JONAH 2:1-10 - A Repentant Man and the Fish-Saving God

Introduction

So, do I ever have a story for you this morning! Back on Monday I walked up the driveway to check the mailbox for an Amazon package, and while I was up there by the edge of the road a PennDOT plow truck came barreling over the hilltop and caught me right in the back with the edge of the blade! Dragged me a good thirty yards down the hill before the driver realized what happened, and before he got stopped he bounced me off the big hickory stump at the bottom of the hill. Crazy!

Now, I don’t want to make things awkward here, but from the looks on your faces I’m getting the distinct impression that you don’t believe me? Now, why in the world would you not believe that a PennDOT truck hit me with its plow and dragged me thirty miles an hour down our hill on Monday? Other than the fact that I would certainly not be here talking to you if it did, right? You can’t get hit by a plow truck and walk away without a mark on you.

You know, there are a lot of people out there who talk the same way about their Christianity. They say they have repented of their sins and trusted Christ as Savior, but their lives show absolutely no mark of a living faith in Christ. They will tell you a vivid story about how they got saved, how they have trusted in Jesus as their Savior, how their Christian faith is so important to them--but their lives are not marked by anything different from the world around them. They chase after the same pleasures, they use the same language, they react to hardship or loss or frustration the exact same way, they have no more interest in spiritual things than the average unbeliever. Repentance from sin and turning to Christ in faith should be a catastrophic change in a person’s life; for all too many people, though, “asking Jesus into your heart” seems to be the kind of thing you just “add-on” to an otherwise unchanged life.

The text before us this morning represents Jonah’s repentance before God for his sin--and I want to argue this morning that Jonah’s repentance was a real repentance; this was not just for show, it was not the result of some emotional high or a hypocritical attempt to “get in good with God”. Jonah came to the very brink of destruction--and as we will see, that led him to a radical repentance.

So what I aim to show you this morning from this account from Jonah’s life is that

Real REPENTANCE brings radical CHANGES to your life

You cannot have an encounter with the God of the Scriptures and remain unchanged. I want to argue this morning that what happened to Jonah in the belly of that fish was real repentance; a genuine change of heart toward God and away from his rebellion.

Now the Biblical definition of repentance carries the idea of turning away from one thing and turning towards another. In Jonah’s case, he has literally experienced a “turning around”--he was no longer on a ship headed towards Tarshish; he was now in a fish swimming towards Nineveh.

But Jonah was not just undergoing a physical turning around; we see in the first verse of Chapter 2 that he is doing something he refused to do in Chapter 1:

Jonah 2:1 LSB

Then Jonah prayed to Yahweh his God from the stomach of the fish,

Remember when the captain of the doomed ship begged Jonah to pray to his God?

Jonah 1:6 LSB

So the captain came near to him and said to him, “How is it that you are deeply sleeping? Arise, call on your god. Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish.”

Look through the rest of the chapter and you’ll find that Jonah did not, in fact, pray to his God during that storm. But now, in the belly of that fish that God had sent, Jonah did cry out:

Jonah 2:2 LSB

and he said, “I called out of my distress to Yahweh, And He answered me. I cried for help from the belly of Sheol; You heard my voice.

As soon as Jonah hit that water, his rebellion against God came to a screeching halt, didn’t it? What happened to Jonah in that moment is the same thing that happens to us when we come to a real repentance that radically changes us:

I. We fully GRASP our DEPRAVITY (Jonah 2:1-4)

Jonah’s desperate plight finally dawned on him. Whatever illusions he had about his rebellion while on board the ship (“I just need to get to Tarshish and clear my head… I can always go to Nineveh later; I’m not even sure YHWH really even wanted me to go there...”)--all of those self-deceptions vanished as soon as the waters of the Mediterranean closed over his head.

There are a couple of things to notice in these verses about what it means to have a full grasp of our wretchedness in our sin. The first is in verse 3:

Jonah 2:3 LSB

“For You had cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the current surrounded me. All Your breakers and waves passed over me.

Jonah realizes here that with this fix he is in,

There is no ONE ELSE to BLAME (v. 3)

We read in Jonah 1:15 that it was, in fact, the sailors that picked Jonah up and threw him overboard. But Jonah doesn’t blame them for his plight; he doesn’t blame the Ninevites for being too wicked to preach to; he doesn’t blame his upbringing and the fact that his father never taught him how to swim. The reason that he was drowning in this storm was because of God’s righteous judgment.

