Jonah Chapter 2 Number 9

THE PRAYER OF JONAH

JONAH CHAPTER 2 Number 9

INTRODUCTION

Pray: We pray that this morning the gospel would come to us, not in word only, but also in power and in the H.S and with full conviction; that we wouldn’t accept it just as the word of a man, but what is really is: the word of God.

Last time we started to look at the prayer Jonah, prayed from inside the stomach of the fish which the Lord had prepared to rescue him.

What we focused on was the general characteristic of Jonah’s prayer in Chapter 2.

And what we saw was:

This is a prayer of great faith in God as Jonah’s salvation.

We saw that two things happen in this prayer.

On the one hand there is a record from Jonah of what he was experiencing; what his senses and reason were telling him. And those things battled against faith.

On the other hand, faith triumphed! Jonah clinging on in faith despite what reason and senses were telling him.

And I put it to you, that that is the nature of faith, is it not?

“It is the assurance of things hoped for”; it is NOT about the things you see or the evidence that is before you.

1. What did the side of Reason and his senses tell him?

Well, he talks about two things: he talks about his situation, and he speaks of the source of what he was experiencing. And both these things were telling Jonah to give up; that there was no hope.

Think about his situation:

Here he is having been through the most tremendous storm that even the professional saliors quaked in their boots.

- Then he was tossed into the sea

- And now he is swallowed by a huge fish.

He calls what he is going through ‘my affliction’.

He was distressed.

His life was on the line.

He saw himself as being buried alive, as it were, in the heart of the sea.

That what he was experiencing. And that suggested he should give up. That there was no hope. No future.

But there is more….

Look at what he tells us about the source of this affliction.

The mere circumstances he has described here are but a small part of what might hinder the prayer of faith.

He saw the Lord’s hand of judgement in all that had come upon him!

And I put it to you last time, that that surely aggravates the affliction, does it not?

If this was just an accident at sea; a man overboard, it would be bad enough. It would have been alarming and terrifying. But the situation is far worse than that.

All the terrors are coming as part of God’s controversy with His servant, so he cries out:

“You” have cast me into the deep.

“All Your billows… all Your waves have gone over me.”

But, my friends,

2. What does faith say?

I suggested to you that the turning point is Verse 4. He says:

“…, ‘I have been expelled from [d]Your sight. Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy temple.’

The temple was the place where God had chosen to put His name!

There was hope to be found in looking to the God who was willing to be reconciled with sinners at the mercy seat.

- The place of atonement.

- The place of forgiveness,

And that is what Jonah clung to by faith.

And we closed last time by looking at four things that demonstrate that Jonah held on to God in faith. I won’t repeat it all but his faith resulted in:

i) Prayer being uttered.

ii) Promises clung to.

iii) Precepts proclaimed.

iv) Praise is given.

Jonah did not stay focused on his experiences or what his senses were telling him. He looked up to God in faith.

So this prayer is a prayer of faith in the Lord’s salvation.

Well, this morning we are going to look at other elements of this prayer, in the hope that it will help us to respond to God in faith when He sends trials and afflictions our way.

What other elements can we discover as we look again at this amazing prayer uttered by Jonah in the depth of the fish’s stomach?

4 things:

1. It is an honest prayer.

2. It is God-centered prayer.

3. It is hope-driven prayer.

4. It is life-transforming prayer.

1. It is an honest prayer.

a) Jonah is honest about himself; and

b) He is honest about the situation and what caused it.

Look how completely frank he is about is life-threatening situation….

Look at verse 2:

“I called out of my distress to the Lord, And He answered me. I cried for help from the [b]depth of Sheol;

Verse 5 “Water encompassed me to the [e]point of death. The great deep [f]engulfed me, Weeds were wrapped around my head. 6 “I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever,

7 “While [h]I was fainting away, I remembered the Lord,

Jonah is not sugar-coating his situation. He is not focusing upon his status as a Jew. He is not referring to himself as a prophet of God. He isn’t self-righteous – with nice pious words.

He is open and honest about how terrible his situation was:

- He is in distress. He admits that.

- He sees himself in the depth of Sheol – the place of the dead, the grave.

- He effectively says he is at the point of death; water encompasses him.

- Weeds are wrapping around his head.

- He felt like he was locked in prison and there was no way out. No escape!

- He was, according to verse 7, fainting away.

Jonah is honest about himself and his situation.

He is equally honest about the cause of it, as we have already seen.

I’ve already mentioned verse 3:

“For Youhad cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the current [c]engulfed me. All Your breakers and billows passed over me.

