Jonah - A Song From The Belly

Our service series is Jonah embracing God's mission.

If you want to turn there to chapter two, we're gonna be reading from there today and Tyler did a great job last week of opening this up to us and helping us to see the big picture of Jonah and what was going on and starting this series out.

So Jonah is a book about a lot of things.

You could think of it as the book of running from God, but it's not really that.

Only it's about a God who gives second chances and Jonah is not really the hero of the book.

God is the hero of this book, right.

It's about the state of your heart toward God and toward people and, most of all, it's really about mission that God really wants to join us together in co-working together with him for his purposes on earth.

And that's what's going on.

And Jonah's unique, as Tyler pointed out last week.

Jonah is very unique in the sense that most of the prophetic books are really about the words of the prophets, the messages that the prophets gave to the people they were going to, but Jonah is really mostly a story.

It's mostly a story of what happened to him, but also in this chapter we hear his words.

He was given a really short message only five words in the Hebrew, to speak to Nineveh.

But he speaks a lot in this one chapter, so these are his words.

So if we can just read, we're gonna start from verse 15 of chapter one and read through chapter two.

So they picked up Jonah and they hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.

Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows, 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 Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish, 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, for you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me.

All your waves and 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 and 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.

Oh 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.

So, father, we thank you so much for your word, which is alive and powerful and always does what you send it to do.

Lord, we're asking you, in Jesus' name, that your spirit would speak to us, god, each of us in different places, lord, different circumstances, in different states of a heart, lord, here this morning.

But you care about every circumstance and every person and you know how to speak directly to us.

We're asking you you would do that from your word in the name of Jesus.

Amen, all right.

So Jonah had been called by God.

He heard the voice of God specifically telling him to go to Nineveh and preach repentance.

So only one problem he hated those people.

He hated those people.

So apparently he thought if he didn't preach to them then they wouldn't repent and they wouldn't be saved.

Isn't that kind of a twisted way to think?

But that's okay with him.

It was fine with him if they didn't repent, if they were destroyed, it was okay, because the Assyrians were terrible enemies of longtime enemies of Israel and they were really wicked people, cruel people.

And Jonah's thinking hey, kingdoms rise, kingdoms fall, just let the kingdom fall, it's all right.

But here God has a different idea.

God is dealing graciously with a very wicked people in Jonah's generation, and Jonah was called upon to be the very voice that would change things for them.

They would call them to repentance.

How exciting would that be if God's called you to be a voice to this city and through the city, to an entire nation, to call them back to God.

What if you got that call from God?

What would you do?

Would you be excited about that?

Do you think that would be a great story to tell your grandkids, wouldn't it?

At that time I've preached, and the whole city came to God, the whole nation returned to God.

That's a great story.

Well, maybe we jumped the chance to that.

Maybe we wouldn't, maybe we'd be like Jonah.

Maybe there's some kind of fear inside of us or insecurity, or some kind of hatred inside of us, some kind of political disposition inside of us that would keep us from doing that.

I don't know.

I've never had the opportunity yet, so I don't know what I would do.

But the prophet, his job is to hear the voice of God and to speak the words of God to the people.

And the word of God is precious to the prophet.

The word of God is like the very commodity, the very stuff of their trade right.

This is what they use.

The word of God is what they use to fulfill their purpose, and they step into the purpose of God.

When the word of God comes, they have a purpose.

And it came to Jonah.

But Jonah Went the other way.

God said go east, jonah went west, he went away from the presence of the Lord.

So last week Tyler told us that God said go and Jonah said no.

That's cute, I like that.

But I was looking in this chapter here and I saw that it kind of went a little further.

God said go, jonah said no and God said oh.

So Jonah said yo and the sailor said let's go.

And the wind said blow and the sailor said oh, no, row, row, row, bro.

The.

Jonah said overthrow.

And they said no, row, row, row, row.

Oh, no, overthrow.

And the fish said hello.

And Jonah said whoa.

And the fish said up, throw.

And then God said go, we're by.

Back around again, right, what do you do?

God calls Jonah east, he goes west.

Why would a prophet do that?

We're not really told yet.

We will be told in a sermon Coming to you soon.

We will be told why he ran away.

