Jonah 1:17-2:10 - God's Grace and Jonah's Prayer

Intro: I’m going to read several statements, and I want you to imagine yourself saying them. As you imagine yourself saying them, also reflect on if you really mean what you are saying.

· I believe in and worship God.

· I have a faithful relationship with Jesus Christ.

· I am thankful that Jesus Christ saved me from my sins.

· I have a very good understanding of what I want all the time.

My yes is always yes and my no is always no.

· I ask for things, and I never regret what I ask for.

· I see so many wicked people in this world, and I am glad I am not like them.

· I am a sinner, and I regularly confess my sins to God.

Were any of those convicting? There is an element of truth found in each statement that I find expressed in our text this morning, where we find a believer genuinely expressing his thoughts and feelings that don’t completely reflect reality.

*previously: God calls the prophet Jonah to go to Nineveh and call out against it. Jonah flees to Tarshish, the opposite direction. He gets on a boat, and God hurls a wind that causes a sea storm. The sailors are terrified, the captain wakes up Jonah to call out to his God, they draw lots and discover the problem is Jonah, Jonah tells them to hurl him into the sea to stop the storm. They eventually do, and the storm stops. The sailors convert and for the first time worship the one true God, YHWH. For those who listened to the message on Jonah 1, you know there’s a lot more going on but basically, that’s what happens.

- a lot of movement in the last chapter. Here, all the movement stops.

- Most of Jonah 1 is loud. Most of Jonah 2 is quiet.

We are going to read Jonah 1:17 - Jonah 2. You will find the text on page _____ in your black pew Bibles. *read

Main Idea: Because God saved us through His judgment, we praise Him through our thanks.

1:17, 2:1 (READ) Our text this morning begins in verse 17 which reads,

17 And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. (STOP HERE)

And Jonah was in the belly of the fish (m) three days and three nights.

1 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish (f),

Our text begins with God doing something that no one in existence can do: appoint a fish. No one can appoint a fish, no one can hurl the wind, God can and that’s what he does. Why does he appoint a great fish? To swallow Jonah. The language of swallow here is of judgment. That’s what it usually is in the OT. Many times, a non-human performs this act, and it’s usually a sign of God’s wrath. Ps 21:9 reads, “The LORD will swallow them up in his wrath, and fire will consume them.” The image is judgment and wrath.

Jonah would have died without the fish. Plummeting into the deep sea waters in the middle of a storm. Drowning. No oxygen. Jonah in chapter 1 showed clear signs that he wanted to die and the water itself would’ve done the job. So why did God appoint a great fish to swallow Jonah? Throughout the prayer, you are going to see a tension between two possibilities, two concepts, two interpretations. The great fish is either a vehicle for judgment or a vehicle for salvation. The reason there’s a tension is because the two ideas seem to conflict with one another. I will give you the first of many examples of this.

Why did Jonah wait three full days before he said anything to God? This question draws us to two things. Here’s the first: three days and three nights is long enough for you to not survive inside an animal. IL: You decide to check out the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago and you somehow end up in the water behind the glass and get swallowed by an animal. One of their sandbar sharks or a beluga whale. It takes the Shedd employees 30 seconds to get you out of the animal. What are your chances of survival? Pretty good. 3 days. What are your chances of survival? Jonah is swallowed by a large sea creature, and assumes he will die quickly. One day and one night passes. He’s alive. Two days and two nights pass. He is still alive. Three days and three nights pass. Jonah is consciously thinking, okay, am I still alive? First thing: three days/nights is long enough for you to not survive inside an animal yet Jonah survives.

Here is the second thing that the question draws us to. One commentator suggests an ancient semitic myth about the underworld and how it took three days and three nights to make a complete journey there, from life on earth to death in Sheol, the realm of the dead. The three days and three nights solidify to the readers that Jonah’s journey to the netherworld was complete.

The two things I just explained provide the first tension we see in the text. Did you all see what that was? Do the three days and three nights emphasize how Jonah is alive or how Jonah is dead? The rest of the message this morning is going to be like this as we expound on Jonah’s prayer. Two-sided interpretations, opposing themes, tension after tension and tension.

You also need to understand where this tension is psychologically, mentally. Jonah is so close to death, so barely conscious that he couldn’t tell if he was actually dead or not. There are indicators in the text to strongly suggest that he’s losing consciousness.

