JONAH.
#6 – The Lord teaches Jonah that salvation is of the Lord’s grace.
Jonah 1: 17 – 2: 10
Sermon by:
Rev. E. Moerdyk
PUBLISHED BY THE
PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE
OF THE
FREE REFORMED CHURCHES OF NORTH AMERICA.
(April 2006)
(No 6 of a series of 10)
LITURGY:
Votum
Psalter 403
Law of God
Psalter 324
Scripture Reading: Jonah 1: 17 – 2: 10
Text Jonah 1: 17 – 2: 10
Congregational Prayer
Offerings
Psalter 114: 1, 5, 6, 7, 10
Sermon
Psalter 310: 1, 2, 4, 6
Thanksgiving Prayer
Psalter 111: 1, 2, 3
Doxology: Psalter 316
Beloved congregation,
When Jonah got onto the ship to go to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, he bought himself a one-way ticket. But he got more than he bargained for. Because God was determined to make it a two-way ticket. Jonah the willing sinner ran into the miracle of an unwilling God – a God unwilling to let him follow his own sinful heart to destruction. God in love uses holy violence to protect Jonah from Jonah’s own sinful, crooked, stubborn nature. God plucked Jonah bodily and hurled him into the sea, to be brought back to shore by an underwater taxi. This is the great miracle of conversion.
This is not just how God worked in the life of Jonah. It is really what He must do in the life of every sinner who becomes His child. Not just once, but over and over again, in daily repentance. Each call to humble yourself, and to repent of your sins, is evidence of God’s continual work to turn the one way tickets we buy when we sin into two way tickets back to his favor and presence, through His sovereign grace.
This being the case, you can understand that when Jonah realized what the Lord was teaching him, he could only say one thing at the end of his prayer – salvation is of the Lord. That is the theme of the whole book if you will. It is certainly the theme of this chapter. It will be the theme of the preaching today. It is a theme that is as we will see full of the Lord Jesus Christ in surprising ways.
Theme: The Lord teaches Jonah that salvation is of the Lord’s grace
I. God’s discipline underlines his need of grace
II. God’s Spirit shows him the way of grace
III. God’s deliverance makes him a trophy of grace
Congregation, the first verse of Jonah 2 tells us that God finally has Jonah where He wants Him – on his knees. This has been the aim of God’s discipline all along. When God aims, He always hits the mark. We have seen the salvos of God’s heavy artillery barrage that brought Jonah to this point, so I won’t repeat all that now. What we need to zero in on now is on what happens in the belly of the fish. Why of all the possible ways open to Him, does the living God choose the belly of a fish? He could have kept the boat from ever leaving Joppa. He could have carried Jonah back in the claws of three or four eagles. He could have had Jonah tell the mariners to turn around and head back for Joppa. But God choose to do it in the depths of the sea. God never does anything by accident. God did this, because it was the best possible way for Him to convert Jonah, and to teach us about the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The first thing we need to see is that God needs to teach Jonah how badly Jonah needs grace himself. Jonah had a prejudice against bringing the gospel to heathen Nineveh. He thought that he and covenant Israel were better than they. He thought they were unworthy of hearing the gospel, while Israel had a certain right to the gospel. In order to use Jonah, God had to show him that he Jonah, could only live by sheer grace from God. God shows Jonah that he is a backslider, a chief sinner, who needs pure grace himself. The point is surely this: if he is a sinner who only is where he is in spite of himself and because of sovereign grace, how can he be silent about the gospel of grace to other equally deserving sinners? God makes it impossible for Jonah to speak to Nineveh from a pedestal, but as one beggar pointing another beggar to bread.
To drive the point home to Jonah, God emphasizes what Jonah deserves and can expect from God’s justice. The Lord sets up His pursuit like a court case. Have you noticed this? There is what we would call in legal language, the indictment. God arrests Jonah with a powerful storm at sea that makes Jonah feel like a little speck, and like a sinful little speck before the judge of all the earth. The Lord as prosecuting attorney uses the sailors to make the accusation: what have you done? The Lord forces the confession of Jonah – guilty as charged. Then comes the sentencing part of the trial – death. Throw him into the sea! Justice must be served. This masterful pursuit of justice underlines that Jonah is a sinner without any rights before God. There sinks Jonah. He describes this quite graphically in the words of his prayer. He says of the Lord in verse 3 “Thou hast cast me into the deep, all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.”
Then suddenly when Jonah is at the point of death, something happens. A huge fish has been prepared by the Lord, and is ready to swallow Jonah. We won’t spend much time this morning on the scientific possibility of this. But a few comments might be helpful – not because we doubt God’s power or truthfulness, but to put to rest some of the slander that enemies of the scriptures vent. Is this really possible?
There are several other accounts of people surviving being in a fish for a few days. In 1758, a sailor fell over board in the Mediterranean Sea, and was swallowed by what is called a sea dog, a large shark. This particular shark does not tear its food with its teeth, but swallows it whole. When the crew fired a canon at the shark a little later, it was scared into spitting the man back out. He was fine. In 1891 a whaling ship put out its smaller boats to pursue a large sperm whale. During the chase, one sailor fell overboard and was not found. The whale was killed and attached to the boat. A day or so later, when they hoisted the intestine of the fish on deck, they found the man inside after cutting it open. He had passed out. He later said he passed out not from lack of air – there is air in a fish stomach, because the fish needs it to be able to swim. The man passed out because of he panicked at the thought that the fish would get away, and he would die.
