Thank you.
Good morning, brothers and sisters in Christ. Is there a light that I can have here?
Thank you. That will do. Thank you.
Well, the Lord is certainly working, isn’t He? What a wonderful, wonderful Lord.
As we come to the study of God’s Word, there is a principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable: total reliance upon the Holy Spirit.
I was thinking, as we were breaking bread together and talking about food and hungering and thirsting, of that wonderful verse from Isaiah 55:
Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,
and he that hath no money, come ye, buy, and eat;
yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
And in God’s kingdom, thirst is the money that purchases from heaven. That is the coin of His kingdom. If we come thirsty, He has promised to meet with us. If we come hungry, He is going to feed us.
I would like to suggest a prayer—a verse that will be added to our application of this indispensable principle. For this particular study, I would like this prayer to be in your heart. It is from Psalm 106:4, the last part:
Remember me, O Lord, with the favor that Thou bearest unto Thy people:
O visit me with Thy salvation.
Oh, visit me—and do not leave the “O” out, because that is the cry: “O, visit me with Thy salvation.”
Let us bow together, commit our time to the Lord, and ask Him to visit us.
Father, we thank You again that we can trust You to open our eyes, to understand Your precious Word. Even as we think about Your dealing with Your servant Jonah—how You chase down those whom You want—we praise Thee that we have seen that already, even this day: Your faithful pursuing, bringing to Yourself Your child.
And we rejoice in that, Lord. Now we would ask Thee, in a special way, that You would visit us with Your salvation. Jesus deserves it, and in His name we claim it. Amen.
I am going to begin our little review by reading from the New Testament—these familiar verses from Luke 11. Luke 11:29-30, and then verse 32:
As the multitudes were gathering together unto Him, He began to say, This generation is an evil generation: it seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah.
For even as Jonah became a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation.
The men of Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, a greater than Jonah is here.
Jesus saw the end result of Jonah. In other words, He saw that God had transformed Jonah into a sign. They saw the sign, they heard the Word, and they repented at the preaching of Jonah.
Jesus saw the end result, but the Book of Jonah does not give the end result right away. The Book of Jonah gives the process. Jesus saw the end: Jonah had become a sign. But the Book of Jonah gives the process of how God turns Jonah into a sign.
At the beginning of the story of Jonah, Jonah was far, far from being a sign. He had a non-missionary heart. He had an anti-missionary heart. For reasons deep within his soul, he fled from the presence of the Lord.
In his independence, he turned his back. The story of Jonah is the story of how God, in His mercy, went after His independent child and brought him through stages to the place where he became a sign—a missionary channel of the very life of God—so that, as a risen man, he could carry the life of God to the ends of the earth.
Glorious book, this Book of Jonah. May God give us eyes to see it.
The great miracle, as I have suggested, in the Book of Jonah is not the fish. That is a great miracle, but that is not the miracle.
It is not even the conversion of that wicked city of Nineveh. The great miracle in the book is God’s mercy on His servant Jonah: to transform him and give him a heart like the heart of God.
Last evening, we discussed a little of that first change in Jonah’s heart. The book begins with an independent prophet running from the presence of the Lord. He does not want to be God’s missionary channel. He wants Nineveh judged. He wants God to be severe with them.
But God, in His mercy, pursues His child and chases him down by every means. He hurls a storm into his life, brings the right people into his life, allows him to hurt people, allows those with less light to shame him, and even uses him in his backslidden condition to bring blessing.
All of that works together to bring him to the place in Jonah 1:12 where he says:
Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea;
so shall the sea be calm unto you:
for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.
God brought him finally to the place where he was willing, for the first time, to give his life for the heathen. From his point of view, and with the light he had, it was a total surrender, a complete dedication, an absolute sacrifice.
“I will die for you.” That is what he said. “Throw me overboard for your sakes. The storm will stop if I die.”