He's going the other direction.

In fact, nineveh to Tarshish is about New York to Los Angeles.

It's a long ways in his day, it's a long ways.

That's the very start of his problems, right?

So here's my question to you what are you running from that you should be running to?

Is there something you're running from Now you should be running to?

You should be turning like like 180, going directly in the other direction.

Is there something the Lord knows and he and you probably know, and if you don't, he'll let you know.

So don't?

Jonah is asleep in the storm.

And a very strange thing.

The pagan sailors, who didn't know God at all, serve these little gods that are no gods.

These pagan sailors were more sensitive to spiritual things than even Jonah was.

They caught the situation and Jonah did not keep keep, catch it right.

So what's going on?

Could you, you know, wake up, pray to your God, do something.

And Jonah says hey, just it sits me, kill me, kill me.

It's the first of three kill me's in this book.

There's a something going on side of Jonah.

He'd rather die Than do what God called him to do.

So the sailors, even to the end Excuse me are repenting and fearing God when they throw Jonah overboard.

But when they do that, the storm ceases, the winds die down and they even sacrifice to the Lord.

They actually like they turn to God.

Jonah didn't even really preach much to them.

He told them who he was, but they turned to God.

And Then here it says the Lord appointed a great fish.

And Another version will say and this word also means but pointed, it could mean prepared the Lord prepared a great fish, he prepared a situation, he prepared circumstances, he had a contingency plan plan, you could say for this prophet who was running away and so he prepared this fish and he prepared circumstances for us to, by the way, for our salvation.

This didn't look like salvation, but it was Jonah's salvation and he prepared circumstances for our salvation and for our sanctification so that his purposes are completed.

Mm-hmm, excuse me, it wasn't pleasant, but it was Jonah's way of salvation, appointed by God.

What was this great fish?

Well, we don't know what kind of fish it was.

Maybe it was a kind of fish that's already gone, extinct.

Maybe it was kind of fish that God only created one of them and it's all he needed.

Who knows?

We don't know for sure.

We just know that it happened right.

But this is interesting to me there's no, no voice from Jonah.

No prayer from Jonah.

Up to this point, no prayer at all.

He did not say a word when God called him, he just left.

He did not lift a prayer.

When the storm came, he did not lift a prayer.

When the so sailors came and said pray to your God, he didn't pray.

Why would a prophet not pray?

Why would a man of God not turn to God, especially in that situation?

If you step into Jonah's shoes Thank you sir what would you find?

And if you step into Jonah's heart that's what we really want to try to do that what's in his heart.

If we could, like, get in there, what would we see?

And what we see is Jonah hates God for loving his enemies.

He's got so much prejudice and hate and stubbornness and rebellion and scheming in his heart.

Can a man of God have that in his heart?

Yeah, yeah, it's possible.

This is why the scripture says guard your heart with all diligence, for out of it flow the issues of life.

Guard your heart because it affects everything you do.

And Jesus said the good things out of the good Treasure of a good heart.

A good man brings forth good things out of the evil treasure of an evil heart.

An evil man brings forth evil things.

So watch your heart.

It affects everything you do.

We have to watch that.

And when you don't want people to repent and receive mercy, that is deep seated hatred, hatred in the heart of a man of God.

But it's not just a man, because the man is a picture of a nation, because this is what.

This is what Israel was supposed to be.

This is what Israel was supposed to be.

Israel was called to be a blessing to the nations.

God called Aram and he said you will be a blessing to nations.

Out of you shall all the nations of the world be blessed.

And Israel's call was to be a chosen people of God, to know God and then to make him known, the true, living God, to make him known among all nations.

But they weren't doing it.

They were doing the opposite of it.

And so Jonah was just a living symbol of a national disgrace of Israel.

And the irony of it all is that Nineveh repented While Israel, god's people, served God superficially, but they also served idols at the same time.

So Jonah's a picture of Israel, and Jonah's heart is full of prejudice and bitterness, and he's suicidal.

And in fact he's the only one in the story that resists God.

The pagan sailors do not resist God.

The elements of the wind that don't resist God.

The fish does not resist God.

The king of Nineveh doesn't resist God.