The way we are going to understand Jonah’s prayer is to first see what the prayer says verse by verse. Then we will go back and see what the prayer is, and then at the end, we will see what the prayer shows.

What the prayer says / What the prayer actually is / What the prayer shows us

I. WHAT THE PRAYER SAYS

2:2 (READ)

“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.

If you’re familiar with Jonah 1, you’re probably thinking: Finally! Jonah does what the pagan ship captain told Jonah to do back in 1:6, “call out to your God.”

Jonah is speaking in the past tense. He called, God answered, He cried, God heard. In this prayer, Jonah prays but he doesn’t ask for anything, but says he received. Jonah is praying as if God already did something.

What we come to find out is Jonah 2 is Jonah’s second prayer. His first one is off-screen; it’s unrecorded. It was a prayer of petition to deliver him. From what? Death? Ninevites? This is where you start the see the tension again. Remember, it seemed like Jonah wanted to die in chapter 1. Did he change his mind in Jonah 2? Once he actually tasted death and the fish rescued him? Did he change his mind? Or does Jonah still want to die, and the fish itself is death? Maybe Jonah is thinking, I asked for death and God provided. Death swallowed me. Is Jonah grateful God delivered him from death or is he grateful God delivered him from earthly life? In either case, Jonah feels like he was delivered.

RE: We’re talking about deliverance here. It causes us to reflect. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what Jonah wanted to be delivered from but what about you? When was the last time you prayed for deliverance? God, I am calling out to you, I am crying out to you. Deliver me. Do you have this feeling, like something has swallowed you up this morning? Maybe it’s your personal habitual sin. Maybe you lack something and you’ve been wanting this for years. Maybe you’re a functional atheist and you don’t care for God but you want more fulfillment in your life. What do you need to be delivered from? And when was the last time you talked to God about it?

This is something crucial believers need to know. In verse 1-2, Jonah is basically saying that his prayer caused his deliverance (fish), but as readers, we see that God’s deliverance caused his prayer in Jonah 2. I hope that’s encouraging to you.

It is because God saved us from our death that we praise Him in our thanks. We pray because God has delivered us. God didn’t save you because you asked Him to. God saved you because He saved you.

In the next two verses, you are going to see Jonah sharing with God his own personal experience of what just happened in the previous chapter.

2:3-4 (DON’T READ)

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.

4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight;

yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’

What you are beginning to see in verses 3-4 is Jonah’s own interpretation of what just happened in Jonah 1. In verse 3, Jonah says God cast him into the deep. In Jonah 1, who hurled Jonah into the sea? The sailors. On the one hand, Jonah is proclaiming God’s sovereign hand in what just took place. The sailors proclaimed this back in v. 14, “for you, O LORD, have done as it pleased you.” Jonah here is a little late, but he still affirms it. So, on the one hand, Jonah recognizes God’s sovereign control and role. On the other hand, Jonah takes no responsibility for what he did so far. Why did the sailors hurl Jonah into the sea? Because he told them to, because he was running away from the presence of God, because the storm was his fault. So in verse 3, is Jonah glorifying God and His power, or is he presenting himself as a victim? He does this again in verse 4.

Verse 4, he refers to his previous prayer, about how he was driven away from God’s sight. Again, Jonah 1, what drove Jonah away from the sight of God, away from the presence of the LORD? Jonah. God said “arise and go”, Jonah “arose” and “fled.” Jonah is reinterpreting to God what happened in the previous chapter. This is the picture I see: A mom tells her son not to touch the cookie jar. The child knocks over the cookie jar and screams at the top of his lungs. The mom walks up after seeing everything that just happened, and the child says to her, “Oh mother, the jar fell over and I cried out to you.”

After saying all this, Jonah says he will look upon God’s holy temple: God’s presence. Again, there are two ways to interpret this depending on what you think Jonah is thinking. By holy temple, Jonah could be saying that he wants to go home. The physical temple is in Jerusalem, in Israel. He doesn’t want to go to Nineveh, he wants to go back to his homeland alive. But by holy temple, Jonah could also be saying that he wants to look upon God’s spiritual temple, God’s true heavenly dwelling place. 1:9 “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven.” So where does Jonah want to be? Alive in Jerusalem? Or not alive and in heaven?

Jonah continues to explain what happened at the end of Jonah 1 in verses 5-6.

2:5-6 (DON’T READ)

5 The waters closed in over me to take my life;

the deep surrounded me;

weeds were wrapped about my head

6 at the roots of the mountains.