Of course, we have the rest of the record, and we know that is still Jonah doing it. It was brave. It was noble. It was daring. It was heroic. It was a great sacrifice. But it was a first step.
As far as missions is concerned, it was sort of worthless—but very necessary as far as Jonah was concerned. Jonah says, “Take my life.” Jonah, they do not need your life. They need His life.
It is important in the making of a sign that we give our lives, that we throw them overboard, that we say, “All right, it is not for me. It is not my thing. It is for Him. Take my life.” That is important as a first step.
Now let me read the full development of that in the New Testament and show you where Jonah was. Remember the Holy Spirit’s words through the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.
That is where Jonah was at this time. You read that, and it is such an amazing thing. A prophet of God—if he had the tongue of angels, but not love. And he did not have love yet.
Love is the fruit of the Spirit. It is the life of God, the fruit of that life, and he did not have that yet. You see that it is possible to give all your possessions to feed the poor and to give your body to be burned.
You say, “What can God want more than that? I have given everything. I have given my body to be burned.” God says, “It profits nothing.” Amazing verse—that it profits nothing if it lacks the life of God.
That is where Jonah was at that point. He had thrown himself—or given himself to be thrown—overboard. From his point of view, a very daring, heroic step. But really, as far as the big picture is concerned, it profits nothing because he still needs the life of God.
When I closed last evening, I reminded you that the mariners could only see with these eyes. They could only see the surface of things. From their point of view, they saw their hero die for them. He was thrown overboard for their sake. They saw the storm stop. They saw God’s supernatural calm come over the sea. They saw Jonah go down for the third time, and from their point of view, he was dead.
From Jonah’s point of view, he was dead. But you know that is not the end of the story, because underneath the surface, God says, “Now I will continue My deeper work.”
There is another work that man cannot see with these eyes. While the mariners only saw the surface—a sea of glass—underneath the sea of glass, God began His strange and unusual work as He continued to make this man into a sign.
That brings us to Jonah 2: the deeper work of God. May God help us as we look at this wonderful chapter.
If the revelation of our Lord Jesus in Jonah 1 is the God who pursues—and certainly you must see that in chapter 1, God chasing His child—then in chapter 2 we have the revelation of God as the One who delivers.
What a delivering God we have in Jonah 2: the God of salvation. That is why I wanted us to begin with the prayer from Psalm 106:4: “O, visit me with Thy salvation.”
Jonah is not yet a sign, but God is working. God is not done. He is going to turn him into a sign. He is going to teach him, work him, and change him. So let the deeper work begin.
I want to make one observation that I think will be helpful before we look at Jonah 2 and understand God’s heart in this wonderful chapter. The principle is this: every time God delivers, He reenacts His salvation.
Every time God delivers, He reenacts His salvation.
When we arrived at Joshua, Bill Burckhardt stood up and shared a burden that was on his heart. He felt that, even though believers are here, there might be some believers who still need to be delivered. You might have come to Joshua carrying some baggage that you need to lay down.
Do you realize this? If God delivers a believer, He reenacts His salvation. Now, I am not saying you need to be saved again. But I am saying that if God delivers, He will restore the joy of your salvation. It feels like you are saved again.
That is the principle that allows us to live in first love, because every time God delivers, He reenacts His salvation. He is a delivering God.
I was saved—well, who knows when—but I think 1958 is when I was made aware of it, anyway. That is forty-three years ago. Do you realize that if God delivers me today from something, I can have the same joy I had forty-three years ago when I first trusted Christ?
God is going to bring Jonah to the place where he experiences the same joy a heathen will experience when he hears the gospel for the first time. God is going to deliver him, and every time He delivers, He reenacts His salvation.
God’s mercy—His delivering mercy—is always undeserved. We read the record and say, “God delivered Jonah from the storm.” That is true.
God is about to deliver Jonah from the fish. That is also true, but it is only one side of the truth. Here is the other side: God not only delivered Jonah from the storm; He delivered Jonah by the storm.
