Jonah Week 2: Jonah’s Distressed Prayer (Jonah 2:1–9)
Notes
Transcript
Today we continue in our series in the book of Jonah.
Last week… (Recap)
Downward descent… God’s love for Jonah to not give up on him... saves sailors
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.
1 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish,
Have you ever noticed that,
it is so much easier to get some people’s attention than others?...
(Jonah so focused on this downward path that the storm did not even move him back on track)
[set in his rebellion]
Jonah 2:1 “1 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish,”
Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom,
before we remember how to pray again.
We can become so settled in our rebellion,
so convinced that we are fine without God,
that it takes something severe—
something that shakes the ground beneath our feet—
to wake us from our spiritual sleep.
A lost job.
Devastating news from a doctor.
A collapse in the home.
A future we assumed was secure suddenly gone.
Whatever the form,
sometimes the only way we wake up,
is when the life we trusted in begins to fall apart.
And it seems—
painfully so—
that the very things
we believed we needed in order to live,
must first die,
so that we are finally desperate enough,
to cry out to God.
It is in that distress,
in that holy moment of desperation,
that prayer is reborn...
A prayer that rises from the ashes,
a prayer that comes from a place that feels like death itself.
(Jonah prayers 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.
It took Jonah being swallowed by the fish,
before he finally cried out to God in his distress.
From the storm raging at sea,
to the darkness of the fish’s belly,
Jonah’s prayer is born.
Jonah says,
V2 “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried.”
Sheol is the place of the dead.
And inside that fish,
Jonah didn’t just fear death—
he felt it.
Cut off.
Buried.
Forgotten.
And sometimes,
that is exactly how we feel.
Alive on the outside,
but dead on the inside.
Yet it is in those places—
the places that feel like death—
that God is still listening.
Still present.
Still near.
Even when you cannot feel Him,
He is there.
Even when you believe you are nothing more,
than dry bones ready to collapse into dust,
God has not turned away.
Just as God did not abandon His prophet,
to fade into the abyss,
He will not abandon you.
Whatever the darkness.
Whatever the depth.
Whatever the situation...
The belly of the fish was not Jonah’s grave—
it was the place where grace and mercy met him.
And sometimes,
the place that feels like the end,
is where God begins move again...
The places the world has sanctioned for the dead,
can become the very places where God brings life again.
The belly of the fish—
a place that,
in the natural,
should have been Jonah’s grave,..
the very path to Sheol—
became the place where God breathed hope into his life.
What seemed like the end,
was in fact a second chance for Jonah,
a moment where God’s mercy broke through the darkness of the fish.
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!”
Add and unpack Jonah 2:3-9
10 And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
Notice how each chapter ends.
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.
10 And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
The Lord is working....
Even in the place that may feel as if it is dead...
(Prophet Ezekiel… Dry bones… all hope is gone...)
[Place you have allowed to go dormant and die. a place forgotten]
[Jesus said… sign of Jonah...] Matthew 12
Distressed moment when only God can intervene…
