Episode Transcript
[00:00:16] There have been several moments, but that one sticks out to me of, like, a moment of desperation, of I don't know what to do. Like, nothing I can personally do is going to change my. This situation or make it any better. And I think that's where we finally find Jonah. At the beginning of chapter two. He is in a desperate situation for those who haven't been with us or don't know the story of Jonah. Quick, quick recap. Jonah's a prophet, right? He's supposed to go do God's will. And God says, hey, Jonah, I want you to go tell the invites that what they're doing is wrong and I'll take it from there. And Jonah says, yeah, I'm out. I'm not doing that. He yeets right off in the other direction, hops on a boat, tries to sail away. God's like, that's not happening today. Sends a big storm. The sailors toss Jonah overboard and attempt to save themselves, right? And Jonah is, like, sinking to the bottom of the ocean. And that's where we end chapter one, with God sending a great fish to go swallow Jonah. If there's ever a desperate man who needs God in this moment, it's Jonah.
[00:01:19] So we're gonna jump into Jonah, chapter two, starting in verse one. If y' all have your Bibles, go ahead and take a look at verse one with me. We're not gonna get very far before we pause and address. Just a couple things, but we'll look at Jonah. Verse 1.
[00:01:33] Then Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish.
[00:01:39] I was gonna stop right there. Before we even get into the prayer, I wanna address a few things, right? I just. Full disclosure. Like, I really believe Jonah was swallowed by a big fish and that he really prayed to God from belly of a big fish. Okay? And if that's hard for you today, like, let's have a conversation about it. But I want to just, like, address that this is not, like, the first miracle that we've seen in the Old Testament. Like, by the time you get to the book of Jonah, you've gone through, like, the 10 plagues, the parting of the Red Sea. Food has been raining down from heaven for the Israelites for, like, at least 40 years. At one point, the destruction of the walls of Jericho, they just, like, walked around and the walls fell down.
[00:02:19] David and Goliath, like, and that's just the Old Testament. If you're a Christian here today, like, your entirety of your faith is based upon the fact that a series of miracles happened, starting with God coming down, becoming man in the form of Jesus, living a perfect life, dying on the cross for our sins, buried and dead like D E D, dead, gone for three days, raised back to life. Right. Seated at the right hand of the Father. So just if you're concerned about Jonah being swallowed by a fish, I think valid. But let's also hold it in context of all the other miracles that God is doing in the Bible and where we are today. And if that is still a problem for you, just, like, do me a favor and set it aside. And we're just going to look at Jonah's prayer and the words and his prayer from then on out. Okay? I just wanted to address that before we get too much further. Jonah prays his prayer from the belly of the fish.
[00:03:13] I think some of it probably happened a little bit before, and we'll get into that here in just a little bit, but he remembers it well enough afterwards to go and write it down. The logistics of writing down your prayer in the belly of the fish probably didn't pan out for him, but he remembers it well enough afterwards to write it down. I think there's three big things that I want to highlight as we go through the verses of his prayer. Okay. The first one is Jonah's despair, his desperate situation, and what he brings before the Lord.
[00:03:39] The second is going to be Jonah calling out to God for salvation. And why that's kind of a little strange considering all the things that Jonah has done. And then the third thing is gonna be that salvation belongs to the Lord. Okay, so we're gonna go through Jonah's despair.
[00:03:55] When I was going through the sermon, I, like, tried to chunkatize the verses very neatly, and I just, like. I couldn't. I didn't feel like that was where the Spirit was leading us. So we're gonna go through verses two through seven twice. All right? The first time, we're gonna do it, we're gonna highl.
[00:04:10] And then the second time, we're going to highlight Jonah calling out to God. So if you got your Bibles for Jonah, two, two, seven.
[00:04:17] I'm going to kind of jump through the verses, but I want to spend just a second highlighting the language that Jonah uses in his prayer to God.
[00:04:27] Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish, saying, I called out to the Lord out of my distress.
[00:04:32] Out of the belly of Sheol, I cried for you. God cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas and the flood surrounded me all your breakers and your waves passed over me and then I said, I am driven from your sight.
[00:04:52] He continues in verse 5. The waters closed in over me to take my life.
[00:04:58] The deep surrounded me.