I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; (WE’LL STOP HERE)

yet you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God.

Jonah is describing what he saw at the end of chapter 1. Describing it in sequence. Look at verse 5. Waters closed in as he entered the water. Then the deep surrounded him as he plummeted into the sea. Then, he finds weeds around his head. Where do you find sea weed? At the bottom of the sea. And then he starts talking about mountains. What are these mountains?

Again, in ancient semitic mythology, there was a belief that two mountains established the borders of the gate to the underworld. The kind of deathly place Jonah is describing sounds like a prison. Once you enter, you don’t get to leave. Metaphorically, we today agree with this. When you die, you don’t come back to life. Especially if you have been dead for three days. You are not coming back. It’s impossible.

It’s impossible, yet Jonah says something interesting at the end of verse 6: yet you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God. This is the turning point in the prayer. The prayer so far has been focused on Jonah’s death and his personal experience in Jonah 1. With the turning point, you would now think he’s going to talk more about God and what He’s done. Instead, Jonah is now going to speak more about himself, and his own efforts and his own piety, in verses 7-9.

2:7-9 (READ)

7 When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, (STOP)

and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.

8 Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.

9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you;

what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the LORD!”

In the OT when we’re talking about remembering between God and man, it’s usually God who does the remembering. In the chaos and brokenness of this world, it is God who remembers us. The Noah flood story is a famous one. There is chaos and death everywhere, and then Genesis 8:1 reads, But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided. God remembers His people. Prophet Jonah says in verse 7, I remembered the LORD. Ancient readers who were familiar with the Hebrew scriptures would’ve thought, “really Jonah?”

Then, Jonah starts talking about these people who pay regard to vain idols. Who is he talking about? The most obvious answer is he’s talking about the pagan sailors he just interacted with. Here’s what Jonah didn’t see. After they hurled Jonah off the ship, verse 16 reads, Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows. Ironic isn’t it? It’s even more ironic that Jonah hasn’t done either of those things yet. He says he will, but what you’ll see in chapters 3 and 4 is that Jonah still doesn’t do them. That aside, Jonah is essentially saying here, when I get out of this mess, I will demonstrate my obedience through sacrifice and vows.

RE: We’re not so different from Jonah. I think believers today have a tendency to think the exact same way. We first demonstrate patterns of disobedience and abandonment toward God. Then we have these kinds of thoughts: When I get this done, then I will obey God. When this happens, when my situation changes, when I feel like I’m ready, when the conditions of my own terms are met, then I will show my faithfulness to God. When I’m comfortable, when He gives me what I want, then I will show God that I love Him. Then, I will show love to others. Have any of you felt that way before?

Jonah proclaims his good works, his piety. In verses 7-9, he’s pretty much saying, I remember God, I pray to God’s holy temple, I don’t pay regard to vain idols, I don’t forsake hope of steadfast love, I with the voice of thanksgiving make sacrifices and pay vows. Me me me. I I I. My my my. All throughout the prayer. Embassy, praying for yourself and about yourself isn’t wrong, but in light of Jonah’s selfishness in chapter 1, you continue to see his selfishness in his numerous references to himself in his chapter 2 prayer. That’s the problem.

And then he concludes his self-centered prayer with, “Salvation belongs to the LORD.” The prayer is complete and some of you are probably disgusted by what Jonah has been saying. Some of you are thinking, I am so sick of this prayer. The fish appears to have felt the exact same way: literally.

2:10

And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

The fish didn’t bring him, spit him, deliver him to the dry land. After hearing the prayer and then God’s command, the fish threw up. He vomited.

So, we finally finished what Jonah’s prayer says.

Now, we need to see what the prayer is. Then, we’ll see what the prayer shows us.

II. WHAT THE PRAYER IS

The prayer is a psalm. It’s a psalm of thanks. What you probably didn’t know, is that the majority of this prayer/psalm of thanks is a collection of Bible verses from a bunch of other psalms in the book of psalms. What does this mean? Most of Jonah’s words are not even his own words. Most of what we just read together is either a direct quotation or a clear allusion to a psalm in the Bible.