The storm was his salvation. He not only delivered Jonah from the fish; He delivered Jonah by the fish.
When we look with these eyes, from the human side, we say, “God was pursuing Jonah. He hurled a storm at him. That is chastening.” Maybe so. But that chastening was also salvation. That was his salvation.
God used the storm to rescue Jonah. Far better to be rescued by a storm than to perish in a calm. God sends the storms as His salvation.
Without the storm, Jonah could never have become a sign. That was all part of God’s great salvation. What a mercy in his life.
So it was with the fish. You say, “Well, that is chastening. God gobbled him up with a big sea monster—chastening.” Oh, I tell you, God did not send the fish to kill him. God sent the fish to save him.
God sent the fish to deliver him, to set him free. That was his salvation. Jonah was far better off in the belly of the fish, at the roots of the mountains, than sleeping in the cabin on his Mediterranean cruise.
The storm was his salvation. Now let us go back to our prayer for this chapter, Psalm 106:4. Do you realize what you are praying when you say, “O, visit me with Thy salvation”?
“O, visit me with the storm.” Can you pray that? That is your salvation.
“O, visit me with the fish.” That is your salvation.
Do not be bitter when the Lord chastens you, when the Lord disciplines you. That is your salvation. That is the mercy of God coming to deliver you. Every time God delivers, He reenacts His salvation and restores again the joy of salvation.
No wonder David could say in Psalm 119:
Before I was afflicted I went astray;
but now I observe Thy word.
It is good for me that I have been afflicted;
that I may learn Thy statutes.
Righteous art Thou, O Lord,
and upright are Thy judgments.
In faithfulness hast Thou afflicted me.
Let me relate all of that to Psalm 23. Brother Jeff has been sharing some things from Psalm 23, and God is using that in his life. I got hold of his tapes, and what a blessing it was to my heart to hear some of those things.
Psalm 23:6:
Surely goodness and lovingkindness shall follow me all the days of my life;
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Do you realize that every moment of your life, Psalm 23:6 is true? Every moment of my life, Psalm 23:6 is true. Goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life.
You say, “Well, that is true when I am walking in unbroken fellowship with Jesus.” Yes, but it is also true when, in independence, you are fleeing from the presence of the Lord. Oh, bless God for that.
If you are a Christian, you never get away from this. There are always going to be two footprints behind you, wherever you go, at all times and in all places. One is called goodness, and the other is called mercy.
They are going to follow you all the days of your life. They may take the form of a storm. They may take the form of a fish. But it is the goodness and it is the mercy of the Lord.
We will not get into it now, but read Psalm 107 and relate all of its parts to the last verse of Psalm 107, and I think God will give you light on that.
All right, Jonah 2, beginning at verse 1:
Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly.
And he said, I called by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and He answered me;
Out of the belly of Sheol cried I, and Thou heardest my voice.
For Thou didst cast me into the depth, in the heart of the seas;
And the flood was round about me:
All Thy waves and Thy billows passed over me.
And I said, I am cast out from before Thine eyes;
Yet I will look again toward Thy holy temple.
The waters compassed me about, even to the soul;
The deep was round about me;
The weeds were wrapped about my head.
I went down to the bottoms of the mountains;
The earth with her bars closed upon me for ever:
Yet hast Thou brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.
When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord;
And my prayer came in unto Thee, into Thy holy temple.
They that regard lying vanities forsake their own mercy.
But I will sacrifice unto Thee with the voice of thanksgiving;
I will pay that which I have vowed.
Salvation is of the Lord.
And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.
Notice verse 1, please: “Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly.”
There are many commentators who believe Jonah did not get swallowed right away by the fish. In other words, the descriptions in this psalm—the currents, the billows, the breakers, the waters encompassing him—are thought to describe Jonah sinking, almost drowning, and then, just before he drowned, God sending the fish to rescue him.