[00:05:01] Weeds were wrapped around my head. The roots to the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars had closed upon me forever. And verse seven, he says, my life was fainting away.
[00:05:18] Jonah's a desperate man.
[00:05:20] And. And if you read closely, you can see that y' all have seen the VeggieTales version of this story.
[00:05:28] Raise your show of hands. Who's seen the veggietale versions of the story? Okay. I think it's great. Excellent for the telling of kids. I think something that, like, frankly, that I'll just fully disclose this. Like, I realized for the first time as I was going through Jonah 2 is like, when they throw him overboard and then the storm immediately calms down, he's just kind of like bobbing along in the ocean. They like throw in the life preserver and then the fish comes and takes him. Like, veggietales. Excellent job. I don't think that's how it actually went down from Jonah. Like, highlight verses 5 and 6. The waters closed in over me to take my life.
[00:06:01] The deep surrounded me. Seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I went down. Like, Jonah is sinking down to the bottom of the ocean. He's not bobbing along with a hope and a prayer, right? He's got nothing, no air.
[00:06:19] He's like, he's not even buoyant, right? He is sinking down to the bottom of the ocean. He's literally and metaphorically sinking down to death.
[00:06:30] Jonah's a rebel and a traitor on the run from the most powerful being in the universe.
[00:06:39] By all rights, he should have no hope for salvation. Like, the very person that he would cry out to for salvation is the one who has. Who Jonah is running away from at this same point.
[00:06:51] Like, Jonah is in despair, and yet he brings his despair before God.
[00:07:00] Like a. Like a moment of self reflection for me is like, I don't think I pray prayers this honest to God.
[00:07:07] And I don't really know why that is. Like, I haven't gotten that far into the self reflection. I think sometimes it's maybe like, God knows my problems already. He doesn't want to, like, hear me babble about how hard my life is. Like, other people have harder lives.
[00:07:20] Or sometimes it's like, ah, God doesn't want to listen to me complain. Like, he's got better things for me to do with my time. But we See an example here, and it's stitched all throughout the Psalms as well. But of Jonah specifically telling God, like, how awful his life is right now. And yeah, maybe it's his own fault, but Jonah is laying this out before God. He needs God desperately. But before he even gets to the I need you parts, he says, I'm sinking, I'm drowning.
[00:07:51] I can't do anything to go and save myself.
[00:07:57] Jonah's situation is an excellent parallel for our own state of sin apart from God.
[00:08:05] Without God, we are rebels on the run with no hope of salvation.
[00:08:12] We are sinking down to the bottom of the ocean.
[00:08:16] And while some commentators think that, like, maybe Jonah actually died and God brought him back to life as, like a parallel of Christ in the grave, I'm not quite there yet. Right. I think Jonah probably would have. He was pretty detailed. I think he would have highlighted if he had actually died.
[00:08:29] But like, I think in the state of our own sin, Ephesians 2 probably says it better than I can.
[00:08:35] And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
[00:08:50] Friends, our situation without God, like Jonah's, is desperate. We desperately need God, and only he can provide a miracle to go and save us.
[00:09:05] So we're going to look at the spin of what Jonah does with his desperation. Go back to the top of verse two. I want to read back through what Jonah does in his call to God, of his desperation and his neediness. So I'm going to highlight some of the other words that were used throughout there. So starting it back at Jonah 2. Jonah says, I called out to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me.
[00:09:31] Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.
[00:09:37] Verse four, he says, then I said, I am driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.
[00:09:45] In verse seven, Jonah says, when my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to you in your holy temple.
[00:09:56] Jonah, in his sin and rebellion, calls out to God and puts his hope and his faith in and his confidence in him.
[00:10:06] Jonah, in one hand is equally desperate before the God of the universe, telling him, here is my terrible state. I cannot save myself. And quickly in the other. Stitched throughout those verses, he's reaching out to God, calling out to him in faith and hope and confidence that the same God who He says, you cast me into the deep Your breakers and your waves are passing over me. He's calling out to that same God and saying, I need your help and I have confidence that you will answer me.
[00:10:34] Like, you could almost wonder, like, why? Like, what right does Jonah have to call out to the same God who he knows has cast him into the ocean? Like, what right does Jonah have to bring to the God of justice a cry for help when he's the one who has committed all of the sin?
