Power in the Pulpit | Jonah 2

Intro: Last week, we started our series in the book of Jonah. We looked at who Jonah was and who the Ninevites were. We looked at how Jonah ran when God told him to go and call out to the Ninevites to repent. Because he ran, God caused a huge storm to come that did not cease until the sailors on the ship Jonah was on threw him overboard. The last verse of the chapter tells us God then sent a whale to swallow Jonah. This week we are going to look at a prayer Jonah prayed while in the belly of the whale. I’m sure being in there three whole days he probably prayed more than one prayer, but this is the one that is recorded.

Have you ever spent time reflecting back on a situation. Maybe you look back on a situation and you realize you probably should have handled something different than you did. Or maybe you can’t believe how something turned out. In Jonah’s reflections, we find the main idea of tonight’s message which is, “God in his grace can save us from all things, even ourselves.” As we do every Sunday night please stand as we honor the reading of God’s Word.

Exposition: Starting with verse 1 we read Jonah 2:1 “Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish,” The narrator makes a very important distinction about what Jonah did. It doesn’t say Jonah prayed to all the gods of the sailors and his God just to make sure he spoke to the right one. No he prayed to his God. And he prayed after his rescue.

Application: As we look at Jonah’s prayer, we are going to see that this is after Jonah had been rescued by being swallowed by the whale. But he didn’t stop once he had been rescued he continued to pray. It is very easy to allow ourselves to get to a place where we only pray when we are in an urgent situation. But once that situation goes away, then we go about our lives and don’t make prayer a regular part of our lives. If God is capable of hearing us and helping us in our times of need, he is worthy of being prayed to regularly. Look at where Jonah is praying from. From the belly of the whale. He probably had lots of time to think about what God had done for him. So he took that time to pray to talk with God about all that had just happened.

Transition: So we see the passage start with Jonah praying to God from the belly of the whale. But in his prayer he describes what all he went through while he was in the ocean. It is often portrayed as if he was swallowed by the fish immediately after hitting the water. But we see through his description of what happened, that was not the case.

Exposition: Verse two says Jonah 2:2 “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.” Sheol is used a lot in the old testament. It was probably the place where it was believed that the wicked would remain after death until the final judgement. Jonah is saying that in his distress Jonah called to God and God rescued him out of sheol. Jonah is not saying that he was dead, he will clarify this later in the chapter, but he was talking in exaggerated terms saying he was as good as dead and God rescued him. In what felt like the last moments of his life, God heard him and rescued him.

Exposition: He goes on to say in verse 3 Jonah 2:3 “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.” See, Jonan is acknowledging something very important here. Technically, it was the sailors that threw him into the sea. But Jonah realizes that the whole event of him being thrown into the sea only happened because God had ordained the events. God had brought the storm because Jonah was had been disobedient. God knew that Jonah would tell them to throw him in to save their own lives. So therefore, it really was God that ordained the events. Now this doesn’t mean that every bad thing that happens in our lives is because of a sin we committed. Jesus tells us this. But this event was a because of Jonah’s sin. Jonah even describes how violent the storm was. Like I said earlier, it so often is portrayed as if the fish swallowed Jonah immediately after he hit the water. But Jonah tells us here that this wasn’t the case. Jonah says the flood surrounded him. NO matter where he turned, he was surrounded by water. Not only was he surrounded by water, but it’s not like he was in a pond. He was in the middle of the ocean. The waves were also knocking him in the head.

Illustration: For those of you that have been to the ocean. Think about when you step in a hole while walking in the ocean, and all of the sudden you can’t reach. Or when you go out a little bit further than you should. Think about how it feels when waves keep hitting you in the face and you can’t quite seem to get your head over the water. That is what is happening here. Jonah wasn’t swallowed by the whale right as he hit the water. Instead, he was right away treading water trying to keep his head above the waves.

