Jonah 2

You've been, you've got a Bible. You're looking at Jonah two.

You're wondering why we're in Jonah two because we're taking

a break from Isaiah for the summer. I've been working

on Galatians chapter two. But this past week I brought

a kind of a refocused message on Jonah two in

Corpus Christie, Texas. Greetings from Waldron Road Baptist Church in

Corpus Christie, Texas to you guys. Yeah, their love to you.

That church has pastored by my dad. He's seventy seven.

He preaches every Sunday. Yeah. Please, Lord, if I could

get to seventy seven and still be able to do this,

and you still want me to do this, that would

be awesome. But I brought a refocused message on Jonah too,

specifically regarding prayer, and I wanted to come back and

share it with us this week. And that's just gonna,

I think, be really helpful for us. So let's read

Jonah too, and you can follow along as I read aloud.

I'm gonna start in the verse prior to the to

the chapter start verse seventeen. A very interesting verse reads

this way, 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. Then then Jonah

prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of

the fish, that is one stubborn dude, saying, I called

to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me.

Out of the belly of Shiol, I cried, and you

heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep,

into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me.

All your waves and your billows passed over me. Then

I said, I'm driven away from your sight. Yet I

shall again look upon your holy temple. The waters closed

in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me,

weeds were wrapped about my head. 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. When my life

was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer

came to you into your holy temple. Those who pay

regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.

But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to

you what I have vowed I will pay salvation belongs

to the Lord. And the Lord spoke to the fish

and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land. This

is the word of the Lord. It was a few

weeks ago I shared a story here that I hadn't

thought of in a while. You might remember it. We

were talking about Hezekiah's prayer and I shared the story

of a guy who had hit rock bottom. He was

looking to recover from substance abuse, and he had a

guy named Gary who was helping him with his recovery.

And Gary came to him and said, you know, you

don't need You don't just need sobriety, you need God.

You might remember me telling this story. And the guy said,

that probably sounds right, Gary, But I don't know God.

I don't know what he's like. I don't I don't

know how to pray to him. And Gary said, well,

I know him, I know what he's like. I'll help you.

And so they got on their knees and the man said, dear,

Gary's God, and that began a relationship between that man

and Gary's God was and is the living God. And

that story is it comes back up for me here

as we look at Jonah because there are a lot

of There are a lot of lines that intersect in

regards to Jonah's ministry. In many ways, Jonah is a

man who knows God, who knows what he's like. He's

been given an assignment, actually to go and proclaim the

word of the Lord to a people who don't know God.

In many ways, the assignment is to speak to the

people of Ninema. And eventually, if you get to the

end of the book, they hit the their knees and

they basically say, Dear Jonah's God. They don't know how

to pray, but they do. And then there's Jonah. He

should know how to pray, but he won't. In fact,

Jonah is an object lesson for the whole nation of

Israel who has stubbornly neglected real prayer for so long,

and they get to watch the man of God. Jonah

also stubbornly neglect prayer until God brings him to the

place where he cries out. And that might be you.

Maybe maybe you're more like Gary's friend who would say,

I'm here this morning in church and I've sung these

songs basically to y'all's God. I don't know him, but

I'm here, and that's a start. And we would say, absolutely,

that's a start. We're thrilled you're here. We want you

to be here. Many of us might say, I know him,

I know what he's like, but it has been a

long time since I have done what the scriptures describe

as crying out to God, going to him in real prayer,

doing as the author of Hebrews says about Jesus in

the days of his flesh, cried out to God with

loud cries and tears. That has not marked my prayer

life in a while. And you might say, I just

don't have it in me. I've not gone to God

in real prayer. I just don't have it. I don't

have what I need. And I'm here to tell you

from Jonah to that you do, that God has provided

for you, even when you don't feel like it, what

you need to cry out to Him. And in fact,

I want to look at three specific provisions that God

has given you, even when it doesn't feel like you've

got what you need to cry out to Him that

you do. And the first provision is one that you're

probably not going to believe. The second provision is one

I am sure you won't believe. And the third is

one I most hope that you will believe. So let's

look at it. What do you have even though you

don't feel like it. You've got the right time to

cry out to God. You've got the right time. And

you might not believe that you have the right time

to cry out to God for a few different reasons.