[00:10:52] I think the answer comes to us in Jonah 4, and I won't make you fast forward there, okay? But Jonah in chapter 4, verse 2, says this to God.
[00:11:00] He says, for I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.
[00:11:12] Okay, you gotta tune in later this summer to get some of the context of the tone in which Jonah says that in chapter four. Okay? Like, he's not saying that, I don't think as a compliment to God. He's like, really angry with God at that point. But that same Jonah knows this as he's sinking to the bottom of the ocean, knows that the same God who desires to save the Ninevites might also desire to save him. The same God who would desire to save the enemies of Israel who's been persecuting them for years, has been killing their people, has slandered their God in front of all of creation, and worships their own idols instead. The same God that loves those people still loves Jonah in the midst of his sin and rebellion.
[00:11:54] I think we pick on Jonah for a lot of things throughout the book of Jonah. But one thing that I think is probably not fair to pick on him about is his faith. Like, even though it's not the outcome Jonah wants, Jonah has faith that God is going to save his enemies.
[00:12:11] And in this moment of his desperation and neediness, Jonah has faith that God is going to call out and answer him. Look back at what he says in verse four, he says, I am driven away in your sight. And right after that, he says with confidence, and yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.
[00:12:29] And in verse seven, he says, I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. Jonah knows that God is listening to his prayers. Jonah knows that God is going to respond. And Jonah knows that he's going to go back to his hometown in Jerusalem and see God's temple again. And he knows this as he's sinking down to the bottom of the ocean and as God is sending a big fish to go and swallow him.
[00:12:58] Jonah has hope in God to save him, has hope in God to save his people.
[00:13:04] And Jonah knows that God is a good God who saves people that don't deserve it and that he responds to prayers.
[00:13:11] Frankly, I don't think I have this level of faith when I pray, when I sin and I mess up and I go before the Lord. Like, oftentimes it feels like what the monks might have done back in the day is like going and whipping themselves. Like, that's the state that I come before the Lord and I say, God, look at all of my failures. Like, if I get to the point of honest prayer of desperation, that's where I stop.
[00:13:36] But Jonah is trusting and having faith that the God who loves him is the God who saves and would save him. A rebel and a traitor and a sinner.
[00:13:48] Jonah's faith is strong.
[00:13:50] Jonah's got Matthew 17 type faith where Jesus says, truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you.
[00:14:06] More often, friends, I wonder how much we're more like James 4, where James says, you do not have because you do not ask, like, do we believe and have faith that God moves and acts when we bring things before the Lord, if we even get to the point of bringing them, do we trust and believe that he's going to do it?
[00:14:31] My hope for us is that we would grow in that more and more. Frankly, that's my hope for myself.
[00:14:40] Fortunately, we get to see at the end of Jonah that God is a God who moves.
[00:14:47] Go to verses 8 and 9.
[00:14:50] Jonah finishes out his prayer from the belly of the whale, saying this. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love, but with the voice of thanksgiving.
[00:15:03] But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed. I will pay.
[00:15:08] Salvation belongs to the Lord.
[00:15:13] The Lord's been in control of Jonah's situation from start to finish. There is no point of the book of Jonah where God gets surprised and he's like, I didn't expect that to happen. Like, I didn't expect my prophet, whom I told to go do the things I told him to do, was gonna run away. Now I gotta come up with a new plan like, that is not the God that. That we serve. God knows what is going to happen from start to finish. And salvation belongs to the Lord. God's not surprised by Jonah's rebellion. He's not Worried about his plan to save the Ninevites. I don't think God's worried about the salvation of Jonah in all of this either. Like, that's one of the things that I think we gotta dig into as we go through Jonah's prayer, is that, yes, the book of Jonah is about Jonah running away and getting swallowed by a big fish. Yes, the book of Jonah is about Jonah's bitterness at the end. But. And, like, kind of the. That's not the ending that we expected. And yes, the book of Jonah is about God going to save the Ninevites and a miraculous salvation of people who don't even really, like, are making war against God's people, and yet they turn and repent. But I think the book of Jonah is also about God going after Jonah's heart in this moment.