This is one of the marks of real repentance--you do not have any desire to blame-shift or excuse your behavior. You don’t want to make it about anyone else’s behavior or what they did or did not do; you don’t blame circumstances or bad luck or poor decisions--real repentance means saying this has come from God and it’s nobody else’s fault but mine.

As Jonah continues his prayer in verse 4, he says

Jonah 2:4 LSB

“So I said, ‘I have been driven away from Your sight. Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy temple.’

When we come to grips with our depravity we realize there is no one else to blame, and we confess that

Our SIN has DRIVEN us from GOD (v. 4)

This is a remarkable confession from Jonah--the one who deliberately told the sailors he was going to “flee the presence of YHWH” (1:10). In chapter 1 Jonah wanted nothing more than to turn his back on the Temple; to run away from Mt. Zion where YHWH had established His throne. The Hebrew text in Verse 4 literally reads “I have been driven from your sight”--in Chapter 1, Jonah was trying to get out from under the sight of God, and now he realizes that it was his sin that had driven him away.

Here again is another example of the old preacher’s warning that “Sin will take you further than you want to go, it will keep you longer than you want to stay, and it will cost you more than you want to pay.” Jonah intended his sin of disobedience to get him out of God’s sight by getting him across the sea--but his sin wound up taking him down under the depths of the sea to his death. Jonah realized he did not want to be out of YHWH’s sight after all--his rebellion and sinful disobedience did not get him where he wanted to go.

You may have all kinds of rationalizations for your behavior, as to why it isn’t really a sin after all; you may believe that you can “manage” your temper or your slothfulness or your lust or your bitterness or your unbelief. But as John Owen warns in The Mortification of Sin:

Sin aims always at the utmost; every time it rises up to tempt or entice, might it have its own course, it would go out to the utmost sin in that kind. Every unclean thought or glance would be adultery if it could; every covetous desire would be oppression, every thought of unbelief would be atheism, might it grow to its head (Retrieved from https://ccel.org/ccel/owen/mort.i.v.html)

Jonah came to grasp the extent of his depravity--he realized he had no one to blame but himself, and he saw finally that it was his own sin that had driven him from God’s presence.

Real repentance brings radical change to your life, as we see in Jonah here in this account. Real repentance is in evidence when we fully grasp our depravity before God. And another characteristic of real repentance is that

II. We utterly TRUST God’s GRACE (vv. 2, 7)

Jonah had spent the entire first chapter of this book with his back firmly turned to YHWH--he was dead-set on getting away from His presence; he would not even pray when the ship’s captain begged him to; he only admitted that he was a follower of YHWH after He caused the lot to fall against him and reveal him as the reason for the storm. And yet now he “calls out of his distress to YHWH” because he knows that there is no other way to be saved.

This is another facet of true repentance that brings radical change to our lives--we truly repent when we realize

We have no other HOPE of RESCUE (vv. 5-6)

Jonah’s prayer reflects his realization that he was beyond rescue:

Jonah 2:5–6 LSB

“Water encompassed me to my very soul. The great deep surrounded me, Weeds were wrapped around my head. “I went down to the base of the mountains. The earth with its bars closed behind me forever, But You have brought up my life from the pit, O Yahweh my God.

This is where true repentance begins--when you realize that you are so far gone that you have nowhere else to turn. I have read commentators and heard sermons on this passage that want to take Jonah’s repentance here with a grain of salt— “Well, of course he’s running back to God now--he’s desperate!” As if the degree of desperation a soul is in somehow makes their repentance less legitimate! Sure, the old saying “there are no atheists in foxholes” is meant to say that a lot of people make insincere commitments to God when they are in mortal danger--but that doesn’t mean that no one in a foxhole is sincere!

Don’t look down on someone’s desperate cry for God’s grace unless you’ve been there. Yes, Jonah was a rebel; yes, he had screwed up big-time; yes, he had scorned God’s call and God’s Word and God’s character by turning his back and setting his heart on escaping Him. But when that moment came, none of that mattered to Jonah; all he knew was that he was being destroyed, and there was only One Name he could call on:

Jonah 2:2 LSB

and he said, “I called out of my distress to Yahweh, And He answered me. I cried for help from the belly of Sheol; You heard my voice.

Jonah knew that his rebellion had brought him to destruction; and he also knew there was nowhere else to turn but to YHWH. And he also had to know that God would have been utterly just to let him drown. This is another sign of true repentance that transforms our lives--that we utterly trust God’s grace even knowing that

We have no RIGHT to be RESCUED (v. 7)

Jonah’s words in verse 7 are particularly poignant in light of his rebellion:

Jonah 2:7 LSB

“While my soul was fainting within me, I remembered Yahweh, And my prayer came to You, To Your holy temple.

