Jonah 2:2-10

Alright, we are in the book of Jonah.

Hopefully, by now, this is like the fourth or fifth sermon or so on Jonah, we realize that Jonah is more, the book of Jonah is more than just a big fish that swallowed Jonah.

But where we're at today is in Jonah chapter 2.

Jonah 2 · chapter mention

We're gonna cover the whole chapter.

And Jonah is in the belly of the fish.

So that's where we're at.

Jonah has um finally made his way into the belly of the fish.

That makes this book so popular.

So Jonah uh finally prays.

He prayed.

Like chapter two is Jonah's prayer.

He prayed.

He finally prayed.

He he ran, he pouted, he slept, he hardened his heart, and then after all hope was lost, he turned to God and he prayed.

Uh verse two, it says that he called out to the Lord out of his distress, out of the belly of Sheol, he cried.

And I think maybe the wildest thing about this is that God actually heard him and even answered him.

Uh the same guy that we've gone through the book of Jonah here, the same guy that ran from God in the opposite direction, directly disobeyed God, has now called out to God, and and that's that God actually hears Jonah.

When he finally wants to call out to him, he actually hears him.

And why is this?

How is this?

What is it?

What in the world would make God do this?

Uh somebody directly disobeying him turns and cries out to him.

What would make God do this?

And I'm gonna put all the cards on the table right up front.

Like, I'm not gonna hold you like uh like a movie where you're trying to figure out what the plot is.

I'm gonna put all the cards right on the table right up front.

This is what my sermon's about today.

Verse number nine.

But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay.

Salvation belongs to the Lord.

How can Jonah get away with all of this?

How can he rail against God and God not just leave him for dead?

Salvation belongs to the Lord.

How can God want someone to go to Nineveh, a wicked city, so much that he's willing to use a disgruntled, disobedient prophet like Jonah to tell wicked people to prevent or to repent of their sins?

Salvation belongs to the Lord, that's how.

Why does God deliver some people from such terrible circumstances and yet allow some people to walk through the worst things imaginable?

It's because salvation belongs to the Lord.

Deliverance, rescue, redemption belongs to the Lord.

And I think when I say that, like everyone's gonna be like, yep, that, yes, that is yes, amen.

Yeah, nobody, this isn't a real amenny type church, but maybe in our hearts we're like, yes, amen, yes.

But yes, thank you.

Amen's man, I'm telling you, that'll get you.

Uh but in our hearts, it is a hard thing for us to grasp that salvation belongs to the Lord.

We want some sort of credit for our actions towards God.

We that's just that's bound in us.

We say things like we decided, or we realized, or we finally got to the end of our rope and we just realized that we needed God.

We saw the way.

We, we, we.

But here we have Jonah in the bottom of the ocean, plummeting to his death, and he is rescued by a giant fish that God appointed to swallow him.

Here we have a guy that hasn't done a darn thing right up to this point.

He hasn't done one thing right.

And he is rescued by God to fulfill his plans.

And Jonah looks over this whole situation and he says, Salvation belongs to the Lord.

He didn't do anything.

Jonah didn't do anything, he plummeted to the bottom of the ocean.

This is the battle cry of the Bible, of the entire Bible.

God delivers and redeems a people back to himself for his glory on his terms.

This is salvation.

I've said this before, and I'll use this example probably many times again, but we don't watch superhero movies and stand in awe of the people that are being rescued.

That's that's not how it works.

No one is watching Superman swoop into a building as it crashes down on somebody and just like jeepers, did you did you see that guy in the building, how he was huddled down completely helpless?

That was amazing.

He was just sitting there.

I just I gotta check in and re-watch that one because that guy was awesome.

No, that's not how it works.

We marvel, if you will.

We marvel at the hero.

We are in awe of the one that is providing salvation.

And that salvation is for us the greatest thing is it's not just some movie.

The credit, the glory, the praise belongs to God alone.

When they roll the credits at the end of the movie, every line is God, director, God, written by God.

He gets the credit.

The credits are his.

So to start out in chapter two of Jonah, uh, he gives us a recap.

Jonah kind of gives us a little recap of what has happened to him and his time when he was thrown overboard.

That's what verses two through seven are.

So in verses two through seven, um, Jonah is actually in the belly of the fish, thanking God for rescuing him from the ocean.

So he hasn't even been fully delivered from this terrible situation yet, and he is taking this time to thank God for providing a fish to swallow him and rescue him.

So I'm going to read verses uh two through seven.

Actually, I'll just read one through seven of Jonah two.

It says, 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 your billows passed over me.