One of them might be this. You might feel like

you don't have the right time to go to God

in prayer because there's so much distance between you and God. Right,

it's been a long time you have avoided him, or

if not altogether, you've avoided him about this one thing,

and you have not gone to Him in sincere prayer

about it. Well, I was just saying earlier. Jonah has

shown the whole nation of Israel what it looks like

to dig in your heels and stubborn neglect of prayer.

He has been an object lesson for them, and he's

an object lesson for us. I mean, it says he's

in the belly of the fish for three days and

three nights, then he prays to the I mean, like

I'm stubborn. I'm not that stubborn. Should he have gone

to God in real prayer. Should he have cried out

in real desperation to the Lord before? Sure? I can

think of a few times. I mean, in chapter one,

the word verse one, the word of the Lord comes

to Jonah, the son of AMATAI, saying, a rise Goda Naneva,

that great city, call out against it, for the evil

has come up against me. And that would be a

great time for him to hit his knees. What's the

next word? But but Jonah goes the complete opposite direction.

He goes and he gets on a boat to literally

take him the exact opposite direction from which he was set.

I can just imagine, like that boat set sail, and

I think, I think maybe at that point my heart

would sink and I would go what am I doing?

Maybe hit my knees. Then how about when the storm

comes up? That probably would have been my point, Right,

the storm comes up, I'm like, I know this is

I know what this is about. Would have been a

good time. What about when he ends up in the water,

what about first gulp? Prayer at first gulp? All of

these would have been better times than now. But those

times are past. You could have on to the Lord

in prayer yesterday. You could have gone to the Lord

in prayer a long time ago. Maybe you have neglected

it for a long time. Those times are past. Today

is today, and it's the right time. Thought. It reminds

me of the old old you know, saying when's the

best day to plant a treat thirty years ago? When's

the next best day today? And that's what the author

of Hebrew says today. If you hear his voice, do

not harden your heart? Do you do you hear his voice?

Is his voice active in your conscience right now calling

you to prayer? Do not harden your heart? And he said, well, well,

it's never too late to go to God. Well, yes

and no, I'm not sure which is to say, I

don't think it's biblical to say that if you will

go to Him in sincere repentance and faith, he will

turn you away. But I do think it's biblical to say,

if you hear his voice today, do not take it

for granted. Harden your heart and believe that your conscience

will still be in the same place tomorrow, because it

might not be. This may be the last day you

even want to pray today. If you hear his voice

do not harden your heart. He's given you the right time. Now.

You might not believe that it's the right time because

of distance, or you might not believe it's the right

time because of distress. Found another d word. But that's

what's going on with Jonah. This chapter is all about

calling out to the Lord in distress. And I don't

know if you also hear the whisper that has come

to my mind before when things I've messed up so bad,

and I'm like, I can't go to God now because

I'm the one who screwed this thing up. I'm the

one who screwed up this situation, this relationship, this area

of my life. I can't go to him now. The

only thing I can do now is roll up my

sleeves and get to work because I'm the one who

messed it up. God is more than just my ambulance driver.

He's the creator of the universe. He's the architect of history.

What right do I have to just call nine to

one one when I'm the one who made a mess

with this? Well, you'd be right. He is more than

your ambulance driver, but he's not less. He loves to

be your ambulance driver going to God and distress is

what this is all about. I mean, look at it

verse two. I called out to the Lord out of

my what distress? And he answered me out of the

belly of Shiel, I cried, and you heard my voice.

I mean, I was in the deep. I was in

the heart of the sea. The floods surrounded me, the

waves passed over me. Weeds were wrapped about my head.

At the roots of the mountain. Probably my favorite picture

in the whole thing, I went down to the land

whose bars closed upon me forever. He brought up of

my life from the pit. My life was fainting away.