[00:16:23] Like, Jonah says what I have vowed. I will pay with the voice of thanksgiving. I will sacrifice to you, O Lord. He's saying this to the same God that just hours before he had been sprinting away from in the opposite direction. God is after Jonah's heart in the midst of all of this.
[00:16:44] And if, like. And if that's hard for you to imagine for just a second, like, think about it. The same God who sends a big fish to swallow Jonah, right? Like, not the salvation vehicle that Jonah probably expected. As he's sinking down to the bottom of the earth, he', God, help me. And then he gets eaten by a big fish. And he's probably, like, not what I had in mind, right? The same God who sends a big fish to go save Jonah could have just found somebody else to go do the job, right? Like, Jonah wasn't the only dude wandering around in Jerusalem at this time that God could have pointed out and said, hey, you go to Nineveh, right? Like, frankly, as a parent and as a former math teacher, that's what I would have done. It's like, you go do this problem on the math board, and then they don't want to go do it. And it's like, all right, I'm done with you if we're moving on to the next person. Like, God does not do that to Jonah. Like, God is after Jonah and relentlessly pursuing Jonah throughout this entire story in the midst of his despair, in the midst of his calling out to him. God has always had a plan for Jonah's salvation amongst the salvation of the many other people that he is relentlessly pursuing.
[00:17:48] And so I wonder, maybe you might consider, how is God pursuing you today?
[00:17:56] Friends, within the past few weeks here in the church and at work, I've talked to people who are going through incredible suffering.
[00:18:06] Like our sin. Yes. But also like the things that we go through and the suffering that it's really hard for us to tie to any of our sin or even to somebody else's sin. Right. Just within the past few weeks, I've talked to people who've lost family members, who've lost their job, lost a relationship, several miscarriages, sickness.
[00:18:34] I was on the friend with an old co worker who I hadn't heard from in a couple months, and he has leukemia out of nowhere.
[00:18:42] Like, I think it's okay to admit that we are suffering.
[00:18:49] Like, I think the God who loves us is a God powerful enough to see us in our suffering and to love us and pursue us.
[00:18:59] And so as. As we walk through these verses here, consider the depths to which God went to to pursue Jonah.
[00:19:07] He didn't pick somebody else.
[00:19:10] He didn't just let Jonah sail away and go off in the opposite direction. He didn't just sink Jonah's ship and say, I'm done with it. He didn't save the rest of the sailors. Just let Jonah die and say, I'm done with you.
[00:19:21] God relentlessly pursued Jonah in the midst of his suffering.
[00:19:26] And friends, God is doing the same for you today.
[00:19:30] He is relentlessly pursuing you. He sent his son Jesus down to earth in the form of a man to suffer in your place for your sins. Like, this is the God who we love and serve today. And sometimes I think it's easy to miss that in Jonah.
[00:19:48] It's kind of a caricature type book, right? We see things happening. Jonah gets angry about this plant that popped up that like God raised in a day and took away in a day. But like, in the midst of this, don't lose the fact that God deeply and passionately cares about his people and he deeply and passionately cares about you.
[00:20:09] So that brings us to the Last verse, verse 10.
[00:20:13] Jonah 2:10 says, and the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah up onto dry land.
[00:20:20] Like, if we finished the book of Jonah here, right, we could kind of create a nice imaginative story of like, ah, yeah, Jonah gets spat up on the shores of Nineveh. The rest of his journey is going to be easy. He's learned his lesson. He's come back to the Lord. He's repented of his sin. Good on you, Jonah. Back in prophet status. You're reinstated. Go forth and do the good things. Right. Like that is not like what verse 10 is reading to Us, okay? Like, just consider the word for a moment. Vomit.
[00:20:47] All right?
[00:20:49] Just like, insert other words that make people uncomfortable. Moist, okay?
[00:20:54] Also probably that in the belly of the fish, all right? But, like, Jonah gets vomited back up onto dry land. Like, point of geography. Nineveh doesn't have shores, okay? It's in the middle of nowhere. Jonah gets vomited somewhere up, probably off the coast of the Mediterranean, several weeks journey ahead of him. If he's got something to ride on, if he's hoofing it by foot, then it's like, I don't know how long it took Jonah to get to Nineveh, okay? Long journey left ahead of him physically. But Jonah's also got a long spiritual journey left ahead of him as well.