Then I said, I am 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 mountain.

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.

So the situation that Jonah has found himself in is completely hopeless.

I mean utterly void of all hope.

I can't think of anything more desolate, scary, uh terrifying, frightening, hopeless than being wrapped up in weeds at the bottom of the ocean.

That is a nightmare.

I have nightmares about that ever since I started reading Jonah.

This is horrifying.

If you if you actually remember back uh in Jonah chapter one, verse number three, Jonah was was fleeing from God's presence.

It says this in Jonah 1:3.

Jonah 1:3

But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.

So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

So Jonah is fleeing from the presence of the Lord.

Jonah fled from God, and what ends up happening in chapter two here is God actually drives him away from himself.

It says in 2, 3, for you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the sea.

And then in verse 4, I am driven away from your sight.

So in chapter 1, we have Jonah running from God, and he thinks, I want I want to get out of God's presence.

So God actually gives Jonah a taste of what that will look like, and he drives him into the depths of the sea.

And sometimes, this happens with sometimes this happens.

God gives us exactly what we want to help us see that that isn't exactly what we want.

Jonah wants to be out of God's presence, okay.

God says, okay, I will drive you into the depths of the sea if you want to be out of my presence.

You want to forget that I'm your God?

Fine.

I will allow circumstances that are so bad that the only thing that you'll have to grasp onto is that I am your God.

I will take everything else.

And God, God doesn't do this as some sort of power flex move.

He isn't on a power trip.

He does this to lead us back to him, which is our only source of true joy.

The only source of true salvation is God.

So he will drive us away to show us that he is all that we have.

Romans 2, 4 says, Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

Sometimes the kindness, the kindness of God doesn't allow you to have what you want because it would be too destructive for you.

But sometimes, in his wisdom and in his judgment, even at times, he gives us what we want to wear us out of ourselves until what we see is him.

In either case, his kindness is meant to lead us back to repentance, it's meant to bring us back to him.

Have you ever indulged your flesh so much that it makes you just sick of that thing?

Like uh you're like, man, this this weekend right here, this is the last weekend, and then I'm I'm getting fit on Monday, which really is just you saying, I'm going to eat terrible this weekend, and I don't want anyone to say anything, and I want to try to find a way to feel better about those bad decisions.

So I'm going to tell myself that on Monday I'm starting this new thing, and then the thing is, Saturday night rolls around.

This is how it happens for me.

I've done this several, several times, several pounds ago.

Um, Saturday night rolls around, and you realize everything you have eaten has been made on a conveyor belt, and there's not been anything of natural color in your diet for the last day and a half, and you are sick.

Like you are you are sick of how you feel, you're sick of how you are acting and how you're just lethargic.

You never want to eat junk again.

Don't we get like that with ourselves?

I mean, I find myself like that all the time.

I'm just like, I'm so sick of my stupid, sinful self.

I'm so sick of it.

Like, I have to live with myself for possibly 50 more years?

Are you kidding me?

I'm driving myself crazy.

I'm wearing myself out with my own sin.

Why do I still choose things that are leading me to death and destruction?

Why am I not choosing things that lead me to life?

What is wrong with me?

I'm sick of myself.

Sometimes God, in his kindness and in his wisdom, allows us to have what we want to show us that he is enough.

To show us that what we thought would satisfy will never satisfy.

And he uses that to drive us back to him.

2 Corinthians 12 9 says, But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Jonah wanted to be out of God's presence.

And that's just exactly what God gave him.

In a sense, I mean, obviously, we know God is everywhere.

There's no really escaping his presence, but in a sense, God said, Okay, I will drive you into the depths of the sea.

And in Jonah's weakness is when God flexes his power.

In our weakness is when God shows up.

His power is on display when we say, I have nothing else.

And that's where Jonah is.

He has not he is tangled in weeds at the bottom of the ocean.

He is hopeless, he has nothing else.

And he finally realizes this: a fish swallows him, and he prays.

He says in verse 7, When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you into your holy temple.

When Jonah felt hopeless, he prayed.

And I think for us that sounds so elementary.

Or like, well, yeah, I mean, when you don't have anything else, you pray.

But we don't run to God in prayer.

Sometimes we have this mindset that, well, God already knows what I need.

I don't I don't need to ask him for it.

Or we think, I haven't prayed forever.

I mean, I can't remember the last time I prayed, and now that I'm in trouble, I'm gonna start praying.

God, God's not really gonna like that.

But that's not what we see in scripture.

We see time and time again in scripture where people are coming to God, like Jonah, in their distress.