He did not see this as coming about at the hand of the sailors, nor was it due primarily caused by the tremendous storm. According to Jonah:

- “You, Yahweh, have cast me into the deep.”

- This is God’s doing.

- He is the prime cause.

- Yes, He uses secondary causes, (the storm and the sailors), but it is ultimately His work; His intention; His action.

- It was God’s breakers and billows that passed over him.

Jonah is honest about his situation and the cause of it. He is not complaining about it, but simply saying it the way it was.

My friends: Is it not true that too often we are not always completely honest in our prayers?

Is it not true that sometimes we come to the Lord:

- Overlooking some circumstance, He has caused in His providence. Perhaps we down-play His role in what has happened.

- Maybe other times we ignore some sin, He has highlighted to us, and we just get on to other things.

- Sometimes we utter nice sounding words which do not match our thinking.

- We dress up our prayers in theological terms that do not match what is going on in our heart.

We simply are not honest and real in our prayers.

Jonah does not explain away his miseries. He isn’t embarrassed to say it the way it is and even identify God as the source of the affliction. - His God is much greater than that.

- He needs no defending.

- He is all-wise, and all His ways are just and right.

- We can be completely honest with Him, when we do so with reverence because He knows it all anyway.

I want to encourage you to be honest in your prayers to the Lord:

- Tell it the way it is.

- Be open and frank with God.

- Don’t try to sugarcoat your situation.

- Don’t try and dress it up in religious garb.

- Be like the tax-collector, raw and straight to the point: “Lord be merciful to me the sinner”

- Remember the prayers of David: The Psalms are full of raw emotion because they are open and completely honest.

That is how our prayer should be: simple and straight-forward to God who knows all things anyway!

Jonah’s prayer was an honest prayer.

2. It is God-centered prayer.

i) It is addressed to Yahweh; and

ii) It is focused on Yahweh

Did you notice that?

His prayer is clearly addressed to God and not just uttered to some nameless being. Jonah uses the covenant name of God; a name that is pregnant with covenant promises that come from a God who is very personal and willing to be intimate with His people.

Verse 2 specifically says:

“I called out of my distress (to Yahweh) to the Lord, And He answered me.”

This prayer is conversation between Jonah and His God. And we are given the privilege of eavesdrop on it. It is personal and intimate.

Verse 7 continues this focus on God:

“While [h]I was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, And my prayer came to You, Into Your holy temple.”

He stops looking at his circumstances and the affliction he was in, and he looks up to the Lord.

“I was fainting away, and life was ebbing out of me, but then I came to my senses and ‘I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to Him.’”

And what is the result of this focus on the Lord?

Jonah comes to him as a pennant sinner.

Penance is not about the Rosary or saying “Hale Mary’s” or trying to fix up your sins in your own strength.

Penance means to confess and repent of sin. It means self-abasement. It requires sorrow for sin and turning from it.

Jonah’s God-centered prayer drives him to show penance in two ways:

a) He acknowledges that everything that had happened to him, while caused by God, was nevertheless his own fault.

In other words, he makes confession for his sin.

How do we know he is saying that?

Well verse 8 is a confession, is it not?

Jonah says:

“Those who regard [i]vain idols Forsake their faithfulness,”

In other words, “those who cling to worthless idols turn their back on the grace that could otherwise be theirs.”

An idol is anything that takes the place of God.

It is not restricted to the idols the pagan sailors might have had – idols of stone or wood.

- It might be another religion. Or a concept of God you have conceived in your own mind rather than from the Word of God.

- It might be another person who you have idolized. It could be your own spouse or your children. They can take the place of God.

- It might be reliance on your own abilities or gifts. You have put them in the place of relying on God.

- It might be a source of some pleasure such as sexual pleasure or drink or drugs.

Anything that takes the place of relying on God is an idol. And I think, if we are honest, we are all prone to idolatry much more than we usually admit.

So Jonah is saying: whenever someone puts something else in the place of God and thereby turns from the Lord, he inevitably also turns from the God’s mercy and from God’s faithfulness.

We have effectively forsaken God’s faithfulness and therefore deserve all that comes on us.

Is not Jonah confessing that is what he has done?

Jonah had put self-interest before obeying the Lord. He wanted to do his own thing!

Jonah had put his own nation of Israel, before warning Nineveh of the peril they were in from the judgement of God.

- Jonah had turned from God.

- Tried to flee from the presence of the Lord.

- He was guilty of idolatry.

So, as he focuses on God, he confesses he deserves everything that has come upon him – he turned to idols and away from the grace of God and the faithfulness of God.

But Jonah’s penance is shown in another way too:

b) He does not ask God for anything.