The whole chapter is about calling out to the Lord

in the midst of distress. And God didn't say should

have prayed earlier out of my distress? He answered me,

when you hear the whisper as I have, you can't go.

You can't go to God in prayer. Now, like you've

messed this up. That whisper is not from God. That

whisper is from pride. What we hear from God is

this that he's near to the broken hearted, that he

saves the Chrustian spirit. Yeah, he's more than your ambulance driver.

But he specializes in your underwater situations. This is a

swift water rescue God. It's his specialty your distress. So

if that's where you're at, I can tell you, based

on the authority of God's word, you have the right

time to go to Him in prayer, to really cry out,

to call out to God in prayer. Well, you might

not believe it's the right time because of discipline. Because

of discipline, I found another d But that's exactly what's

going on with Yonah. Yes, distance, yes, distress, Yes, definitely discipline.

I mean what is verse seventeen of chapter one say,

and the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.

Jonah gets it. He knows verse three says, you cast

me into the deep. All your waves and your billows

passed over me. He knows that God is sovereign. He

knows how he got into this situation. Yes, because of

his rebellion and his sin and his stubborn neglect. And

God has brought discipline, and he's put Jonah completely in

a straight jacket and brought him to the lowest literally

the lowest point of his life. You know what that's

like for God to put you in a straight jacket

and bring you low on purpose in love, so that

your eyes have nowhere else to go, your heart has

nothing else to fix on, literally protecting you from yourself

in his purposeful, loving discipline. And the New Testament tells

us he disciplines those he loves. Ed Copeland put it

this way, sometimes what feels like just a divine prison

is actually also a divine protection. Might not feel like it,

but He has provided for you the right time to

cry out. Don't wait any longer today. If you hear

his voice, do not harden your heart now. I said,

I wanted to look at three specific provisions. The first

one is that you have the right time. You do

have the right time, And I told you you probably

didn't believe me, but I think we've seen that you

have the right time. The second provision I know you

won't believe, and it's this, you have the right words.

You have the right words. You're like, well, that's absolutely

what I do not have. I do not have the

right words. I certainly don't have these kinds of words.

I mean, do you see this poem that Jonah writes

and the fish? Can you imagine being waterboarded for three

days and writing song like this, it's like songwriter in

a clothes dryer. Really, when I first started studying Jonah,

I thought Jonah has done some very rigorous editing after

the fact, he's made himself look really good. But then

if you check the cross references, it starts to make

a lot of sense. Every line of this prayer has

been lifted out of the Psalms. I mean, like Psalm

eighty eight, for example. It's a song that Jonah would

have sung a hundred times. The lyrics about being confined

to shield, going into the deep, so the surrounding flood,

the overwhelming waves, being hidden from God's sight, being close

to death like Jonah would have sung all of that

from Psalm eighty eight throughout his childhood. And Jonah is

taking the old songs and he's putting himself in them,

right like verse three, your you're breakers and your ways

have gone over me that comes right out of Psalm

forty two, verse four, I am driven from your sight.

The line about worthless idols that comes from Psalm thirty one,

The opening line I cried out to the Lord and

he answered me, and the final line salvation belongs to

the Lord. All of that is from Psalm three. These

are borrowed words, these are provided words. Makes sense. If

I was drowning, my whole prayer would probably be a

mashup of is it as well with my soul? And

great as I faithfulness? Maybe Holy forever? Like we're just saying,

I don't know, just depends on what goes that far

down right? You ever been there? You got nothing left

to pray. It's just fragments of memory versus psalms and

hymns and spiritual songs. That's all that's coming out of

your mouth. When I say you've got the right words,

it's not because you're a wordsmith. It's because God has

already provided you the words that you need to sputter

back to Him. Just open up the Bible's song book,

get on your knees, use what He has provided for you,

and cry out to him. He has not left you

without what you need. There's a third provision. You have

what you need to cry out to God because you've

got the right time and you've got the right words.