We see people cry out to God for deliverance, and we see God deliver.

This is just this is like every other chapter in the Psalms, if you read through there.

David's always in distress and he's crying out to God.

He does want you to come to him.

And sometimes he will put us somewhere where we truly feel that he is our only option.

We know that he is, he's always our only true and worthy option.

But in our arrogance, we tend to go about like Jonah and intentionally forget God.

We're raising a family, we're running a business, we're bebopping here, we're doing life, we got this.

And we like Jonah, we flee from God's presence.

And often it takes us having the feeling that Jonah had in verse 6 to come back to God.

Verse 6 says, Um, at the roots, I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever.

It gives it we have to have that feeling before we get drawn back to God.

Psalm 18, 5 and 6 says, The cords of Sheho entangled me, the snares of death confronted me.

In my distress I called upon the Lord, to my God I cried for help.

From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.

Are you in distress this morning?

Are you running from the presence of the Lord?

Are you lost?

Do you feel like the bars are closing in on you forever?

I would encourage you to call out to God in your distress.

We have a God that hears.

Even at the bottom of the ocean, he hears and listens and answers.

You know who isn't a really good listener?

You.

You're pretty terrible at it.

Stop trying to be your own listener and cry out to God, the one that actually listens.

You know who is a terrible savior?

You.

You're awful at it.

Stop trying to save yourself and cry out to the one that salvation actually belongs to, that owns it.

Jonah says in verse 8 that those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.

When we refuse to cry out to God with everything that's going on in our lives, we are refusing hope.

We are staking our hope in something other than the steadfast love of God, of the God that actually is love.

His very makeup is love.

He invented love.

This prayer that Jonah is praying in chapter 2, it isn't even that good.

I mean, seriously, it's really not that good of a prayer.

When we would look at it, we would be like, yeah, this isn't that good.

I mean, really.

He isn't apologetic, he doesn't repent, he shows no remorse for anything that he does.

It's just Jonah acknowledging God and blurting out whatever is happening in his life.

That's really all it is.

Christianity isn't a profession.

We're not professionals.

Actually, I prove we're not professionals.

This is my son's science folder, and then it has my other son's name written very poorly on it, and I'm using it for my sermon notes.

We're not professionals.

Christianity is not some sort of professionalism.

God isn't in need of your really well put together sentences.

If you can put together sentences really well, that's fine.

But he's not in need of that.

He wants you to call out to him.

1 Thessalonians 5, 16 through 18.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

You struggling with what the will of God is for your life?

It doesn't get much more simple than that.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in every circumstance.

That's the will of God for your life.

That's the will of God for Jonah's life.

That's what God wanted from Jonah.

Finally, so then we get we get all this prayer, this drama happens, and then in verse number 10, something, if you're not familiar with the story, like unexplainable happens.

And it says in verse 10, and the Lord spoke to the fish, which that's pretty amazing.

The Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

A fish puked a human up onto dry land.

Just wrap your brain around that for a second.

God delivers an undeserving Jonah from the belly of the fish.

It didn't look good, it didn't smell good, it didn't feel good, but Jonah was delivered.

I'm gonna guess that it probably hurt because if I'm just thinking through this, a giant fish can't really get up to shore, you know?

He can't make his way to the shore and gently like vomit Jonah onto the shore.

Vomits like one of those words you shouldn't even say in a sermon, but it's in the Bible, so I can say it.

He he didn't like just ease his way up to the shore and then vomit Jonah out, or else he would be like a beach whale or something.

So he had to be back in the deep.

He's back here in the deep and he vomits Jonah up onto the shore.

That's one of those ones that when you're sick and it's like coming down from your toes, and you're just you're really hurling.

That fish had to hurl Jonah out.

I don't even.

That's gross.

That is disgusting.

God doesn't always deliver us in some beautiful way.

You know, people that that get these signs and stuff, and they're like always looking for a sign, they always pick these beautiful things as signs from God.

You know, like, well, I saw a butterfly land on a daffodil, and I think God's telling me that we should buy the house on daffodil drive.

No, I mean, maybe, but I just no one looks at puke for deliverance, but that's what God does.

Jonah got up with puke.

I mean, he just got hurled out of a out of a whale, smacks the shore, gets up, puke, guts, disoriented, I would think.

He hasn't seen the light of day for a few days, sore.

Have you ever looked at puke?

It's it's hard to be around.

It's hard to not get sick saying the word, let alone like looking at it and smelling it.

And then, but Jonas gets up and he's covered in it, and God says, Yep, you're the one.

You're the one that I'm going to use to go tell people to repent.

