Our Prayer-Hearing, Fish-Delivering Savior

Introduction

How many of you have been in a situation where you deserved to be punished? This is a near daily occurrence for us. We get in our car and we go 56mph in a 55mph zone - we deserve a speeding ticket. The Bible shares with us that we break God’s law and we do this on a daily basis as well. Because of this, as we talked about this morning, we deserve eternal separation from God. I read a story from a prominent Christian author and teacher this week in which he talked about his past, specifically his teenage years. During his teen years this individual would go out with his friends and prank people by ringing the doorbell and running away before the person could open the door. As this went on week after week in the summer, the group of boys escalated to something more daring: busting the mailboxes of some of these same people. After a few weeks of doing this, the boys decided to up the ante once more by staging some fights while stopped at a stop sign. One boy would get out of the car and fake punch another boy while another would bring a baseball bat out and pretend to hit the boy a couple of times. All this is going on with people watching all around them. Finally they would grab the kid and throw him into the trunk and drive away really fast. These boys were reckless and had the cops called on them numerous times because of their crazy actions. As time has gone by, this teacher noted that he and his friends now realize how dumb their actions were and how they are fortunate that they did not get in more trouble than they did because they deserved serious consequences.

We hear stories like this and maybe you are reminded of some foolish choices you have made in your life - I am reminded of the same, such as whenever I played hide and seek on the roof of FBC Ozark! Whenever we remember some of our mistakes, naturally we also are reminded of some of the consequences for our actions.

We looked last week at Jonah’s disobedience and how there is a consequence: Jonah was thrown overboard and eventually swallowed by a great fish. Tonight we will look at the result of this on the life of Jonah as Jonah cries out to the Lord and the Lord answers this powerless prophet.

Jonah 2 CSB

1 Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish: 2 I called to the Lord in my distress, and he answered me. I cried out for help from deep inside Sheol; you heard my voice. 3 When you threw me into the depths, into the heart of the seas, and the current overcame me. All your breakers and your billows swept over me. 4 And I said, “I have been banished from your sight, yet I will look once more toward your holy temple. 5 The water engulfed me up to the neck; the watery depths overcame me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. 6 I sank to the foundations of the mountains, the earth’s gates shut behind me forever! Then you raised my life from the Pit, Lord my God! 7 As my life was fading away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, to your holy temple. 8 Those who cherish worthless idols abandon their faithful love, 9 but as for me, I will sacrifice to you with a voice of thanksgiving. I will fulfill what I have vowed. Salvation belongs to the Lord. 10 Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

We Must Know that God Hears Us (1-2)

Jonah has faced the consequence for running away from the Lord in chapter 1 and finds himself in the belly of the fish… But he still remembers that he serves the One true God and he goes to God in prayer. See, the fish was not just God’s judgment but the fish is also God’s mercy. Jonah is not being paid back for his sin, he is being brought back from his sin. God has a perfect plan and that plan does involve justice but it also involved mercy and grace. The fish serves as a grace of God as Jonah finds himself stuck for 3 days. Assuming this is a fish and not a whale, there wouldn’t have been much room to move around for those 3 days. Have you found yourself stuck before? Probably not stuck in an animal but sometimes we get stuck in life. I’ve been stuck climbing a tree before and that’s not a very fun position to be in. Sometimes we get stuck in our cars in a traffic jam and we can’t get out. Jonah was stuck in a fish and he couldn’t move and he couldn’t escape… He had 3 days to think back to God’s call on him to go to Nineveh and to reflect on his mistake in the past of ignoring God’s command. Jonah knew he was in a dilemma, either he would go to Nineveh and they would reject the message and probably kill him, or he would go to Nineveh and they would accept the message and God would have mercy on them. Either way, things don’t go well for Jonah because he wants to see these people get what they deserve… As we’ll see later in this study, Jonah demonstrates genuine sinfulness to us as clear as day.

He was willing to say yes to God in some areas but not all areas. He wasn’t willing to believe that the people of Nineveh deserved God’s mercy and in refusing to share this message of repentance, he fails to immediately do what God wanted him to do. Are we that different? Sometimes we’ll come to church or read our Bible and we’re fine with 99% of it. We’ll live out 99% of the Bible. We’ll agree with 99% of a sermon or a Sunday school lesson, but sometimes we don’t want God’s way in 1 area of our life. We don’t really want to surrender our marriage to the Lord. We don’t really want to surrender our family or our jobs or our future to the Lord. We won’t fully trust in God’s plan for our finances because we think that we don’t have enough money to tithe and we definitely won’t allow God to call us to uproot our lives here and move halfway around the world. Jonah isn’t all that unlike us - God touched his nerve with this request to go to Nineveh… and God touches all of our nerves whenever He demands complete Lordship of our lives. This includes all aspects, public and private. This is where the rubber meets the road and sometimes we need to be stuck in the belly of a fish for 3 days in order to have time to figure out who really is in control. As CS Lewis said, He’s either Lord of all or He’s not Lord at all!