The people of Nineveh don't resist God.

The cows of Nineveh don't resist God.

You're in bad spiritual shape when the cows are more sensitive to God than you are Really bad shape.

Jonah was the one who needed mercy.

Jonah's called to preach mercy, but he's the one that needed mercy.

Is there anyone that you can think of whom you would just as soon see suffer the judgment of God?

I mean, if they suffer, you'd kind of be glad, because they deserve it.

They deserve justice.

If they get it, it's fine.

And who are we to decide who deserves justice or who deserves mercy?

This is what's amazing.

God decides to give his mercy to everyone.

In this story, he extends it to everyone.

If you've got that heart that you want to see people suffer the judgment of God, that's a heart sickness that God wants to deal with today.

He wants to address it and heal it today.

So it seems that Jonah is so stubborn that he was in the belly of the fish for three days before he even prayed, which really is kind of amazing to me.

I mean, I think I don't know what I'd do.

I don't know.

We don't know what's in our heart.

Right, what would we do in a situation like that?

But I feel like I just feel like if, when I'm swallowed, I'm praying, I feel like that's what I would do, and then it's like, because it's it, I'm done, I'm toast.

But then I realize I'm not toast, I'm living in here for a day, I feel like I would pray, you know.

And then the second day, and then the third day is like, okay, now we start to pray.

So it says, jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish, the belly of the fish.

And if you look in your Bible, what you see is the words are printed differently because this is poetry or this is a song.

He's literally singing a song from the belly.

Okay, jonah is singing a song in this dark, hopeless place.

Okay, and I just wonder what the song sounded like.

Right, because I do that.

I think about things.

I wonder what Psalm 23 sounded like, because I think it would be just really beautiful, peaceful, chill.

Then I think about what is Psalm 51 sound like?

Because that's David's repentance song.

It's like, maybe like dark or like, I don't know, metal.

I don't know what it would be.

It might something similar, I don't know.

But this man, this had to be a blues from the belly.

Third day in the in the belly.

It had to be a blues.

So I thought it probably sounded like this Na na na na.

Here I am in the belly, na na na na, lord, what's happening to me?

Na na na na, kind of dark, kind of smelly.

Da na na na na, it's one.

Bless, you don't wanna be, you got the blues.

Ba na na na na.

Don't you think Something like that?

Maybe not, maybe not.

And mine would've sounded something like that, probably.

So there from the belly, isn't it interesting?

He says Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly, of the fish, from the belly.

So that word belly means several different things, different things.

It can mean several different things, right?

So Jonah prayed from the belly.

It literally means digestive organs, so means like from the belly.

There he was in a literal belly praying.

He was singing a song from a literal belly.

Okay, it can mean that the Hebrew can also mean the place, the deepest place of emotions or distress.

You know what that's like.

You've been hurt bad enough, where you're crying out from your belly, like from the, from the bottom of who you are, in your emotions, you're crying out to God Song from the gut, from the inmost parts.

And I thought about what Jeremiah said in chapter 4.

He said he says it, most versions say it this way my bowels, my bowels, ah, I'm pained at the very heart.

My heart makes a noise within me.

I cannot hold my peace.

It's coming out right.

And there's sometimes, when you're in that place of darkest pain, anguished, that what is inside of you has to come out, like if you have a virus, a stomach virus, and there's something in you that needs to come out and it's coming out and you can't hold it in.

Doesn't matter how much you try, you can't will it down, it's coming up, it just literally comes up right Physically.

But the same thing happens sometimes in our emotions you can't will it down, you can't hold it, it's got to come out, it's got to come out From the belly of the fish.

That word, this is really important.

Okay, this is important because you don't have to raise yourself to a certain condition before you pray.

Okay, this is important.

Church, you don't have to get it together before you pray.

You don't have to clean yourself up or like know what you're doing before you pray.

In fact, I think real prayer happens when you don't know what you're doing and when you're at your worst, when you, when you feel the lowest.

Sometimes that's when real prayer is.

Prayers are not always polite.

Prayers in scripture are often not polite.

They're real and they're from the belly and whatever it is the fear or the distress or the anger, the injustice, whatever it is it's coming out honestly, which is beautiful to God.