The third provision is the most important, and I hope

you'll believe the most. You've got the right God. You

have what you need to cry out to him because

you've got the right God. Even when it doesn't feel

like it. You're like, well, how can it not feel

like I've got the right God? Well, maybe when you've

let him down, Maybe when it's been a long time

since y'all have talked, Maybe when you've put a lot

of distance between you and him. That's exactly where Jonah is,

That's exactly where Israel has been. That maybe where you

have been. But Jonah prays this last line that he

remembers from Psalm three. It's the key to his whole prayer.

It's the key to his whole restoration. Salvation belongs to

the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord. The late Edmund

Clowney said that that line from Jonah may be the

central most truth of all the Bible. Salvation belongs to

the Lord. He's the one that Jonah says, here's my cry.

He's the one that brings my life up from the pit.

He's the one who answers. He's the one who is

abounding in steadfast love and grace and mercy. You've got

the right God to cry out to him in prayer.

He's provided what you need. If Jonah can see that,

he's got the right God. If Jonah can see that

he abounds in steadfast love and mercy, If Jonah can

see that salvation belongs to the Lord when he's in

total darkness, how can we not We see the cross

in the broad daylight. We sing of the work of

Christ at the top of our lungs. We know who

Jesus is and what he's done. We can see that

salvation belongs to the Lord, and he is good, and

he is gracious, He is full of steadfast love and mercy,

and he is eager to hear. You can see because

of the Gospel of Jesus that you have the right

God to cry out to. So if you don't feel

like you've got the right stuff to really go to

God in prayer, it may be because you don't know,

or that you've forgotten that the right stuff isn't your stuff.

It's Christ's stuff. It's Christ's merits, it's Christ's work, his blood,

his name, his priesthood that gives us access. And if

you would if you would say, I don't know that Christ,

I don't know that God, I don't know what he's like,

then I'll have the best news for you. Because the

message to you if you don't know him. Is much

like the message that Jonah was bringing all the way

to Nineveh, which is you don't know him, but he

he can show you mercy. That's that's the message Jonah

didn't want to deliver, and yet you get to hear

it loud and clear that based on the work of

Jesus Christ, his righteousness, his blood, his sacrifice on your behalf,

this God that you don't know can be yours and

you can be his by grace alone, through faith alone,

in Christ alone. And if you have Christ, you have

what you need for real prayer. Then, as hebrew says,

go with confidence drawn near to the throne of grace.

If you have Christ, you're not even praying alone. If

you have Christ, he lives to make intercession for you.

He is praying with you and for you. Like Spurgeon said,

your prayer in Christ is like a man who is

poor and uneducated and who wants to write a letter

of appeal to the king. But he doesn't feel like

he can because he doesn't know how to spell, and

he doesn't know how to organize his thoughts. He doesn't

even like know like how handwriting is supposed to work.

Is just like, I don't I don't know how to

do this. I've tried, but he has been befriended by

the son of the king. And the king's son says,

give me your letter. I'll fix it. I'll fix your spelling.

I'll try to, you know, move some things around. And

you're like, no, no, you don't understand. I've messed this up completely.

This already looks like a mess. And the son says, no, no, no,

give me your letter. I will write it myself. I'll

write it in a good hand. I will I will

represent your appeal in my letter, the kind of letter

the king would be pleased to receive, and it will

have my name on it. That's what your prayer is

like in Christ. So if you're if you're trusting in Him,

then his instruction to you is go confidently to the

Throne of grace. Even though this right God requires perfect righteousness,

you've got mine. If you're trusting Christ, his instruction to

you is to just gather up all of the scriptures

and spread them out before God and bring them as

your words to Him. Because in me, all of the

promises of God are yes and amen. If you're trusting Christ,

His instructions are cry out in prayer today. If you

hear his voice, do not harden your heart. All who

come to me, I will in no wise cast out.

If you're trusting in Christ, you have, even if it

doesn't feel like it, you have everything you need to

really go to God in prayer. If you've been avoiding

him for any reason, if you've been avoiding Him about anything,

go today, Go before the sun comes up tomorrow in

real prayer. You've got what you need.