In this situation, Jonah begins to understand Who God is and he calls out to Him for help in this situation, just as many of us would whenever we find ourselves completely stuck.

In this moment, Jonah prays and this marks a turning point in this book. Here’s the question for us this evening, “Why do we often wait for Rock Bottom to start looking up to God?” Jonah had the opportunity in chapter 1 to pray to his God just like all the sailors were doing but he passes or at least we aren’t told that he does so in the first chapter. In fact, it is the secular sailors who cry out to his God in chapter 1

Jonah 1:14 CSB

14 So they called out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, don’t let us perish because of this man’s life, and don’t charge us with innocent blood! For you, Lord, have done just as you pleased.”

Jonah remains silent… until chapter 2 and then he prays. This presents a timely truth for us and it serves as one of the recurring themes throughout Scripture - our God hears our prayers whenever we call out to Him! Look at some of these passages in Psalms

Psalm 31:22 (CSB)

In my alarm I said,

“I am cut off from your sight.”

But you heard the sound of my pleading

when I cried to you for help.

Psalm 42:7 CSB

7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your billows have swept over me.

Psalm 18:6 CSB

6 I called to the Lord in my distress, and I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.

Psalm 120:1 CSB

1 In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me.

We shouldn’t wait until rock bottom to begin, but whenever we cry out to the Lord, He is near. He hears us. He answer us! Jonah admits that he is in the place of divine judgment (Sheol) but he knows that even whenever we experience judgment, God hears us. What an important truth for us to remember in our suffering - God is near and He hears us when we cry out to Him… Let’s make use of that truth before we get into the fish, though!

We Must Know that God Holds Us (3-6)

Jonah says that the Lord heard his voice and then transitions in the middle verses to discuss what the Lord has done thus far. In verse 3 we see that Jonah realizes, once again, that everything that has happened thus far has been from God. Notice what we find at the end of verse 3, “All your breakers and billows passed over me.” There was a purpose in all of this and Jonah realizes this. As the great reformer Martin Luther noted, “Jonah does not say the waves and the billows of the sea went over me; but your waves and your billows, because he felt in his conscience that the sea with its waves and billows was the servant of God and of His wrath, to punish sin.” Jonah had disobeyed and deserved destruction, not deliverance. Jonah is experiencing a consequence from God due to his sinfulness. Even in the midst of this, though, Jonah continues to pray. Let this be a lesson to all of us that even in difficult moments of life, we should continue to pray and seek the Lord. This should be our message to others as well - even when life seems overwhelming and as if you are drowning in anxiety and worry, cry out the Lord because He hears us and He is in control. In the midst of our trials and tests, let’s remember that it is our God who promises to be with us. Charles Spurgeon, called the Prince of Preachers, struggled with depression for years and years of his ministry… He knew his Bible extremely well. He was a faithful preacher. He married and counseled thousands of people. He knew the right answers but he still struggled with depression and sadness and defeat. He once shared this, “I’ve learned to kiss the wave that throws me upon the rock of ages.” Spurgeon doesn’t blame Satan for his problems… He understands that even in the trial of worry, he can rejoice that his depression pushes him to trust all the more in Jesus. Isn’t this the truth that has to carry us through the dark days of our lives? Our God holds us even when things seem out of control?

I want us to camp out specifically in verses 5 and 6 for a couple of minutes as we reflect on moments in our own lives where we have gone astray and take heart in what Jonah shares. Jonah talks about how he was thrown out into the sea and the water encompassed him to the point of death and how he slowly sank. Have you ever watched the VeggieTales story of Jonah? I love VeggieTales, but the Jonah version doesn’t exactly get this part right. In the VeggieTales version, Jonah is thrown out into the sea and almost immediately the fish swims up to him and he is swallowed after a minute or so. Verse 5 seems to tell us a different story - obviously whenever Jonah was thrown overboard the sea calmed but we see that Jonah was encompassed by the water and it slowly brought him in deeper and deeper. Jonah hits the water and the Lord lets him float for a little while. Have you ever tried to just float for a long amount of time in a pool or body of water? Floating for a couple of seconds isn’t that hard but after a few minutes it can be hard to stay above water. Imagine trying to do this out at sea! This would be very difficult. Add in 20 or 30 foot waves and this becomes impossible! We see Jonah floating and slowly sinking in verse 6. Why does this happen? Once again, to emphasize the deliverance and power of God. Did Jonah smell really bad and is that why the fish came and swallowed him? No. Was the fish already underneath the ship and Jonah simply dove straight into its mouth? No. Jonah was descending slowly and says that the earth with its bars were going to surround him forever. In 21st century vocabulary, Jonah was on deaths door and he couldn’t do anything about it. He couldn’t swim harder. He couldn’t take grab a lifejacket or do anything of his own power to save himself.

This is how our lives can feel at times. Life can feel overwhelming and daunting. Before we come to know Christ as Lord this is especially true as we are dead and we don’t even know it! Yet, just as Jonah experienced being delivered into the fish literally, we experience being saved spiritually and all that comes with that. As Jonah says at the end of verse 6, “But God has brought up my life from the pit.” This is another “But God” Scripture verse. Jonah was beyond human intervention, yet God stepped in and sent a fish to save him. Once he was in the fish, though, once again there was nothing Jonah could physically do. He was truly in God’s hands.