And through prayer we reach in our weakness into the unknown, for what we know we need and don't have.

That's prayer deep inside of us, something that we need to bring wholeness or salvation.

That's it.

I don't know what to do.

I don't know what to say.

I'm in the belly.

This place is dark, it's tight, it's uncomfortable.

There's no hope, there's no peace.

I gotta cry out.

But that Hebrew word means another thing too.

It means digestive organs, it means the deepest seat of your emotions.

But it also means womb, womb, womb.

It's where something is born, or it's where something gestates.

It's something God is doing inside of us, a rebirth, a forming of Jesus inside of us.

So there's something new is born out of this.

And Jonah is in the belly All three ways.

He's at the belly, literally, emotionally, and God is birthing something inside of him as well.

Here's what he says Out of the belly of Sheol.

I called, I cried and you heard my voice.

Sheol, he's in the belly of a fish, but he says I'm in the belly of Sheol.

The Old Testament, the most common way of describing Sheol, is the place, the unseen realm of the dead.

It's where the dead go.

It's a dark place, but it can also mean my darkest moments.

Out of the belly of Sheol.

In the Psalms you see that word quite often In places of distress Sheol, my darkest time and we create our own personal Sheol.

We create our own personal hell, in a sense, when we run from God.

When God says this and we say this, we run for our calling, our calling to God.

Maybe God's calling you to him.

You've never really known God.

Maybe this is a place this morning where you need to turn to him, receive his grace and his forgiveness and know him personally for the first time.

That's possible here this morning.

Maybe it's he's calling you to know him deeper.

Maybe it's a calling into ministry or calling into mission.

I don't know.

Maybe he's told you something and you're running the other way.

I don't know, but we do create our own darkness when we run the opposite way.

So here's my question this morning Do you believe that you can make a decision today that will change the rest of your life?

You can make a decision today that will change the trajectory of your life from this direction to this direction.

You can.

You can Out of your Sheol, out of your belly, you can make a decision.

Where you are right now is not the end of your story.

You can turn to God and you can call out to him.

This is what Jonah did.

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

He did the only thing he knew to do he prayed.

What do you do when you're in the belly?

I don't know, he prayed, but what did he pray?

This is the thing that was a great revelation to me this week.

I'd never seen before what did he pray?

He prayed prayers that had already been prayed.

They'd already been prayed and already been written down and they were prayed every week in the temple.

He prayed from the Psalms.

In fact, in this prayer in chapter two we just read it he prays.

He refers at least eight times to the Psalms, different Psalms in chapter.

In verse two you see him praying Psalm three and Psalm 118.

In verse three he prays Psalm eight and Psalm 42.

In verse four he prays Psalm 31.

In verse five he prays from Psalm 69.

In verse nine he prays from Psalm 50 and right back around to Psalm two, what was inside of him came out.

Why?

Because when your bucket gets kicked, what's inside comes out.

This is something this week I was noticing in Stephen in the book of Acts we were reading in our churches, going together through the New Testament and the Psalms through the Bible app.

And so we were in Acts and Stephen was standing before people who were just ready to kill him.

His bucket was kicked and what happened?

It was amazing.

What happened.

What came out of his bucket was the entire Old Testament, like in one chapter, the entire story of God, from the beginning all the way to the present day.

He had it inside of him and when his bucket was kicked came the story of God.

And when Jonah, his bucket was kicked, what came out was the Psalms.

Because he had heard the Psalms.

He had heard them in the temple.

He'd worshiped with them.

There's temple liturgy.

He had prayed some of these Psalms, probably going up to Jerusalem, ascending to Jerusalem.

Maybe he prayed these Psalms.

So out came the Psalms.

They were praying them in the temple, that's for sure.

In our worst times, the Psalms give us the words to pray.

Not only do they give us the freedom to go ahead and say what we want to say, but sometimes they give us the things, the very words to pray when we don't have the words, when we're in the belly and we don't know what to say.

Man, you open the Bible.

Here's what to say.

This is what Jonah did.

And this is why it's also so important for us to be honest.

You know, we say you know why.

I mean, god already knows what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling.

Why should I say it?

Because it's important to name it.

It's important for us.