[00:21:23] Jonah gets thrown up by this fish onto shore. He's finally like, okay, God, I'll go and do what you've told me to do, even though I don't really wanna go do it. Like, that is not. If you have children, like, by the time you finally get them to obey and they're like, ugh, fine, I'll go and do it. You're like, I don't even want you to do it anymore. All right? You don't got the right attitude. Like, that is the at which Jonah is acting out in obedience to God. Like, Jonah's got a long journey left ahead of him. We've got a couple more chapters of the Book of Jonah that we're going to go and punch through here. But, like, don't. Don't lose sight of the fact that, like, Jonah's prayer is positioned in here after the story of his sin and rebellion, but before the story of more of his rebellion as a point for us to go and highlight in our lives. That I think is okay, right? It's like the same God who relentlessly pursues us going to give up on us because we screwed up.
[00:22:13] Like, he is not dependent on us to go and do it, right?
[00:22:17] In order for his plan of salvation to work for us, for other people, that he's going to, like, allow us to be part of their salvation story. Like, Jonah here gets vomited up onto land. He's going forth begrudgingly to go do God's will. And God is still going to continue to pursue Jonah.
[00:22:36] I think this oftentimes look a lot like our own lives, right? Like, if we get saved and we're like, oh, my gosh, this great burden of sin has been lifted from me. I'm gonna go do the thing. We're ready, God, tell me what you want me to go do, right? And that lasts for, I don't know, days, weeks, months, maybe for some of us, years. Like, high five.
[00:22:57] We follow God for a little bit, and then our hearts just turn against us.
[00:23:04] Like, I don't. I don't know.
[00:23:07] I know what it is. It's our hearts and our sins, right? But I don't know if it's like, boredom or if we're just, like, not interested in what God wants us to go do. I think more often it's like the fool says in his heart, there is no God. And our hearts default back to that state. And we just don't want to do what God has called us to do. Like, we don't want to love our neighbors. We don't want to be there for people. We don't want to pray for those around us. We don't want to engage with people for the cause of their salvation. And so we sin and we rebel and we turn away from God and we run away from him and we cry out to God for salvation.
[00:23:39] Maybe we. Maybe we doubt sometimes that God's going to save us. Like, maybe we doubt that he cares for us in the midst of our depravity.
[00:23:50] Maybe we forget the depths of God's love for us.
[00:23:54] Maybe we forget how God pursued Jonah and the miracles through which he went to save him.
[00:24:01] Maybe we forget that God sent His own son, Jesus, to take our punishment, a brutal, merciless death on our behalf.
[00:24:13] And God saves us again.
[00:24:16] And it feels like he's spitting us back up onto shore, worse for wear. And we go back through it like friends.
[00:24:26] I want to tell you that I think that's okay.
[00:24:29] Like, I think it's okay to feel a little worse for wear after our own sin and rebellion. Like, God loves us and he's not going to give up and stop loving us because of what we have done.
[00:24:42] And he's going to make all things new.
[00:24:45] Like our own hearts, our own spiritual state, the mess that we've caused around us, the lives that we've impacted. Like, God is going to make all things new and he's going to keep pursuing us.
[00:25:03] And why?
[00:25:05] Because salvation belongs to the Lord. Like, if there's nothing else you remember from this sermon, look at the last portion of Jonah, verse 9. Salvation belongs to the Lord.
[00:25:19] Like, not only does salvation belong to him, it's what only he can do. Like, only God can save us, and he delights to go and do it. Like God is going to save us because only he can. Because he wants to do it. Like he wants you. He wants your heart. He wants you to come to him in your despair and in your suffering and in the I don't know why this is happening.
[00:25:45] Like he wants you then.
[00:25:48] He wants you now.
[00:25:54] So in our despair and in our sin and in our suffering, let us cry to God as Jonah did.
[00:26:05] Let us be honest with God, and frankly, let us be honest with each other as we walk through the hard moments in our life.
[00:26:12] Let us have faith in God as Jonah did.
[00:26:15] Let us know that as we bring our requests before the Lord, that He is going to move and he is going to answer us.
[00:26:22] And let us remember that salvation belongs to the Lord, and He loves to save his people.
[00:26:29] If you would bow your heads with me.