This must serve as a reminder to us that no one is too far gone for the Gospel and grace of Jesus Christ. I love how David Platt puts it, “How deep does God’s mercy go? God’s mercy will go down to the sandbars in the ocean for a rebellious prophet who deserved to die. There is no one too sinful for God. God will hear you and He will rescue you forever.” What is our responsibility? We must believe in Jesus Christ and have faith in Him. We live as a new creation. Even in difficult times and whenever we are stranded in the middle of the storm, we trust in the Lord.

This is the message that we all need to remember and share with others. There is no one too far gone for the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ. We’ve all messed up and we all deserve separation from God. But, because of His infinite grace and mercy, there is a way, like Jonah, to be raised from the Pit and that way is to be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ - this is the theme of Jonah and this must be the heartbeat of our lives and the pulse of FBC Salem in the years and decades to come.

We Must Know that God Saves Us (7-10)

Jonah doesn’t get everything right in chapter 2. We still don’t see a complete and genuine repentance. We still don’t see a spiritually mature person like a Paul, Isaiah, or James but we do see someone who begins to grow as verse 7 tells us that he remembers the Lord. This morning we talked about the severity of not remembering who our God is and what He has done - this brings about serious consequences! We must be like Jonah and remember the Lord and place our faith in Him. As we do this, we must run to our God!

Here is Jonah’s problem and here is our temptation today to have a problem as well. Jonah rejoices whenever he receives God’s mercy. But fast forward with me to chapter 4

Jonah 4:2 CSB

2 He prayed to the Lord, “Please, Lord, isn’t this what I said while I was still in my own country? That’s why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster.

Whenever the people of Nineveh receive God’s mercy, Jonah throws a fit. Why? Because he didn’t think that they deserved saving in the first place and that they deserved to be punished for their wickedness! Do you see the irony here? Whenever he received God’s grace, all was well. But whenever other people received God’s grace, then there was a problem! Before you cast your stone on this prophet, pause for a minute. Aren’t we all guilty of this? Whenever we go through a hard time but someone that we don’t necessarily like all that much is blessed by God, isn’t there something inside of us that groans because we think that we deserve better or that they deserve worse? That’s part of our fallen sinful nature! We can’t play this game anymore than Jonah should have and the reason why is because we are all equally sinners before our God. This includes you, me, and the terrorists overseas who are threatening to kill Christians this very minute. We’re all sinners and none of us deserve God’s mercy - yet He gives it to us! As we sang about this morning, He lavishes it upon us!

Jonah’s problem is that he thinks that there are some people who don’t deserve to be saved by God and here’s the scary part - He’s right! None of us deserve salvation - after all, Jonah 2:9 says that it belongs to the Lord. But this includes you, our friends in Guatemala and Moldova, people in Australia, North Korea, and Germany as well. None of us deserve it - we’re not better Christians just because we live in the USA, we’re all sinners and it’s only through Christ that we have anything to boast in. The only thing that we have to boast in is the work of Jesus Christ in saving us from our sins. Just as Jonah vowed to fulfill God’s calling upon his life, our response to the work of God in sending Jesus to die for our sins on the cross must be go therefore and make disciples of all nations and to bring glory to our God in all that we do. The only way that we’ll do this is by remembering that it is God alone who saves us.

Conclusion

Jesus quotes the story of Jonah in the New Testament and illustrates God’s remarkable plan to send a snake-crushing Savior

Matthew 12:40 CSB

40 For as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.

Point: Jonah was brought into the depths of Sheol and raised back to life. Points to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jonah, Israelite and servant of the Lord, was told to go to this place because of the sins of another group of people - parallels to Jesus, an Israelite and servant of the Lord, who came from heaven to earth to seek and save the lost and give His life as a sacrifice for sinners. Our Lord is rich in mercy and if we have received that mercy ourselves, we are tasked to share that mercy with others indiscriminately! Not just for people who look like us or like the same things that we like but for rich and poor, weak and strong, tall and short. We see in the book of Jonah that God’s message of salvation is a worldwide message for all nations. It was for the sailors, for Jonah, and even for the wicked people of Nineveh. Today, the Gospel message is still for all people and we have a duty to proclaim the Gospel purposefully with our neighbors and the nations. Why? Because Salvation still belongs to the Lord and the Lord has chosen to use humans like you and I to be cracked pots to handle the most important news of all-time: Jesus Christ saves sinners!

As we go throughout our lives, in the mountain highs and the stormy sea lows, let’s vow to be people of mercy, joy, and thanksgiving as we remember all that our God has done and point others to all He promises to do. He is faithful! He hears us and He delivers us! Even when we fall short, even when we go over the speed limit, he is merciful and He alone offers forgiveness and salvation. Let’s not be stingy with offering forgiveness and showing mercy as well.