IF he had petitioned God for something, then we might suspect that his repentance had a hidden motive.

But Jonah asks for nothing in this prayer. He is genuinely sorry for his disobedience.

- He isn’t asking God to deliver him from the appalling affliction he was in.

- He doesn’t ask God to revisit His decision to send him to Nineveh.

- There is simply no such petition in the prayer, is there?

And that, my friends, shows that his prayer is not focused on himself but on the Lord; the One whom he had sinned against.

When you or I focus on God, we come face to face with One who is holy, powerful, righteous, just and great in all His ways.

And the response of every human being who has come in contact with the holy is always the same:

- First there is fear. We tremble before the Holy. That is why so often when angels appear to men and women in Scripture, their first statement is “fear not”. We fear for our lives when we come before the holy.

- But after fearthere is a deep sense of our own unworthiness and the greatness of God.

- And that results in usnot to ask anything of God, but simply worshipping at His footstall and listen to what He has to say to us.

Jonah’s prayer is God-centered. And accompanying that is his repentance:

- confessing his sin of having turned from God’s faithfulness to go after worthless idols.

- AND NOT asking God for anything.

My friends, what is the focus of your prayers?

Is it on yourself or your circumstances, or is it on God Himself?

Are your prayers a list of things you want God to do for you?

Or are your prayers focused on WHO God is and what He has done for you and others?

AND When you come face to face with God, do you sense His holiness and fear Him?

Do you feel your inadequacy, your filthiness, your sinfulness and cast yourself on Him, looking for His grace to help you in your time of need?

My dear friend, only His Son, Jesus, can prepare you to meet with Holy God.

Only His Son, can take away our sin and remove our sins as far as the east is from the west by His death on the cross. Only He has paid the price for your sins, so you can come to the Father in prayer.

Only His Son can cloth us in His own holiness and righteousness, so we can meet with the One who is “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

Our prayers need to be honest, and they need to be God-centered!

What else can we say about Jonah’s prayer?

3. It is hope-driven prayer.

If you think that Jonah is down in the dumps about his situation, you would be completely wrong.

The thing that strikes you as you read this prayer is Jonah has great hope for the future, does he not?

Because he is focused on the Lord, his prayer is filled with hope. He does not despair.

The remedy to spiritual depression, my dear friends, is to stay focused on God. He is your rock! He is your Redeemer! Your friend! And your hope!!!

I mentioned that the turning point in his prayer is in verse 4. Everything looks bleak up to then, but then he says this:

“Nevertheless, I WILL look again toward Your holy temple.’

- That’s hope!

- His life does not end with being expelled from God’s sight.

- He clings to future grace: “Nevertheless, I will look again toward Your holy temple”.

- This affliction is not the end.

- Death is not the end.

- Even in the midst of affliction he can say, “I will look towards your temple and there I will find the Lord seated upon the mercy seat between the two holy Seraphim.”

- There I will find the blood-stained mercy seat where a substitutionary sacrifice has been made to atone for me.

- There I will find my fowl sins covered and propitiation has been made!

- There is hope, for hopeless sinners like me!

Jonah goes on with more hope in verse 6:

“I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever, But You HAVE brought up my life from [g]the pit, O Lord my God.”

He might be drowning and dying in the midst of the fish’s belly, but Jonah does not see death as the end.

He says, by faith, God HAS brought up his life from the pit of death!

Why?

Because Verse 7 says:

… my prayer came to You, Into Your holy temple.

That is a remarkable statement, is it not?

At this point Jonah had not been delivered. He was still in the belly of the great fish. Yet, he says, by faith: ‘God HAD heard his prayer for mercy. God granted Jonah His grace.’

We come back to the fact that this is a prayer of faith, don’t we?

And faith looks forward in hope. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. That is why this prayer is full of hope.

- He is not looking just at the appalling circumstances he was in.

- He is not just focused on how he had sinned against God and fallen short of His glory. (The Devil wants us to focus on our failures and have us paralyzed for life.)

Jonah is looking up to God in faith and that faith gives him hope for future grace:

- My prayer has come to You.

- Nevertheless, I looked to the holy temple where God is seated.

- And You brought my life up from the pit.

Dear friends, our hope rests in the God of hope who gives grace in our hour of need.

Psalm 130:7 says this:

O Israel, hope in the Lord;

For with the Lord there is lovingkindness,

And with Him is abundant redemption.[1]

We can hope in the Lord because of who He is: He is full of lovingkindness and the source of abundant redemption!

Lam 3 puts it like this in verses 19 - 23:

Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness.