Exposition: Jonah then says in verse 4 Jonah 2:4 “Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’” Jonah, in the midst of his struggling, says something really interesting. He says he is driven away from God’s sight. The same person that tried to run from the presence of God, was now ackowledging he is in this awful situation because God was driving him out of his sight because of his disobedience. Now the last part of verse 4 is hard to determine the proper reading of. When King Solomon dedicated the temple to God before the time Jonah was a prophet, he said in his prayer 1 Kings 8:35-36 ““When heaven is shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against you, if they pray toward this place and acknowledge your name and turn from their sin, when you afflict them, then hear in heaven and forgive the sin of your servants, your people Israel, when you teach them the good way in which they should walk, and grant rain upon your land, which you have given to your people as an inheritance.” So we know it had been established that in times of disobedience one could pray towards the temple in Jerusalem, and God would hear their prayer. So, it is not certain if Jonah said all of verse four in one statement because he remembered what Solomon had said at the temple dedication. Or, if what he is saying is that even though God drove him out of his sight, he still will one day see the temple of God because he was saved. Either way, we can draw the same truth. Though Jonah was in a situation of his own making, God showed him grace and rescued him from the death he deserved. Either way, God did not leave Jonah out of his sight.

Application: Sin does something similar to us. It separates us from God. We talk about what Romans 6:23 says a lot. Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We are deserving of death because of sin, but God has made a way through Jesus for us to be brought back into his fold. God is a God of grace.

Exposition: Starting in verse 5, Jonah goes into even more detail about how dire his situation was. He says in verses 5 and 6 Jonah 2:5-6 “The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about 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, O Lord my God.” So he says the waters closed in over him to take his life. He must have been getting to where he could no longer hold his head above water. He says the deep surrounded him. He then tells us that he had begun to sink. Remember, the ship was close enough to land for the sailors to try and sail back, so he probably wasn’t too terribly deep, but deep enough to not be able to stand or swim to the top of the water. He tells us weeds surrounded his head which means he was probably deep enough and with his head in position where seaweed on the ocean floor wrapped around his head. We also know he was at the bottom because he says he was at the roots of the mountains. In this time, it was believed that the base of the mountains was at the ocean floor. But then he starts to describe sheol. He says in verse 6 he went down to the land whose bars closed upon him forever. It was believed that when one entered Sheol, there were bars like on a gated city that kept people from leaving. Once again, Jonah tells us he was as good as dead. He then also tells us just how close to death he was when God saved him.

Exposition: He says in verse 7 Jonah 2:7 “When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.” Jonah tells us that he was losing consciousness, which means he wasn’t far from drowning, and he remembered God and prayed to him to save his life. Jonah says that his prayer entered God’s Holy Temple, the place that was suppose to be the dwelling place for The Lord. In that moment when he was just before death God heard him.

Application: What this means is that there is no such thing as too late if somebody is still alive. Remember the story of the thief on the cross. He knew he was guilty. He even said as much. But he asked Jesus to remember him when he went into his kingdom. Jesus told him that, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” God knows our hearts and knows if somebody has truly repented of their sins and turned towards him. There may be people you have prayed for years to come to know Christ. You may get discouraged and begin to say it’s too late. But God is still capable of saving those who are next to death. Maybe there are situations that look to bleak. Maybe you feel that you have turned to God too late. We see in this verse that God didn’t just say, “well, Jonah, if you had come to me sooner I could have helped you. But now, it’s too late.” No, as Jonah’s life was slipping away, God saved him. God may not always act in this way, and we may never know why. But never think it is too late for God to do something miraculous and Godlike, because it is not.

Exposition: Jonah then says in verse 8 Jonah 2:8 “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.” Let’s start with the phrase “Those who pay regard to vain idols...” There is a chance that Jonah was referring to the sailors that had been praying out to false gods. But, there’s another possibility. Jonah was a prophet of the Lord in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The land was full of people that were Jewish people by ancestry, but had chosen to worship false gods like baal and asheroth instead of the one true God that was the God of their fathers. Jonah was thinking about how all these people in his home country had turned from the one true God and were instead worshiping statues. Nothing more than that.

Application: It’s very easy to sit here in the Bible belt and wonder how people could bow down to statues and worship them and think they could save them or bring them any kind of value. That will probably never be an issue for most of you. But when these people worshiped false gods, they were giving control of their lives over to something else. They found value in something other than God. How many of you are consumed by what other people think about you. Does it ever become a hindrance to walking with Christ? How many of you, don’t raise your hands, but how many of you live and die with how many responses you get to something you put on snapchat or tik tok or any other social media platform. How many of you live and die with wanting people to notice you? Some of you may live or die with the hope of succeeding in school or in some sport. When pursuing those things become more important than following Christ, they have become vain idols. When we think more about those things than serving Christ, when we feed those desire more than our relationship with Christ, they have become vain idols.

