Jonah 2

Introduction

If we have not had the pleasure of meeting my name is John Colunga and I have the privilige of serving as lead pastor here at New Day Pasadena

I also have the privilige of bringing this weeks sermon

So if you have your Bibles, please turn to Jonah 1

If you forgot your Bible please use the one in front of you and if you dont have a Bible at all, please take home the one in front of you as a free gift to you

Set Up

No one likes to be wrong (brings humility or pride) Illustration

Last week we talked about how Jonah was wrong

God proclaimed his will to Jonah

He gave Jonah a command

Jonah ran away - he was being disobedient

God pursued Jonah with a storm

God preserved Jonah through the belly of the whale

And now, today, we are going to look at Jonah’s response in his new situation

After he has been in the wrong, sinning towards God, and is now in the belly of this fish

Remember

Remember that while we are in the book of Jonah - We are consistently pointing back to the New Testament and

Keeping Psalm 145:8 in mind

Psalm 145:8 “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

This is the proclamation we will find from Jonah today

At this time, If you are able to stand I ask that you do so for the reading of God’s word. I’ll read it out loud and if you will please follow along

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.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jon 2:1–10.

This is the word of the Lord, you may now be seated

Prayer

We noted it last week that up to this point, Jonah has not prayed

God gave Jonah a command and Jonah didnt pray about his response

Jonah was fleeing and he didnt ask for guidence

When the captain told him explicitely to pray, Jonah did not pray

Michael Ramsden (Christian Apologist) notes that there are two main reasons for silence on prayer as a believer

And he is not not talking about the day to day forgetfulness to pray

He is talking about absolute silence on prayer

You do not know what to say or how to say it

You are ashamed

Jonah knows who God is, Jonah believes in who God is, But his actions have contradicted his belief

His actions have gone against God

And in his shame, he has been silent towards God

And now, in the depths of the sea, in the depths of the belly of a great fish

Jonah is brought to his lowest of lows

And in his lowest of lows, when there is nowhere left to run or nothing left to do, he prays

Transition - I would love to do a deep dive just here in Jonah 2 (my favorite chapter of the four)

Chaiastic stucture

literary devices and meaning

Psalms of thanksgiving

If you remember when we were going through different types of Psalms, we talked about Psalms of Thanksgiving

Psalms of Thanksgiving express thankfulness and detail things that God has done for them recently

They personalize the psalm to their current situation

They thank God for his most recent love, goodness, mercy, grace, and faithfulness

And so generally, Psalms of thanksgiving start out by giving an intention of thankfulness

They then give a brief snippet of the trial or time of lamenting

And then they end with extended thanksgiving

This is what we see in todays prayer from Jonah

And in todays prayer we will see how Jonah goes from shame to thankfulness

God Humbles Jonah - God humbles his people

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.

Jonah recognizes his circumstance and how he got there

Sheol in the Old Testament refers to a human fate and specifically an unwelcomed fate

Sheol is a Divine Punishment

Jonah is in what seems to be a Divine Punishment from the Lord

However, Jonah recognizes that he is still alive

That God has pursued and preserved him

Jonah recognizes that God has showed mercy towards Him and is still with Him

God cast Jonah into the deep

Into the depths of the heart of the sea

God brought the flood and the waves that passed over Jonah

And yet, God’s pursuit of Jonah meant that God is for Jonah not against Him

Jonah still breathing in the belly of a great fish means that God is for him and not against him

And the God he believes in - the creator of heaven and earth

A God who is gracious, merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love -

Is actively pouring out his mercy not just towards the Ninevites but towards him

In Jonah’s lowest of lows God is there with him

AND THIS IS HUMBLING!

But at the same time, this is hopeful!

Just listen to the humility and hope Jonah now has as he is reflecting and praying

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.

God not only humbles Jonah, but God restores Jonah - God Restores His people

Depression is a very real thing

In depression - people will tend to abandon their responsibilities (run from God)

In depression - people tend to sleep longer, harder, and more often (Jonah slept through the storm)

In depression - There is a lack of hope.

A person will focus on the current situation and weightiness of the situation

There is a burden of shame

A person will feel like there is no way out, there is no future (Just throw me over head first)

I am not clinicaly diagnosing Jonah with having depression but many of the signs are evident

And at the very least, Jonah has been in despair

But because of God’s mercy and humbling of Jonah

God now starts to restore Jonah to the point where Jonah depicts a salvation

Jonah depicts a hope

A second chance

Gods mercy means forgiveness

God brought Jonah up from that pit and God will continue to restore him

God listens to Jonah - God listens to his people

The ending of Jonah’s psalm concludes his thanksgiving

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!”

Jonah cries out that he believes that prayers came to the Lord

Jonah believes that God is for him and therefore God will hear him

And so, he makes this statement at the end of the prayer to contrast the God that he serves to any other god

That anyone believes in another god other than the God of Heaven and earth

They have no hope because their little g god do not have “steadfast love”

The sailors prayed to their gods and that produced nothing

The fish gods that the ninivites worship cannot love

And because only God humbles

Because only God restores

And because only God listens - The God of the Hebrews, the God of Heaven and Earth is only God that brings hope!