They say Jonah is describing his experience of sinking in the sea. I think it is important to remember that as soon as Jonah’s body hit the water—do not read lightly Jonah 1:15:
So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea:
and the sea ceased from her raging.
The men feared greatly. It was an instantaneous and supernatural calm that God brought on that sea. It was no ordinary storm, and it was no ordinary calm.
What a revelation of the sovereignty of God in this marvelous miracle. Certainly, you see the power of God when He hurls the wind and increases its intensity. But now you see the Lord’s power in bringing the storm to an abrupt end.
Would you not expect the Bible to say, “And then the wind died down, and gradually the wind stopped blowing, and the storm was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical depression”? That is what you would expect to read.
But what we read instead is that Jonah was thrown out and the sea stopped its raging. Usually, after the wind dies down, it takes time for the water to die down. Water is not stable. You get waves building fifteen feet, twenty feet, twenty-five feet; it takes time for unstable water finally to settle down.
Not here. Do not miss the wonder of this. As soon as Jonah hits the water, there is a supernatural calm.
I call attention to this because when Jonah prays in this chapter, he describes currents, breakers, billows, and waves. There were none. There were none.
You say, “Well, that is just poetry.” No. What he is describing, I do not believe, is sinking into a tremendous storm with all these breakers breaking over his head. I think he was in water as still as pond water.
What he is describing is being gulped down by a big fish. This fish comes along. The currents, breakers, waves, billows, and weeds around the head come from this fish moving at tremendous speed, opening its mouth, gulping, and all of that coming in.
That is what he is describing. This whole prayer took place inside the fish, not when he was drowning, but when he was inside the fish. You can take Jonah 2:1 as the key to the entire chapter: the prayer that he prayed from the belly of the fish.
As I understand this fish experience, God was accomplishing at least two things. Many more, of course. We always know God is doing more than our little outlines. But at least these two things He was accomplishing.
First—and Jonah knew nothing about this—God was preparing a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection.
In the future, God would take, literally, the poetic expressions of Jonah’s experience, multiply them by infinity, and apply them to what Jesus experienced on the cross. In another connection, I will tell you why it is a perfect picture of the cross.
But second, let us go back to Jonah. Jonah did not know he was going to be a type, that he was going to prefigure the Lord Jesus. He did not know about that.
What was God doing in Jonah’s day, in Jonah’s life—this deeper work under the surface as He makes him into a sign? What was God trying to accomplish in his life?
I believe the answer is that God had to bring Jonah to the place where he understood that mercy is undeserved.
Mercy is undeserved.
Remember, at this time, even though he was so noble, brave, and courageous—having surrendered his life for the heathen—he still had a non-missionary, anti-missionary heart.
If you had reached down in the water, pulled him up, and said, “Jonah, do you think Nineveh should be spared?” he would have said, “No.” He still had the same heart.
Nineveh deserves to be judged. They are wicked. They are violent. They do not deserve the mercy of God. Why should God spare them?
Sometimes you ought to be around our house when, on the television, some wicked person does some wicked thing. Lillian one day said, “I wish I was God for a day.”
You know what? Lillian, God for a day—there would be no mercy. Oh, what she describes should happen to these terrible people!
What God did in the belly of the fish—and you will not understand this passage if you do not see this—was put Jonah in the shoes of the heathen.
He was going to put Jonah in the place where he would learn that he did not deserve mercy any more than the Ninevites to whom he was sent. That is the great thing God was accomplishing in the fish.
Missions is far more than a noble surrender of our lives for the sake of others. It is also a spiritual understanding that we are as undeserving and as ill-deserving as anyone to whom we are sent to minister.
In the fish, Jonah came to see that he did not deserve the mercy of God, that he deserved to be judged. All those things he wished on the Ninevites, he himself deserved.
He came to the place where, if he was ever going to be delivered, it would be by the undeserved mercy of God, by the undeserved grace of the Lord. God taught Jonah about grace in this fish.