Illustration: There is a silly movie about this guy who loves the Boston Red Sox. Which, if you have ever known anybody from Boston, they really love the red sox there. But his love for the red sox had cost him his relationship with his girlfriend. And there’s a scene where she had dumped him because of it, and he’s talking to this kid he coaches in baseball, and the kid asks him, “Have the Sox ever loved you back?” When you look at the things that you are putting before God, have they ever loved you back? Has trying to be popular ever left you satisfied, or does it give a quick fleeting pleasure of happiness, but then leaves you in search of whatever it will take to get that moment again? Has social media loved you back? Or has it left you comparing yourself to others and not being happy with who God made you? Do pursuing things other than God leave you happy, or do they constantly remind you that the world is broken and they lead you to unhappiness?

Exposition: This is because when we pursue these things and place them before God, we are trying to make them do something they can’t. Verse 8 in it’s fullness says, Jonah 2:8 “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.” God’s love is never ending and it is never failing. But when we pursue things other than God, we are pursuing things that can never love us back.

Application: When we let things take the place of God, we are voluntarily walking away from experiencing God’s never failing love. God doesn’t stop loving us, but we quit allowing it to be what defines our lives, and this leads us to more and more unhappiness and a feeling of emptiness. Why do we chose something less than an almighty God? We don’t have to.

Exposition: Jonah is sitting in the belly of the fish, and he is seeing once again how it feels to walk the path defined by God’s love and mercy. And it leads him to a place of worship. It leads him to a place of fulfilling his commitments to God. Jonah 2:9 says Jonah 2:9 “But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!””

Application: We don’t make sacrifices anymore, but salvation creates in us a heart for good works. For sacrificing of ourselves because of what God has done. If you find it hard to walk in the Lord, you have probably lost a heart of thankfulness. If we are not living in a way that honors God, if we are not giving of ourselves. If we are not fulfilling the obligation we have made to have Jesus be Lord of our lives, it is probably because we are not living with thankfulness. And why is it that we are thankful, we are thankful because of what Jonah says at the end of the verse. Salvation belongs to The Lord. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot do enough good things or stop doing bad things long enough to make ourselves right with God. Salvation is completely a work of God.

Transition: So we see Jonah end his prayer with a commitment to worship God. Well, what happens next? Next, Jonah is given his second chance at life.

Exposition: We’re not sure what the time period between the end of Jonah’s prayer and verse 10 is, but we know that at some point after Jonah prayed, God had the fish spit Jonah onto dry land. We’re not sure where Jonah was spit out. When I was a kid I always assumed it was in Ninevah, but that wasn’t the case. But either way, after Jonah acknowledged that salvation came from God, he was given a second chance at life. We see the ultimate result of God’s grace when Jonah is put back on land.

Application: Like Jonah, we are all sinners. Sin separates us from God, and just like Jonah describes, it puts us in a hopeless place. But God made a way for us to receive his grace. He sent Jesus to die on a cross for our sins and rose him from the grave so that anyone that believes that Jesus died and rose again and confesses Jesus as Lord of their life can have the hope of eternity. If we acknowledge that Salvation belongs to the Lord, we too can be sent from death to life, and have the chance to walk with Christ.

Conclusion: Are you ready to call on God tonight. Do you believe that if you turn your heart towards God and call on Him that He hears you. Maybe you are a believer in Jesus Christ, but you have been running from God. Maybe you have gotten involved in sin you wish you hadn’t and you don’t like where you are because of it. Turn to God. Call out to Him and ask for his help removing you from where you are in this situation. Go to Godly adults he has placed in your life and ask for their help. But maybe you are here tonight and you haven’t placed your hope in Christ. Those that do not know Christ are dead in their sins. But just like Jonah, if we call to God and ask for his salvation, he can save us. All you have to do is believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose again, and confess Jesus as Lord of your life. If you give him control of your life and allow him to bring you from death to life, He will. If you feel God calling you, don’t wait. Allow him to save you, just as he did Jonah.