I’ll show you the first instance. The first half of verse 2 is a direct quotation of Psalm 120:1. Psalm 120 is a song of ascent. Songs of ascent were prayed when Jews pilgrimaged to Jerusalem every year. You look at Jonah 2:2, and I’m going to read Psalm 120:1. Here’s Psalm 120:1, “A Song of Ascents. In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me.” Almost verbatim. The irony is that we saw how misleading Jonah’s prayer could be. One interpretation is that Jonah comes off lying or being deceitful. He said God cast him in the sea and he was driven away from God’s sight. We know what really happened in Jonah 1. If you were to continue reading Psalm 120, verse two reads, “Deliver me, O LORD, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue.” It appears that Jonah cherrypicked this one verse out of its context, maybe because the context of Psalm 120 reveals what Jonah is doing. And that’s just one example.

A part of Jonah 2:4 reads “all your waves and your billows passed over me.”Jonah took this word for word, form for form from Psalm 42:7. Between Psalm 42 and Jonah 2, themes of salvation and distress are present in both. However, Jonah says the waves pass over him as a form of judgment, but in Psalm 42, the psalmist is clearly comforted by it. The psalmist thirsts for God and God provides waterfalls and waves to pass over him; there’s a positive connotation here of God acting in steadfast love. Since you now know that, it’s easy to see that Jonah is quoting and alluding to Psalm 42 while misapplying the verse toward a situation very different than the context of the psalm. Also, the speaker in the psalm seems to feel like God has abandoned him and he is seeking out God. In contrast, Jonah has been running away from God this entire time and God has been pursuing him this entire time. The good news for Embassy church is that when we begin our sermon series again on the book of the Psalms, we’ll begin with Psalm 42.

For time’s sake, for those interested, I will provide all the psalm citations for each verse of the prayer in the sermon description on our church website. That’s what this prayer is. Jonah’s psalm of thanks is a collection of various verses from the book of psalms out of context, misapplied to Jonah’s situation. One thing I will admit is that Jonah has become a master in memorizing the psalms. The author may be implying that Jonah had memorized all 150 psalms.

The traditional interpretation of Jonah 1 and 2 is that Jonah runs away, gets swallowed by a whale, Jonah says he’s sorry and repents, and then the whale spits him out. That’s the more famous rendering. We just went through what the prayer says and what the prayer is: at what point does Jonah say he’s sorry? Apologize for what he’s done and thought so far? When does Jonah confess his sins? When does Jonah repent? Repent means to proclaim that you will no longer keep sinning the same sin. Repent means to turn from your sin and then turn to God.

What’s noteworthy is that after Jonah’s talking, in verse 10, God doesn’t speak to Jonah. He speaks to the fish. Why doesn’t God speak to Jonah? One OT scholar believes that it’s because Jonah’s prayer justifies himself while also lacking repentance. God recognizes this by not speaking to Jonah, but the fish.

Because God saved us through His judgment, we praise Him through our thanks. #2: we confess our sins and repent of our wicked ways.

We see this missing in Jonah’s life. Do you see this missing in your life?

Eddie this morning prayed a beautiful prayer of confession. Jonah’s prayer doesn’t sound like that. Throughout Jonah 1 and 2, Jonah does not demonstrate any intent or indication to repent of his sins. At the same time, Jonah acknowledges his ongoing relationship with the LORD (even though he attempts to run away from Him) and expresses thanksgiving for God's action that God has not yet executed.

III. WHAT THE PRAYER SHOWS

We don’t want repentance but dependence. We want to depend on our God, but we don’t want to repent to our God. It forces us to think of how most nominal Christians today think of God and their own faith: unrepentant self-proclaimed faith in Jesus.

The prayer also shows us just how broken Jonah is. So much contradiction and conflict and delusion and tension. Jonah, is the fish a vehicle of God’s judgment or God’s deliverance and salvation? Do you want to go back home and see God’s physical temple or do you want to go to heaven and see God’s spiritual temple? Do you acknowledge God’s sovereignty in your life or are you just a victim? What kind of salvation are you talking about at the end of your prayer? Salvation from death? Or salvation from the reality of life that you’ve been running away from this whole time? Do you want life or do you want death? Which is it? What do you want? I think the tension of the text reflects the tension going on inside Jonah’s heart. And I think the tension inside Jonah’s heart reveals to us the tension going on inside our own hearts. There is a tension inside all of us.