We don't say it for God, we say it for us.

It's important to name what's going on inside of you because it's also very easy to just push it aside, just shove it down and not even deal with it.

We feel like it's easier to not deal with it and later on it deals with us.

But God's way of dealing with grief is going ahead and letting it out.

It's opening up and saying what we're feeling and naming it so that God can heal it, so that there can be honesty and there can be light, he can begin to give us his perspective.

So here's the thing.

Here's the thing.

Get the word of God inside of you.

That's the thing.

Get the word of God inside of you.

It's the sort of the spirit, it's what the Holy Spirit uses to fight for us.

This is His sword man.

If we don't have it in there, it doesn't come out.

If you don't have it in there, you don't know how to respond in certain times.

It's light to your dark places.

It's the sword, it's living and it's active and it goes down to the very intentions and the thoughts of our hearts and it discerns our heart.

When we don't know our heart, the word of God discerns our heart and it always accomplishes what God wants.

Look what Isaiah said, isaiah 55.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there, but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth.

It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

You get the word in you because it always works inside of you.

He's working all the time, especially when you're in your belly, when you're in that darkest place and you don't know what to do.

His word is a lamp into our feet, it's a light into our path.

So a little testimony.

I grew up in church not knowing God at all, far from God, never wasn't born again at all.

But I went to church because that's the way it was in my house.

If you lived in my house, you went to church.

Thank God for my mom and dad.

It's a beautiful gift that they gave me.

So I was a servant God.

I was, in fact I was a musician, rock and roller, addicted to drugs, addicted to alcohol, really bad relationships with women, terrible mess, just a mess of life.

But when I came to the place where I was understanding that this is not the way I wanna live my life, the things that I thought would fill me are not filling me and I need something beyond this, I didn't know what to do.

You know, what began to happen is the word of God that was put into me without me even thinking about it.

All those years began to come back up.

You know, sunday school lessons, sermons, sermons like.

You know, adulterers and fornicators will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Fear of God, sermons like the kindness of God leads you to repentance.

Kindness of God, there's fear and there's kindness.

All of this stuff was in there and I don't think I really thought about it much at all until I was in my belly not my belly, but in the belly, my metaphorical belly and I was crying out to God and the word of God began to come up inside of me and it began to work on me and it began to draw me back to the Lord.

It did what he wanted.

It doesn't ever return to him, void.

It always accomplishes.

So give the Holy Spirit something to work with.

Get the word of God inside of you.

Join the Bible plan with us.

Read through the Bible with us.

Do something to get it inside of you, memorize it.

Let the word of God dwell in your heart richly, and that's where your answers are gonna come, where you're in your darkest place.

Let's see what Jonah said here.

He said, 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.

And what I saw to me, what I saw, what occurred to me as I was reading this, and what was curious to me is that Jonah was so specific about his prayers.

And it became curious to me because I thought we're so specific about our worries and we're so general about our prayers.

I mean, we fellowship with our worries.

We go deep, we know them, we talk.

They're good old friends, right?

They're our buddies, they're with us always and we're thinking about them and we think about every possible way it could go wrong.

And we're thinking about the drama, and sometimes we're creating drama.

Sometimes we're addicted to drama.

Some of us are addicted to drama and maybe that's just.

You just feel like you need to find it somewhere.

There's something, you know there's something, something's gonna go wrong.

That's a pretty day, but something's gonna go wrong.

I don't know.

We're so specific about our worries but we're so general about our prayers and I think God wants to flip it right.

I think he wants us to be okay, general, realistic about our worries.

It's okay, but we cast our cares on him.

Let's be specific about our prayers.

Let's go deep with these prayers.

I mean, he took the Psalms, but he also added his own thing in there, like seedweed is wrapped around my head.

You know those kind of things.

This is my specific circumstance, lord.

There's Psalms and then there's me and we're pulling this all together, but he's specific about his prayer.

We would do well to be specific in what we ask God for.

Jonah wanted to go so far away from the presence of God, but now in the belly, he's asking for the presence.

You see what he says.

He's asking for the temple.

I will again.

He uses the word temple twice.

It's a place where you meet God.

It's a place of fellowship.