20 Surely my soul remembers

And is bowed down within me.

21 This I recall to my mind,

Therefore I have hope.

22 The Lord’sloving-kindnesses indeed never cease,

For His compassions never fail.

23 Theyare new every morning;

Great is Your faithfulness.[2]

My friends, even in the midst of great affliction; even in the middle of the Lord disciplining you to bring you back to faithfulness to Himself, there is great hope. That hope is grounded in the God we trust:

- His loving-kindness never ceases.

- His compassions never fail.

- Great is His faithfulness.

Jonah’s prayer is a hope-driven prayer.

Apply:

My friends, are your prayers characterized by hope?

It is very easy for us to become preoccupied with how bad things are and to become downcast because we don’t see things improving. Perhaps we even see things as only getting worse and worse.

But surely the Christian should be driven by hope because our hope rests not on what we see but on the Lord God Almighty who is able to do as He pleases and change what appears hopeless and even impossible.

Jonah’s prayer is hope-driven despite the darkness of his situation.

One more characteristic of this prayer:

4. It is life-transforming prayer.

What are the signs of a change in Jonah’s life evident in this prayer?

Two things:

i) There is a change from outward, formal religion, to heart-driven faith.

ii) There is a change from pride to humility.

Let me just prove that to you:

First, there is a change FROM outward formal religion TO heart-driven faith in the Lord.

Did you notice the contrast between verse 8 and verse 9?

In verse 8, Jonah is thinking of ALL those who turn to idols. He doesn’t appear to be just focused on himself and confessing his own wrongdoing. His statement is a bit preachy.

But in verse 9 it is very personal. There seems to be a change. It is what he proposes to do from now on:

“But I will sacrifice to You With the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation is from the Lord.”

Jonah life is changed; transformed from a dead-formal religion that tends to preach at others, to a life that is marked by:

a) A sacrifice of thanksgiving which comes from his heart; AND

b) Vows he promises to pay by way of future service.

What is this sacrifice of thanksgiving and the vows he promises to pay?

Well, we must NOT see them as the ground of his salvation.

- He is NOT saying he will offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay his vows in order to earn salvation or to work for his salvation.

- He is quite clear in v9: “Salvation is from the Lord” (and we will come back to that shortly).

So what is this sacrifice of thanksgiving and payment of vows Jonah speaks of?

I want to put it to you they are one and the same thing.

- It isn’t two separate activities.

- It simply denotes a wholehearted commitment to the Lord; serving the Lord from a heart that is on fire for Him.

Why do I say that?

Well, these very same Hebrew words are found earlier in Psalm 50. In fact, they are repeated in that psalm for emphasis.

What that psalm does is it compares empty, outward, showy religion with heart-felt service to the Lord.

Let me just read to you from Psalm 50 verses 7 to 15:

7 “Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify [c]against you; I am God, your God. 8 “I do not reprove you for your sacrifices, And your burnt offerings are continually before Me.

In other words, they are not neglecting the outward form of religion.

They are offering their sacrifices; going through the motions of religious observance.

God is NOT rebuking them for neglecting the outward form of religion. But God continues in verse 9:

9 “I shall take no young bull out of your house Nor male goats out of your folds. 10 “For every beast of the forest is Mine, The cattle on a thousand hills. 11 “I know every bird of the mountains, And everything that moves in the field is [d]Mine. 12 “If I were hungry I would not tell you, For the world is Mine, and [e]all it contains. 13 “Shall I eat the flesh of [f]bulls Or drink the blood of male goats?

In other words, although they were commanded to bring their sacrifices to the temple as a reminder of their sins and their need for redemption, there was a sense in which God did not need them.

- The sacrifices they bought were already His.

- He owns a cattle on a thousand hills.

- He knows every bird of the mountains.

- The whole world is His!

So what does God want from these people? What does he want from us? Verse 14:

14 “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving And pay your vows to the Most High; 15 Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honour Me.”

And he repeats it in verse 23:

“He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honours Me; And to him who [j]orders his way aright I shall show the salvation of God.”

In other words, God isn’t interested in an outward, show of religion. That is not what God wants. He wants their hearts, and He wants their devotion:

- To obey is better than sacrifice.

- He wants them to be full of thanksgiving.

- To be grateful for who God is, in and of Himself.

- He wants them to delight in Him.

- To love Him.

- To honour Him wholeheartedly.

- Offering a sacrifice of thanksgiving out of gratitude for what He has done; and

- Paying vows of service to the Lord.

- And that is what Jonah commits himself to in chapter 2.

Apply:

My dear friends, what is the state of your walk with the Lord?

