for those who need it, and grant work for those who do not have it.
[00:33:41] We ask for those who are sick with various illnesses, those who are recovering from surgeries, those who are dealing with cancer and being treated for it. We ask that you would grant healing, mercy and grace to carry through, and that you would bless those also who are hurting, who are brokenhearted, those who mourn, that you would grant them comfort and peace.
[00:34:07] And, O Lord our God, we ask that you would help us as brothers and sisters in Christ, as the family of God, to walk together in kindness and mercy and in patience with one another.
[00:34:17] Help us to serve you together to your honor and glory. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