Right, he wanted to go back to church, y'all.

Right, he wanted to go back to church.

And God's calling some people today.

Back to church, back to him, back to fellowship with people, with believers, back to church.

You're in a tight place because you're in a tight place precisely because you ran the opposite direction.

But you can make a decision today that changes all of that.

And if you hear him calling, don't run the other way, because it's his kindness reaching out to you.

And this is where we come to the very core of the message today, the heart of our response to today's passage.

Jonah said this those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.

Steadfast love is that word, that Hebrew word, hessed, and we've talked about this before that word which is Trying to describe the indescribable kindness of God.

It really means kindness.

Hesed means kindness.

It means love, but it's more.

It's love out of a kind heart.

It's more.

It's tenderness, but it's more it's mercy, it's tender mercies and it's steadfast love.

It stays always with us.

It's it's hesed.

It's that word that has no exact cognate in any known language.

It's a word that's specific to Hebrew because it's specific to the Hebrew God Cause God is kind.

God shows kindness to the sailors, to the prophet and to the wicked city.

He shows kindness to us.

Michael Card wrote in his wonderful book Inexpressible the great surprise of the Hebrew Bible is not that God is powerful or holy.

These are characteristics that we would expect in a God.

The great surprise is that he is kind.

Anger is not a characteristic of God.

Slow to anger is.

He is slow to anger precisely because he is rich in hesed.

This is what God said when he self identified.

He revealed himself in Exodus 34 to Moses.

He said the Lord, the Lord gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in hesed.

He's rich in his kindness.

He's rich and Jonah knew this, because two chapters later he's gonna quote this back to God, the very thing that Moses wrote he's gonna quote back to God I knew you were kind.

I knew you would save them.

I didn't wanna go because I knew what you were like.

I knew what you were gonna do.

You're kind.

Where do you find this kind of kindness.

Jonah found it in the belly.

I found it in my belly too.

In my darkest place I found the kindness of God, and he found out the hard way the wisdom that he is sharing with us today.

You can serve vain idols and you can suffer the consequences, or you can live in the mercy of God.

Today we can live in the mercy of God.

And the very last words of Jonah's prayer Salvation belongs to the Lord.

Salvation belongs to the Lord.

This rebellious prophet, running from the call of God, still had the truth in his heart and in his sight, and he still proclaimed it From the belly.

He proclaimed the truth.

He was prophesying his own salvation.

He was prophesying the salvation of Nineveh as well.

But he was looking much further down the road.

He was looking at a much bigger picture.

He was prophesying the salvation of the one who was greater than Jonah, a prophet who was to come, a messiah who would take away the sins of the world, bring salvation to everyone.

Salvation is of the Lord.

Jesus said in Matthew 12, when he was speaking to the Pharisees and the scribes.

Some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him saying teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.

But he answered to them.

An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it, except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

Or just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, and the men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repent it at the preaching of Jonah.

And behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

And you look back on this story, what we read this morning.

The sailors had done everything they could do.

They threw everything overboard.

They prayed to their own gods and they interrogated Jonah.

They asked him to pray for them and they rode, and they rode and they rode.

They did everything they could in their own power, but they still could not save themselves, and so they threw him overboard.

They sacrificed Jonah, jonah.

And this is a picture of Jesus and it's a picture of us, after we have done everything to try to save ourselves, to perform in order to be acceptable to God.

We've summoned up our strength, we've tried to appease the image of God that we have in our minds.

We base our acceptance With God, on our performance or our zeal, but we find that we fall short, our efforts are not enough.

But the Son of man was sacrificed for us and he sang a song in the belly of the earth.

And I don't know what that song sounded like.

It wasn't a blues, it was an anthem.

Maybe it was Psalm 68, quoted later by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4, when he ascended on high, he led captivity captive and he gave gifts to men.

And he's got gifts for us this morning.

God raised him from the dead and the greatest gift he has salvation, is from the Lord.

So what do we learn from this passage?

A lot of things.

A few things.

I've gathered here is God gives mercy where judgment is warranted, to a wicked generation, to a wicked nation, a wicked city, a wicked king, a wicked people.

He offered salvation, he held out mercy.