And it is to that God and that God alone that Jonah will rejoice in, and give thanks to

And so Jonah ends with this bold statement, Salvation belongs to the Lord!

Only God saves!

The Ninivites only have hope and a chance of repentance because God had seen it necessary

Becaue God is sending Jonah

Because God is restoring Jonah

God saved Jonah, called Jonah, commissioned Jonah, and restores Jonah back to himself

And we, as we read this book and read the Bible, we recognize that this story is not about Jonah - It is about God

Salvation belongs to the Lord

Transition - God hears Jonah’s prayer and three days later God told the big fish to vomit Jonah onto dry land

Application

Salvation

God humbles his people

No one can come to salvation to God without a hint humility

To repent is to say that you have messed up, you have failed, you have missed the mark

To believe is to say that there is someone greater than you, who knows more than you, who has authority over you

And we do not come to repantance and belief apart from God

It is God who has sent his Holy Spirit to do a mighty work in your life

To change you and convict you of the error of your ways

That because of the Holy Spirit softening and changing your heart - you come to humility

And are able to see and hear the beauty of the gospel

And the gospel is how we are restored in salvation

God restores His people

We have missed the mark and so we have a blemish

That blemish (that sin) is what separates us from God

God sees his people and knows us and has called us by name since before the foundation of the world

Out of God’s grace, mercy, and steadfast love

God sent Jesus

Fully God and fully man

lived a perfect life

This book of Jonah points directly to Jesus’ work of salvation

That just as Jonah was in the depths of Sheol

So our Jesus died and was buried

Jonah prays to the Lord

On the cross, Jesus calls out to the Lord

Jonah was in the belly of the fish for 3 days and was spat out

Jesus arose on the third day

Salvation is from the Lord!

The Holy Spirit changes our hearts and convicts us and we profess faith in Jesus Christ and are saved

God listens to his people

After the Holy Spirit has changed our heart and we have come to faith in Christ, we are now in relationship with God

We now know the Father because we know the son

We now have access to God the Father and God the father cares and listens to his people

Proverbs 15:29 “The Lord is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous.”

This is talking about those who are in covenant and who arent in covenant with God

Sanctification

God humbles his people

Jonah being a prophet was already saved

And yet he had belief with the wrong action

When Jonah writes: ‘I am driven away from your sight;

He is reflecting upon being separated from the Lord’s presence

How in chapter 1:3 he is fleeing the presence of the Lord

And for Jonah, he is reflecting that being away from the presence of the Lord at the time of his impending death is scary

And in his prayer he recognizes how far he was from God and he is humbled - that though he ran, God is still there!

And for us, I have to ask, if you are running from God, living in disobedience, keeping God an arms length away

Then you have to ask this question: Am I ok with being separated from the Lord? Am I ok not being in his presence?

If the answer is yes - then I would caution you and direct you back to salvation and faith

Why? Because once you know and have the beauty of the Lord, then your desires should not long for anything but him

Psalm 27:4 “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.”

You should long to be with the Lord all the days of your life

And so if your answer is no, I am not ok being separated from the Lord and his presence

But maybe your experiencing some shame for running, sinning, or living however you want

Shame would lead you to believe that God does not want to hear from you

I want to tell you that God is still with you

He hasn’t abandoned you - he will never erase your name

He isn’t looking to strike you down

And I would ask you to reflect because I am sure that somehow, some way, God has been pursuing you

God has been revealing himself to you

I want to remind you that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

As God pursues us, as he is there for us despite our running, and as we believe that he is merciful

We are humbled by him - that he would still want relationship with us

And we humbly return back to him with all thanksgiving

God restores His people

We noted that Jonah was in despair

But in this prayer, after talking about being driven away out of the Lords sight

Jonah says: yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’

Jonah is longing for and knows that with God, there is hope

That he may go to the temple to the presence of the Lord

And that God will forgive him - God will restore him

If you have been living with shame then you also may have been living with some despair

And at times it may seem like there is no hope

But that is why we cling to Jesus who is the all sufficient hope

And it is because of Christ that we can always be restored

We will always be forgiven - We will always be made right

Psalm 86:5 “For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.”

Micah 7:19 “He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.”

1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

We have hope because God is always faithful to forgive - to restore

God listens to his people

And so we know that we can always come to the Lord

There is no depth to deep where he wont hear us

There is no sin to great that will keep him away

When we pray God cares and God listens

God hears Jonah’s prayer and Jonah is spat out of the great fish

In troubles, in our trials, in our circumstances God hears our prayers

Prayers of forgiveness, thankfulness, and surrender

James 5:16 “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

Colossians 4:2 “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.”

1 John 5:14 “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.”

Do not be silent towards God

Do not live in sin, shame, and despair

Rather know that the Lord is fighting for you

Pursuing you to humility

Readily wanting to restore you

And wants to hear from you

Lets go to him in prayer