At the end of the ordeal, Jonah saw that there was not one shred of difference between him and the Ninevites. They deserved to die, and so did he. They deserved not to be delivered, and so did Jonah.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, it is a wonderful revelation of the Lord—and a miracle—when God’s people see that the entire world, in God’s eyes, is on level ground.
Not only in the church, where we embrace the priesthood of believers, where there are no stations and we are all one—that is true. But it is also true in the entire world.
Part of being a sign is having a missionary be able to look into the eye of a cannibal and know that he is not some hero who has been sent to rescue the cannibal, but someone who has received grace—the same grace, the same mercy, that that cannibal needs.
Until we fully see that we are undeserving and delivered by undeserved mercy, we are not fully prepared to share the gospel with those who need mercy.
Take that wonderful ministry at the Christian Shelter. My, my. God has called together a body of beautiful believers and servants—those who sacrifice and present the grace of God.
On the one hand, you have all these servants of the Lord who come and volunteer to minister. On the other hand, you have this stream of people needing mercy: homeless, jobless, enslaved in so many ways, derelicts, drunkards, drug addicts, perverts.
There is not a shred of difference between the workers and the guests. The guests need mercy, and the workers receive mercy.
That is missions. When those who have received mercy are able to give mercy and stand on level ground and say, “We are the same. You need the Lord; I needed the Lord. He reached me. He can reach you.”
Jonah was a cut above. Jonah was a proud Jew. “They do not deserve to be delivered.”
God said, “Jonah, come with Me. I have something to show you.” Down in the deep, secret place, God began to put Jonah in the shoes of the heathen so that he might know.
He had already been in the same boat with them, but he did not catch on that he was in the same boat. So now God was going to put him in their shoes.
In order to show how God brought Jonah to the place where he stood as a heathen needing mercy, I would like to isolate from this marvelous prayer six expressions.
Think beyond what I am talking about. Think spiritually, and you will see why Jonah became a wonderful type of our Lord Jesus. If it is true that God is putting Jonah in the shoes of the heathen and showing him what they deserve, what do you think happened on the cross when our Lord Jesus was put into the shoes of the heathen and received literally what they deserve?
This becomes a marvelous picture of the cross. I am going to take six expressions—there are others, but I have isolated these six—to give you a sense of how God is teaching Jonah this great truth.
First is Jonah 2:2:
I called by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and He answered me;
Out of the belly of Sheol cried I, and Thou heardest my voice.
The King James says, “Out of the belly of hell.” Jonah cries out from the belly of hell.
Sheol, as you know, in the Bible is the place of the departed. Sometimes it is used to describe only the body; in that case, it is the grave. Sometimes it is used to describe the place of departed spirits. But it is always the place of the departed.
Jonah pictured himself as a man lying in the grave, waiting for someone to shovel dirt on his coffin. That is where he was. “In the belly of hell.” Describe your experience: “I am in the belly of hell. I am in Sheol. I am in the depths of Sheol.”
He felt like he was in a prison from which there was no escape, alive like that demoniac in Mark 5—in the place of the dead, living in the cemetery.
When God prepares a missionary channel, He lets him see that he is in the belly of hell.
The second expression is from Jonah 2:4:
And I said, I am cast out from before Thine eyes;
Yet I will look again toward Thy holy temple.
That is what the ungodly deserve, and that is what is threatened: that one day they will be expelled from Thy sight, out of the presence of the Lord.
Isn’t this amazing? The Book of Jonah begins with Jonah fleeing from the presence of the Lord. He thought God’s presence was a great burden to him. Now, all of a sudden, he realizes what it is to be expelled from God’s sight, and now that is the burden.
He is describing what it means to be God-forsaken. That is what the heathen deserve, and God is putting him in the shoes of the heathen.
God-forsaken—that is the verdict of sin. God is completely out of sight.