And it's not because of the way you look, and it's not because of the way you smell, it's not what you're bringing to the table, it's because in your weakness, in your pathetic state, I am going to look great.

God can make the most disgusting, disgraceful things and use them as part of our deliverance.

Do you see where I'm going here?

God can use disgraceful, disgusting things as part of our deliverance.

That's exactly what he did with the cross.

That's the exact thing that he did with the cross.

He used a bloody, hard to look upon, battered, and bruised Jesus as a means to save us from our sins.

Jesus is the true and better Jonah.

He's the greater Jonah.

Matthew 12, 38 through 41, it says this.

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.

But he answered 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.

For 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.

The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it.

For they repented at the preaching of Jonah.

And behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

God used the cross for our deliverance.

The cross is an emblem of shame and embarrassment.

It's an invention that was made for torture.

And Jesus was raised up on it to drink the cup of God's wrath so that you and I could be delivered from our sins.

Why does he do this?

Why?

Because salvation belongs to the Lord.

He wants to display his grace and his mercy by saving undeserving sinners for his glory.

He can do that.

He's the only one that can do that.

Because he is the only one that owns salvation.

He owns it.

I was fortunate enough growing up to be raised by parents that loved each other.

And for all I know, they still do love each other, I think.

It's getting kind of rocky.

They're getting old and cranky, but I think they still love each other.

I I had a great childhood.

We didn't have a lot materialistically, not by a long shot.

Like we were always rolling in the older vehicles.

It was always a little bit embarrassing to get dropped off because you had to use the door that worked to get out.

And then like we didn't have brand name clothes until we got old enough to either A, buy them ourselves, or B, have a girlfriend that bought you clothes.

So you're like, man, if she's gonna buy me clothes, I'm gonna marry her.

And so we we didn't, we never really lived in these nice houses, but man, oh man, did we have a steady home?

Uh when I got home from school, I never thought about dad coming in to beat me up or mom not coming home at all.

I never thought they forgot about me or they they're not going to provide what I need.

I never went home and thought, like, this, is this actually my house?

I don't really know.

My parents, you know, they're the ones paying for this.

Am I allowed to have the snacks?

Am I allowed to drink out of here?

I don't know.

This stuff isn't really mine.

That stuff didn't cross my mind because the house, the home belonged to my dad and mom, and they loved me, and I knew that.

I was free to go to school, I was free to go play sports, I was free to hang out with my friends.

It's not that I didn't have any responsibilities, it's that the house belonged to them, and therefore I didn't have to fret about not having a home.

I was loved well enough to be able to make mistakes and take risks and still come home and be loved because I knew it belonged to my parents.

It was theirs.

This is the freedom that we should live in, knowing that our Father is the one that our salvation belongs to.

We don't have to maintain it.

He paid for it, he provided it, he gifted it.

We don't have to be paranoid about him coming back later on down the road with a bill and saying, hey, we got I backdated this bill and you owe a lot of good works here for this salvation.

We're safe to take risk.

We can roll.

Let's roll now.

We aren't tied down to these rules and the roles of this world.

We are free enough that we can pray a prayer of thanksgiving and gratitude from the belly of a fish at the bottom of the ocean.

That's how free we are.

We can be joyful and thankful in the midst of life's grief because ultimately we know that our salvation belongs to the Lord, and He is a good and right and just merciful God that actually loves us.

And if you're here and you don't know that love, uh maybe, maybe you've never known safe love like that.

That's what God offers.

It's incredible.

He offered it to a disgruntled, arrogant bigot like Jonah.

He offered it to a wicked, murdering, violent people in Nineveh.

He offered it to an average, short, stocky guy in Danville.

He offered it to a punk kid, teenager, that made a wreck of his life from Sennerberg.

He offered it to Rick.

I mean, let's go.

Salvation belongs to the Lord.

And if you believe that, if you believe that, and you believe that his son did the work on the cross of Calvary, and you believe that that work, that work is enough to pay your debt before a holy God, then that offer, that offer of God's love stands for you this morning.

Would you, would you receive it?

If you've never done that, I would encourage you, please come talk to Jimmy or myself or Rick.

I would love to sit down and show you, talk to you and show you how you could know how your sins could be forgiven.

How your sin, instead of you being driven into the depths of the sea, how God can take your sins and drive them into the depths of the sea, that He will remember them no more.

If that, if you are here today and you've you've never you've never experienced the love of God, I would love to take that time and show you.

As would anybody in here, um, as I know Jimmy would, as I know Rick would.

Please don't delay on that today.

Let's pray.