The Temple that he had deliberately run away from; the prayer that he had deliberately refused to pray when the ship’s captain pleaded with him; the God that Jonah had tried to forget--now he cried out to him with his final breath. He knew that he had no right to be rescued; he knew that it was God’s justice that had swept its waves over him, and there was nothing in him or his behavior or his track record that would cause God to give him a second look, let alone rescue him.

The seventeenth Century English poet William Camden wrote An Epitaph for a man killed by falling from his horse that reads in part “Betwixt the stirrup and the ground, Mercy I ask’d; mercy I found”. And this is the mercy Jonah found--moments away from death, God heard him, and He rescued him!

Beloved, linger here over the astounding grace of God toward a rebellious, wretched sinner like Jonah, because this is the same grace that God extends to you in Christ. It doesn’t matter what you have done; it doesn’t matter how hopeless you believe your situation to be; it doesn’t matter how close to destruction you think you are.

Have you run away from God? His grace is greater. Have you turned your back on His Word? His grace is greater. Have you dragged others down with you in your rebellion? His grace is greater. Have you put your life and your family’s lives or well-being in danger with your depravity? His. Grace. Is. Greater. If God’s grace was great enough to rescue a rebellious, stubborn, reckless, hard-hearted man like Jonah, then His grace is enough to rescue you, even if you know you don’t deserve it--but that’s what makes it grace in the first place!

Real repentance comes when we fully grasp the extent of our depravity and when we come to utterly trust in God’s grace to save us. When we live in that kind of repentance--a day-to-day realization of the incomprehensible scope of the grace of God toward us in Christ,

III. We sincerely SERVE in GRATITUDE (Jonah 2:8-10)

See how this understanding of our depravity and God’s grace transforms our service to God (and one another!) There is no more fooling ourselves with the notion that our service or our worship is somehow improving our standing with God or earning His favor--we serve and worship and give out of sheer thankfulness for our deliverance! There are at least two ways this is reflected in verses 8-9 of Jonah’s prayer. The first is that when we are sincerely serving in gratitude for what God has done for us

Our DEVOTION is not DISTRACTED (v. 8)

I take this from Jonah’s words in verse 8:

Jonah 2:8 LSB

“Those who regard worthless idols Forsake their lovingkindness,

Remember the context of Jonah’s life and ministry--he prophesied during the period of the Divided Kingdom, with Judah in the south and Israel in the north--both kingdoms were plagued by the worship of false gods and pagan idolatry. 2 Kings 14:25 tells us that Jonah’s hometown was in Gath-hepher, in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. So this means that Jonah’s own people--the Covenant people of YHWH--were constantly “forsaking the hesed of YHWH” (“lovingkindness” - the special term for God’s covenant love set on His own people) for the vain promises of happiness from the false gods like Baal and Molech and Ashteroth and Milcom.

Jonah is saying here that all those worthless idols--the word carries the idea of deception, worthlessness--all of those idols will betray you in the end; they will claim to make you happy, healthy and wise, but they will ultimately let you down. They will deceive you into forfeiting the steadfast, faithful covenant-lovingkindness of YHWH for you. That dream job that requires you to work on Sundays; that “complicated” business deal that means you have to bend the truth; that relationship with a co-worker that doesn’t “mean anything” but that your spouse just “wouldn’t understand”--all these promises of happiness, contentment and belonging that want to entice you away from your devotion to God and His Word and His people--don’t turn your back on the steadfast faithful lovingkindness of God for you in Christ for the sake of those lies.

Our devotion is not distracted when we live our lives in light of that real repentance that grasps our depravity and relies wholly on God’s grace. Our service will be sincere, with undistracted devotion, and in verse 9 of Jonah’s prayer we see one more facet of a life marked by real repentance:

Our DUTY becomes our DELIGHT (v. 9)

Jonah 2:9 LSB

But as for me, I will sacrifice to You With the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to Yahweh.”

Jonah’s recognition of just how wickedness and peril YHWH had saved him from caused him to look at the prospect of offering sacrifices as a delight. This would mean that, when he got back to Israel he would make the trek up to Jerusalem from Gath-hepher in Galilee, get an unblemished goat or lamb or heifer and have it slaughtered there at the Temple. Remember--in Chapter 1 he was trying to get away from the Temple; away from the sacrifices and incense and offerings and washings and all the rest of it. He was willing to go to “the other end of the earth” to get away from the Temple, and now he can’t wait to go back!