I do not know whether you have ever met anyone or dealt with anyone who falsely imagined that God had cast them off. Twice in my life—and unless He gives special grace, I hope it never happens again—I have dealt with those who thought they had committed the unpardonable sin and that God wanted nothing to do with them.
The first man ended up in a mental hospital, and the second woman committed suicide. It was awful, talking to somebody who honestly believed they were cast off.
Now, see, that is poetry for Jonah, but that is not poetry for Jesus on the cross: “Expelled from Thy sight.” God is painting the cross here.
He put Jonah in the shoes of the heathen, and Jonah begins to feel his own condition. He is in the belly of hell, just like the Ninevite, and he has been cast off from God’s sight, just like the Ninevites.
Verse 5 gives the third expression:
The waters compassed me about, even to the soul;
The deep was round about me;
The weeds were wrapped about my head.
The King James says, “The waters compassed me about, even to the soul.” To my very soul.
This is not like Ezekiel, who went in the water and it was at his ankles, then his calves, then his knees, then his thighs, then up to his head, and then waters to swim in. This is not Jonah in the ocean; this is the ocean in Jonah.
It is not in his stomach and in his lungs. He says, “This thing is flowing to my soul.” It is a spiritual flood. He is being inundated right into his soul.
That is poetry for Jonah. That is not poetry for Jesus. It is a marvelous picture, but Jonah is beginning to feel what it feels like to be a lost heathen.
They deserve to be in hell, and he cries out, “Lord, I am in the belly of hell, the belly of Sheol.” They deserve to be cast out, and he says, “Oh, Lord, I am expelled from Your presence.” They deserve to be spiritually drowned, and he says, “Lord, I feel the water coming in, touching my soul, my spirit.”
What a tremendous experience God brought him through.
Then the fourth expression, also in verse 5:
The weeds were wrapped about my head.
Isn’t that graphic? They say that the Hebrew word for weed here was very well known and avoided by even the strongest swimmers because it was that entwining weed, like a rope. It weighed a ton.
The weeds were wrapped around his head. I have met some people who looked like weeds were wrapped around their heads, as far as the bondage of the mind is concerned, anyway.
But it is a picture of complete helplessness, hopelessness, entanglement, and the weight of that whole thing. He is crying out from that position. The more you struggle, the worse it gets.
God was putting Jonah in the position of somebody who desperately needed mercy. Jonah was able to say, after all this, “Oh, man, I am in the belly of hell. God is expelled from me. Waters are coming into my soul. Weeds are around my head. I am going down. I need mercy.”
“Oh, really, Jonah? I thought you were up here someplace. I thought you were real spiritual.”
The fifth description is in verse 6:
I went down to the bottoms of the mountains;
The earth with her bars closed upon me for ever.
Forever. “I am never getting out of here.” That is what the heathen deserve: “Let them go to hell forever.”
All of a sudden, Jonah is standing in the same place where the heathen are. Some people think that at this point, in Jonah 2:6, Jonah actually died, and then God raised him from the dead again.
I do not know whether that is so. I do not think it is necessary in order to picture the death and resurrection of Christ. Isaac, for example, pictured the death and resurrection of Christ, and he did not literally die.
So I do not think it is necessary. But no one would doubt for a moment, after reading this, that in Jonah’s mind he was as good as dead. Whether he died or not, we do not know for sure, but he was as low as low can be.
You talk about going to the bottom—the roots of the mountains. God brought this man all the way down, down, down, as far as you can go.
In our culture and language, we have words that are Jonah’s idioms: “I am sunk.” “I am in over my head.” “I have reached the bottom.” “I am going down for the third time.”
He has this picture that the bars closed on him forever. Jonah feels like a lost sinner in hell, and God purposely does that.
Verse 7 gives the sixth expression:
When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord.
This is very interesting. The scholars tell us—I do not know Hebrew; I study those who know it and put it into English for me—and they say this is a very interesting expression.