Another thing is that God wants the gospel to go to the nations and he wants to use us to do it, and when I say nations, I mean every nation, and that includes this nation, which means your community and your family and your school and your job.

He wants to use us to impact the world, to show forth the hope and the mercy that's in his heart, his kindness Also.

God accomplishes his mission even though we are reluctant or rebellious.

He will have his people.

He is sovereign and he's going to make it happen.

But it's a lot easier if we work with him.

It's a lot easier on us and what a joy to be able to work with him right.

And then the last thing is embracing God's mission of mercy is impossible unless I realize my own need for mercy.

I need this mercy.

I need it in my own heart, so I need to understand and get the gospel right.

I need to get the gospel into my heart so it changes me, so I can get the gospel out to other people.

Let's stand together.

I want to pray for you all, and we're all in such different places this morning and only the Holy Spirit really knows where we are.

But maybe you're running from God, maybe you've created your own version of hell, maybe you're living in the circumstances that you've created.

But God's prepared a fish for you and it's for your salvation.

And maybe your circumstances right now they don't feel like they're your salvation.

But he's in charge and his kindness is drawing you back to him.

And where you are today is not the end of your story and you can return to the God who's calling you this morning.

You can make a decision today that changes the rest of your life.

What a grace, what good news this is.

Maybe you're not running from God, but you're running from a ministry call or a call to missions, and today's the day to turn and embrace God's call and to say, yes, I'll do it, god, I'll do it, I'll walk with you.

Maybe that's the change he wants to make in the trajectory of your life today.

Maybe you're walking with God and you're actively engaged in his mission.

Things are pretty good, but God wants maybe to draw you closer, to hear him, to hear his heart for the people that he has called you to reach.

Maybe he wants to expand your soul, to receive more of his heart for them.

He'll speak to you, he'll speak direction.

He'll speak the words you're to speak.

He'll speak the exact personal mission to you.

He will In terms of verse.

There's a hymn that came to me as I was, came to my memory as I was preparing this.

It goes like this there's a wideness in God's mercy, like the wideness of the sea.

There's a kindness in God's justice which is more than liberty.

There is welcome for the sinner and more grace is for the good.

There is mercy with the Savior, there is healing in his blood.

But we make God's love too narrow by false limits of our own and we magnify its strictness with a zeal God will not own.

For the love of God is broader than the measures of the mind.

The heart of the eternal is most mercifully kind.

So, god is to that kindness that we turn.

We hear your word this morning, god, that your steadfast love, your kindness, your haste is here for us.

Lord, we turn wherever we are.

God, we're all different places, all of us.

We thank you for the mercy that your Spirit draws us to turn.

Your kindness does lead us to turn and repent, god, and we come to you, lord, and we see your arms open.

We hear you drawing us in to you.

Lord, thank you for this kindness.

I pray for those, lord, who are hearing a call to you for the first time, lord, that they hear your voice, they hear this message of hope in the gospel that Jesus has died for their sins, and I pray, god, that they would turn to you.

I pray for your spirit to draw them into fullness of your salvation, god.

Pray for those who are running from ministry call.

Maybe they just not stepped into it, something you've called them to step into, lord, that they're just hesitant, lord, we are sometimes weak, lord, and insecure and fearful, and we think like orphans.

Lord, forgive us and help us to think like sons and daughters, lord, and to step into what you have for us.

God, bring us into that place now.

I pray in Jesus' name, lord.

I pray that you would call us always into your mission and make us mindful of that mission.

Give us ears to hear what you have to say and give us grace to open our mouths and speak it.

Lord, I pray.

Thank you, lord, that you call us into your mission.

I pray for those who are in their personal belly of Sheol right now, that your kindness would wrap around them like those seaweeds around Jonah's head.

Lord, let your kindness wrap them up and birth in them whatever you're birthing in them, god.

Let that gestation process of the Holy Spirit happen and bring forth what you want in them.

Bring forth the image of Jesus inside of them.

God, thank you for that and I pray your blessing on this body.

As you would bless them.

You would keep them, each person, each home, lord, that you would cause your face to shine on them.

Lord, be gracious to them, let your countenance up on them and give them peace in the name of Jesus, amen, amen, amen.