One tension I think we all have is how we want God but also don’t want God. Sometimes, we use God to avoid Him. We use, like Jonah, God’s word to avoid obeying God’s word. The prayer shows us that Jonah knows how to say all the right things. The Bible-centered believers we have in our own church, also know how to say all the right things. Some of us, instead of worshipping the Christian God, would rather worship the Christian religion. Do you all know the difference? We say all the right things, act like our lives have no issues, smile and only say kind things at church, and when we go home, we’re a wreck. You occasionally pray in public but you don’t talk to God at all when you’re alone. If this is true for you, then maybe you need to ask yourself if you’re not worshiping God, but you’re instead worshiping a religion.

Here's what the prayer also shows us. It shows us that our God is so gracious, He is willing to hear our imperfect, self-delusional prayers. We speak, He listens, and He responds. Even in our warped perception of ourselves like Jonah, not only does God allow us the capacity to talk to Him, when we do, He is willing to listen to us. What an amazing loving Father.

The last thing that Jonah 2 shows us is how Jonah prefigures our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. You’re thinking: Jonah? How? There is a very subtle textual clue, where as a Christian once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The clue is in the first verse of the prayer, verse 2, where Jonah says “out of the belly of Sheol.” That word belly can just as commonly be understood as womb. This Hebrew phrase “belly of Sheol” or “womb of Sheol” is an expression no one in the entire Bible uses. The phrase doesn’t occur anywhere else in the Bible. However, there is only place in the NT where death is presented as having a womb and in that passage, death with the womb is pregnant. What if I told you that this extremely rare, one-time metaphor was use in the first ever Christian sermon?

In Acts 2, the apostle Peter preaches the first ever recorded Christian sermon during Pentecost, and in verse 24, describes death having birth pains. The image is pregnant death trying to prevent the child from coming out, but this preborn child would not be held by it. The child breaks through. The implied image of this child represents someone: resurrected Jesus Christ, how death could not keep Jesus dead.

Jonah was in the belly/womb of Sheol for three days and afterward was brought back to life. Jesus said in Matthew 12:40, “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.”The sign of the prophet Jonah that Jesus spoke of was that Jesus would die for our sins, die on the cross in our place, die even though he didn’t deserve death, and after being dead, really dead for 3 days, on the third day, he would come back to life. That’s the sign.

Earlier, I said that it was impossible for a dead man to not be dead after three days. The Godman we worship, Jesus Christ, did the impossible. He raised himself up from the dead and conquered death. We as believers stand in awe of how amazing he is, undeniably recognizing that something greater than Jonah is here. We have been trying to decide whether Jonah was being judged by God or saved by God, but on the cross, God the Father, the righteous judge, judged His one and only son, poured out His wrath upon Him, the wrath that we deserved, and it is through Christ’s substitutionary atonement - Substitute meaning in our place. Atonement meaning making right a previous wrong. – it is through Christ’s substitutionary atonement that we are saved.

Embassy, we have been saved through the judgment of God, only made possible by the blood of Jesus. And because God saved us through His judgment, we praise Him through our thanks. God didn’t show us grace in response to our heavenly praise, but we shout heavenly praise in response to the grace that God has chosen to flood us with.

The tension in Jonah 2 is whether Jonah was really alive or really dead but there is no tension with Christ. Jesus Christ is alive today. And he sits at the right hand of God in heaven, and he sent us his helper who dwells in us now. Whatever tension is going on inside of you this morning, you’re not alone anymore. God the Holy Spirit is with you and sustains your eternal life and comforts your soul. Jonah was thankful for a full deliverance he had not yet experienced. We Christ-followers today are thankful for a deliverance we have experienced. We have been reborn, birthed out of the womb of death, and born again into life by and with our Lord and Savior. Salvation belongs to Jesus Christ.

Jonah 1:17-2:10

A Great Fish Swallows Jonah

17 And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Jonah's Prayer

2 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, 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. 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. 4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ 5 The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head 6 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. 7 When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. 8 Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. 9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

10 And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

Amazing image of someone crying out from the grave, the underworld and God reaching out to grab this person.

RE: What does your life say about our faith in Christ?

RE: If you were put on trial and your crime was loving Jesus, your crime was being Christian, would there be enough evidence?

1:17 “belly of the male fish”

2:1 “belly/womb of the female fish” (same word for “womb” but different image with gender)

Salvation through judgment (Kevin Youngblood).

- “swallowed” is a language of judgment, destruction, end of your life,

- Life, new beginning

RE: this idea of being born again through judgment and salvation, does it remind you of anything? Receiving a new life, a new beginning? Has that ever happened to you?