It describes the moment of physical exhaustion that comes to a person when a film passes over the eyes. Literally, it would be, “My spirit folded in on itself.”
That is what he is saying: everything collapsed. It is almost, “I was fainting away, and my whole being collapsed upon itself.”
Those are only some of the agonies. Then add what Carroll Moore put in her poem on Jonah 2, describing him. I think Pinocchio has ruined us. We get this picture of the whale, and there is a little lamp and a light.
This man was in darkness for seventy-two hours—smelly, cramped, in this awful place, in pitch darkness. Who knows the agonies he went through?
But I know this: at the end, God had changed his view about who needs mercy. He was one who needed mercy.
As I suggested, that is why this becomes a picture of our Lord Jesus.
Jonah did not really go to the belly of hell. But your Savior did.
Jonah was not really expelled from the sight of God. But your Savior was.
Jonah actually felt the floods, but they did not touch his soul. But they did for our Lord Jesus.
Jonah was down for three days and felt like the bars were around him forever. In a moment of time, our Lord Jesus suffered what every sinner would ever suffer forever.
Being infinite, He could crush eternity into three hours, which He did. That is your Savior. That is my Savior.
Jonah just felt like everything collapsed. Jesus carried the weight of the world upon Him, and He did collapse.
As Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth. This is all a marvelous, marvelous picture.
At this point, being in the shoes of the heathen, Jonah begins to embrace the grace of God.
Remember, Jonah wrote this after the fact. As he looked back and remembered, he saw himself as God had taught him: he did not deserve the mercy of God.
So much did he not deserve mercy that he did not even ask for it in this prayer. He did not say, “Have mercy on me,” in this prayer.
In fact, there is not one petition in this whole prayer. I read one commentator who said, “If there is no petition, it is not prayer.” What about Hannah? It says Hannah prayed, and there is not a petition in her prayer.
This is a prayer, but he asks for nothing because God has done the deeper work. He does not deserve mercy. He does not even deserve to ask for it.
God had brought him to the place of absolute helplessness and absolute hopelessness, where nothing but grace could deliver him.
If ever a man needed to cry out, “O, visit me with Thy salvation,” here is Jonah in the depths of the sea, at the root of the mountains, in the belly of a fish for seventy-two hours—in darkness, in the smell, weeds all around him, being crushed and folded inside.
He needs God’s salvation. Nobody needs it more than he does.
Notice: he who was so independent at the beginning of the book, who fled from the presence of the Lord, in the belly of this fish now returns to the presence of the Lord.
Verse 4: He changes his focus.
Yet I will look again toward Thy holy temple.
When he turned from the Lord, he turned his eyes away from the Lord and from the holy temple. Now, in this deep, dark place where you cannot see anything, he is talking about these eyes: “I will look again toward Thy holy temple.”
He is coming back into the presence of the Lord. He was so convinced God would hear. Verse 7:
And my prayer came in unto Thee, into Thy holy temple.
That is faith. You talk about someone trusting God in the dark—here is a picture of someone trusting God in the dark.
You say, “Well, Jonah, your prayer has a long way to go. It has to go through the fish, and when it gets out of the fish it has to go through the water, and when it gets out of the water it has to rise all the way to heaven, where God is.”
Did you ever feel like, “My prayer does not reach the ceiling”? It is okay. God is in the room. It does not have to reach the ceiling.
God got down there with him in the fish, and Jonah knows it. Even with all of that around him, on him, and going through him, and with this in his mind—“I deserve nothing. I do not deserve to be delivered”—he turns again to the Lord.
“I remembered the Lord. I turned again to His temple, and my prayer will reach Him.”
Then he crowns God Lord of all. Who threw Jonah into the sea?
You say, “Jonah 1:15. The mariners threw Jonah into the sea.” Not according to this prayer. According to this prayer, verse 3:
For Thou didst cast me into the depth, in the heart of the seas.
He knew who cast him into the sea. Who were the mariners? It was God.