Is your religion cold and formal; a mere outward show; keeping up appearances?

Do you come to church because it is your desire and delight, OR just to be seen to be present?

God doesn’t want an outward, showy, religion. He wants our hearts. He wants our devotion. He wants a sacrifice of praise and for us to willingly pay our vows. That shows a heart on fire for Him!

Jonah’s life has been transformed from a cold, formal faith, to one that is now living and vital.

But there is a second sign or symptom of a life-transforming change in Jonah:

There is a change from pride to humility.

Did you notice the use of similar words between what the sailors did in Chapter 1:16 and what Jonah now says of himself in Chapter 2?

In Chapter 1: 16 we read this, speaking of the Sailors who have just thrown Jonah into the sea and the sea has stopped its raging:

16 Then the men feared the Lord greatly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

Now Jonah says in chapter 2:9, Jonah says:

But I will sacrifice to You With the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay.

In chapter 1, Jonah appears to place himself above the sailors:

- His confession seems to come from a position of superiority.

- He confessed: “I am a Hebrew”

- “I fear the Lord, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.”

- He says all that despite his disobedience to the Lord. There seems to be a certain degree of pride and arrogance.

Now, in Chapter 2, Jonah, who wrote this book, seems to be identifying with the Sailors.

He is putting himself on their same level with them:

- There is no longer any focus on the spiritual advantages he had as a Hebrew.

- He is not talking about how good he is.

- He is putting himself on the same plane.

- Effectively saying, “I too must offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay my vows to Yahweh.”

Do you see what I mean? The similarity of these words is no mere coincidence, is it?

When Jonah is honest with his God and focuses on the Lord, he is humbled to the dust. His life is transformed from pride to humility. He admits he is no better than anyone else.

God wants us to come to Him with humble hearts, trusting His grace alone.

Pride is the exactly opposite of that.

CS Lewis in “Mere Christianity” speaks of pride being “the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.”

No one has every truly repented till he or she has acknowledged that there is nothing in ourselves to commend ourselves to God. We have to empty ourselves and look to God’s grace and that alone.

And that leads to one last thought:

What is the cause of this life-transforming power witnessed to in this prayer?

- Jonah concludes in verse 9: “Salvation is from the Lord.”

- He is the One who chose him before the foundation of the world.

- He is the One who called him into being and made him a Hebrew by birth.

- He is the One who called him to be a prophet in Israel.

- And it is God who has accomplished salvation for him now.

- It’s all of grace!

- Salvation is from the Lord!

And the same is true for you and me: Salvation is from the Lord!!!

In fact, there is NO salvation outside the salvation He has given us as a free gift.

Let me just read a couple of passages from Titus in the New Testament to prove that.

In Titus 2:11 and 14 we read this:

“For the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all men!”

What is that grace that has appeared? Paul goes on to clarify:

“Christ Jesus … gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good works.”

And Titus 3 continues:

“HE saved us, not on the basis of deeds… but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing by the Holy Spirit, which HE poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour.”

My friends, there is NO salvation outside that of Jesus Christ.

- Your works are never going to satisfy a perfect God.

- Your good deeds are but filthy rags compared with His holiness.

- HE has saved us by Jesus Christ who gave Himself for us to redeem us; to pay the price for our sins.

Remember Eph 2:8 and 9:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and [h]that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Salvation is from the Lord:

- He has given His Son

- He has paid the penalty for our sins.

- He has clothed us in His righteousness.

- He chose you before the foundation of the world

- He is calling you this morning.

- He will justify you;

- He will sanctify you; and

- On the last day: He will glorify you!

He has done it all for us. He is the only source of salvation. Jesus says “No one comes to the Father but by Me.”

Salvation comes from the Lord. It is all of grace from beginning to end.

My dear friends:

Are you relying on the salvation that comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone?

Do you trust Him, no matter how messy your life appears to be?

Or are you trying to generate a life-transforming patten in your own strength with an outward, showy religion?

Are you full of pride; full of your own ability?

OR do you remember “salvation is from the Lord”?

My friends, there is no salvation apart from Jesus Christ. He is our salvation and I urge you to repent and believe in Him this morning.

Call on Him while He is near.

Ask Him to work salvation in you, to His praise and glory, and to transform your life.

Conclusion

Jonah’s prayer is marked with:

1. Honesty.

2. It is God-centered.

3. It is hope-driven.

4. And results in life-transformation:

- Away from an outward, formal religion to a heart felt commitment to the Lord.

- Away from pride and arrogance to a deep sense of humility.

Remembering and acknowledging that salvation comes from the Lord alone.

PRAY