What made the difference in Jonah’s life? The gratitude that is born through true repentance. Those things that he once considered drudgery, the duties of worship prescribed by Moses’ Law, were now delightful to him! “Oh YHWH, I will delight to do what I have vowed before You--You have rescued me from the depths of the grave, you have delivered my life and transformed me from my wicked rebellion to joyful obedience!”

That is the radical transformation that takes place in the life of someone who has truly repented and is resting in the overwhelming grace of God--we have in our minds that someone who is “repentant” is gloomy and burdened, that they are always bewailing how terribly they have failed God, making a show of their deep remorse and self-loathing.

But see here that true repentance results in happy gratitude! The man who knows just how wicked he was before he came to Christ, the woman who recognizes just how close she was to being destroyed by her sin under the wrath of God--people like these are the most thankful people in the world. They don’t really have a lot of time for complaining; they are the last people in the world to stand in judgmentalism of someone else; they have nothing to hide about their lives or their past, because their vision is not full of their sin or their depravity as much as it is full of the unfathomable grace of God!

I have a dear friend who used to write a lot about his past and the sins and wickedness of his youth, the devastation of self-destruction that he went through. And he used to talk and write about what it was like when he came to that point of real repentance--coming to grips with the depths of his depravity and resting utterly in the undeserved grace of God to him in Christ. And he would always talk about the life he lived after coming in repentance and faith in Christ as saying “I am walking free.” No matter what hardship or trial or unexpected turn of the road, he had no fear or worry or anxiety or bitterness--he just “walked free” in Christ.

Beloved, is that your experience of your life in Christ? Are you “walking free” because you have truly grasped your depravity--that there is no one else to blame for your sin, that your own behavior has driven you away from God? And having clearly laid all of that depravity before the sight of God have you fully placed your trust in the grace of God alone? Have you experienced that real repentance that brings radical changes to your life?

Or is your life characterized by constant self-justifications, always having to make sure people understand that it’s not your fault that you stumble or fail or lose it. Are you always on the lookout for someone else to trip up so that you can tell yourself, “See? I am a better person, because at least I don’t screw up like that!!” Are you waging an unrelenting battle with shame over your thoughts and your behaviors? Are you outwardly taking your place with all the other Christians going to church but inside terrified that someone will see through you? And more than that, do you inwardly cringe at the thought that God can see through you, and you are drowning in the certainty that He hates you and could never forgive someone who has done what you have done or has been who you have been?

If that is you this morning, then let me show you here from this account of Jonah that there is more grace in Christ than there is sin in you. No matter how far you sink into the depths, no matter how much seaweed of guilt and shame wrap around your heart, no matter how firmly the bars of guilt slam shut over you, no matter how far outside His reach you think you have gone, there is no way to out-sin God’s grace to you in Christ.

Jesus said in Matthew 12:40 that the only sign He would demonstrate to His authority was the sign of Jonah:

Matthew 12:40 LSB

for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Jonah was buried in the sea under the wrath of YHWH for three days and three nights. He deserves it because he is a rebel. But Christ was under God’s wrath on the cross because we are rebels.

Jonah goes down into the depths of the grave, going down into Sheol under the wrath of God. And Jesus Christ went to the Cross under the wrath of God--“But Yahweh was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief...” (Isa. 53:10)--crushed under the wrath of God so that you could be rescued from His wrath.

Jonah cried out to YHWH from his watery grave and received mercy--friend, that mercy is waiting for you as well. Between the stirrup and the ground. With your last breath. In the last drop of strength that you have left. When you cry out to Him He will hear you. Salvation belongs to the LORD--He will rescue you, He will deliver you, He will set your feet on the rock and clothe you with His righteousness and cleanse you from every last stain of shame, guilt, remorse and rebellion. Today is the day; this is the moment for the true repentance that will radically transform your life. So come--and welcome!--to Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Hebrews 13:20–21 LSB

Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus, equip you in every good thing to do His will, by doing in us what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION:

How does your testimony to your salvation compare with the daily life that you live? Are there “marks” of repentance that characterize your life? How do the choices that you make and the priorities that you pursue demonstrate the reality of your Christian life?

What are some ways in which people can mask totally depraved lives and fool themselves about their own ability to handle life apart from God’s help? What are some dreadful things the Lord uses to awaken people to the truth about the desperation of their situations and their need for Him?

Why can Jonah expect to see the Lord in His temple after such great disobedience? How does this reveal the majesty of God and the glory of Christ?

How has your own thanksgiving for your salvation led to greater proclamation of the gospel to unbelievers? What might this say about the value you place on being rescued from sin? What might this also reveal about your understanding of your true situation prior to your salvation?