He did not say, “The breakers have come over me. The billows have rolled over me.” He says in verse 3, “Thy billows have rolled over me. Thy breakers have come upon me.” He knows it is the Lord. There is no question that it is the Lord.
Marvel of marvels, this is a prayer of thanksgiving.
But I will sacrifice unto Thee with the voice of thanksgiving;
I will pay that which I have vowed.
Salvation is of the Lord.
What is he thanking God for? Look where he is. Look what he is experiencing.
The psalm ends with shoutings of grace. Grace.
He quotes Psalm 3—actually, it depends on which commentator you look at. He learned the value of memorizing Scripture, because he quoted at least twelve psalms in this prayer. Some say as many as twenty psalms.
The last psalm he quotes was Psalm 3, when David was fleeing from Absalom and fleeing from his past sin.
The message is mercy—the message that there is nothing he can do to help himself. He cannot lift a finger to help himself. He does not need a counselor. He does not need someone to come and talk to him and encourage him. He does not need a Bible verse.
He just says, “Salvation is of the Lord.”
That is great. God does not wait another moment. As soon as he says, “Salvation is of the Lord,” God commands the fish, and the fish vomits him up on dry land.
Recently—you remember, because many of you prayed, and I appreciate that—a little about what we went through with Lillian having food poisoning. It was just a terrible time. From my point of view, I had never seen her that sick.
I did not arrange this; God arranged it. Easter was coming. I was studying Jonah. Lillian got sick. Those three things happened at the same time. I did not arrange that.
I do not want to get gross here, especially since it is going on the tape for the kids. I had never seen vomiting like I saw with Lillian. It was awful.
There was nothing she could do, and there was nothing I could do. At two o’clock in the morning, we were both kneeling at the bathtub. I was trying to help her, and there was nothing left, but it kept coming and coming.
You cannot control vomiting when you have no control. You have to let it go.
I was reading this: the fish vomited Jonah. It could not hold him in.
At the same time, it was Easter, and I was thinking about the resurrection. All of a sudden, the verse came to me from Acts:
Whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not possible that He should be holden of it.
Death could not hold Him. It could not hold Him. The fish vomited Jonah because it was involuntary. It could not hold him anymore.
That is what happens when he says, “Salvation is of the Lord.” He is vomited up, and he stands a new man in a new creation.
A sign. He is identified, but he does not know it yet. He does not understand the theology of it.
He is identified with Christ in His death and in His resurrection. He knows nothing of that. He only knows that he never expected to breathe God’s air again.
Now he is on the land: a new creation, a new man in a new world. He is alive by a life that is not his own—God.
In His marvelous way, God is making a sign—making a sign. That is only the second step, but what a glorious step it is.
Jonah came to the place where he said, “I will give my life for the heathen.” Now, for the first time, he understands: it is all by grace. “I do not deserve anything. I deserve nothing.”
If I am in heaven a million years, outside of Christ I still will not deserve anything. All the brothers and sisters in this room, with all their experience in Christ, still do not deserve anything.
Nobody does. We deserve nothing but the mercy that He gives by grace. It is all from Him. We are on level ground with them.
When God makes a missionary channel, when God creates a sign, He brings us to the place where we understand that all we have is because God gave. It is the goodness of the Lord. It is the mercy of the Lord. We deserve nothing.
God brings us down to death and then up again. Now it is a whole new world, a whole new perspective, and we are alive.
Now we are going to watch, at this time, as God begins chapter 3. Lord willing, we will pick that up tonight. Let us pray.
Father, thank You. Thank You so much that death could not hold the Lord Jesus. Thank You for this shadow of the cross.
Thank You for Your patience in turning us into signs, individually and corporately. Lord, give us eyes to see that salvation is from the Lord, that all we have is undeserved, and it is by Your grace.
Prepare our hearts for the next stage of what it means to be a sign. We ask in Jesus’ name.