Back to Jonah. Sometimes people get so caught up in what is happening in the fish, that they forget what is happening in Jonah, which really is the greater miracle. What message is God sending to Jonah in the belly of the fish? Well, remember that Jonah was running from the presence of the Lord? God gives him a taste of what it would be like to really get away from the presence of the Lord. That is what hell is – to be without God, without hope, and without the good things God has made. It is dark in the fish – he can’t see a thing. It is uncomfortably hot in the fish – about 104 degrees Fahrenheit. It stinks. The stomach of the fish is full of half digested food. Things are hopeless – no human being can help Jonah at the bottom of the sea. No one knows where he is, and even if they did, they can’t rescue him. That is why Jonah says in verse 6, the bars closed behind me. You get the idea of a prison cell in which the door is welded shut. Jonah is in solitary confinement – no one can sympathize with him, or even share the horror with him.
What terror must have gripped his heart when he found himself coughing the salt water out of his lungs in the belly of a fish? Is it any wonder that verse 7 says Jonah’s soul fainted within him? You could translate, Jonah was overwhelmed. The terrors of the deep, the knowledge that he is where he is not by accident, but because he is a guilty sinner, bring Jonah to desperation. What is God’s point? If Jonah is to be saved, God alone can help Him. Only the grace of God can get him out of this prison. Salvation, if it is to happen, must come exclusively from the Lord. The Lord uses Jonah’s helplessness to show him his need for grace.
Have you ever reached this conclusion about your own salvation? You probably will not get a taste of hell in the belly of a fish. But does your conscience accuse you of being a sinner? Has God through the preaching of His word been shaking you, and making you feel how much of a sinner you are? Has God confronted you with yourself, so much so, that you can’t hold your head high any longer. That you say – all my righteousness is like filthy rags. Maybe you have an old white shirt that you use to wipe your shoes after you polish them. Would you use this rag to wipe your children’s face with? Do you say in your heart – that is what my best acts look like. I have nothing to offer God that is free from the stains of sin. Lord, if thou shouldst mark our sins, who then could stand? I do not have a single reason to give God why I have a right to any of his blessings.
Maybe someone who sits here says – no. Take a look at Jonah in the belly of the fish. He calls it in verse 2 the belly of hell. God says to those who are unconverted this morning, you are on your way to this kind of a hell. Only the reality of hell is far worse than what Jonah tasted. Jonah got a taste of it – you will get the full dreadful reality. God will shut you in a prison out of which there is no escape, and no comfort, and no hope. Unless you repent of your sins and pray as Jonah does for grace, and become God centered.
But maybe someone says – accused by God’s justice. That is exactly how I feel. How can I even pray then? How did Jonah get to the point of prayer? There can only be one answer –grace.
II. God’s Spirit shows him the way of grace
Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God from out of the fish’s belly. Really, what else can he do? God has taken every other option away from him. Right now my wife and I are trying to teach our daughter to pray for her food. When you ask her to fold her hands, she often squirms and tries to hide her hands under the high chair tray. So one of us has to grab her hands, and fold them in our hands, and pray with her. God does this in the fish’s belly. He leaves Jonah with no other way than to fold his hands, and bow his head.
What breaks Jonah’s heart however is not just his helplessness, but God’s grace. Because though he is in the depths of the sea, beyond all human hope, and though it is impossible for any human hand to save him, it is not impossible for God. Verse 7 tells us – when my soul fainted within me, I remembered the LORD. What does this mean? Jonah certainly remembered his God when he was hanging on to the sides of the ship for dear life in the storm. Did he not say to the sailors, I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land? What Jonah remembers now is that this God is the LORD – Yahweh, the God who makes and keeps covenant with sinners. Jonah remembers the Lord, the God who forgives sinners, and who is plenteous in mercy. Jonah runs for refuge to a gracious God. From out the depths, Jonah’s prayer ascends to God.
This means that the Spirit of the Lord is using the discipline to soften Jonah’s heart, and to make him act again like a child of his father. Sometimes your child has a stubborn streak that can only be broken with painful discipline. When you do this, the tears well up in the eyes of your child, and she wants to give you a hug, to be reassured that you still love her. If a stranger would discipline her, she would run away from you. But when her father or mother smacks her hand, she looks for comfort from the very same person who disciplined her. Isn’t this proof of being a child? The Spirit of God is working in Jonah, so that Jonah runs to the same God who has had to discipline him to get his attention. That is why verse 1 says Jonah prayed to the Lord, HIS God. There in the depths of the sea, the heart of Jonah becomes soft, and he prays.
Does the Spirit of God bring you to this point too? The point where your hands are folded, your heart tender, and you go to the same God who has pointed out your sins, for comfort and for mercy? Do you remember the Lord when you are convicted of sin? Did you say to yourself – in spite of all that I have been guilty of, He is still the Lord. He is still my God. Isn’t this one of the marks of being a child? Isn’t this proof of sonship?
Jonah tells us in his prayer what the key was that gave him reason to dare to hope that his prayer was heard, and that God would be gracious to him again. Look at verse 4 – then I said, I am cast out of Thy sight. Yet I will look again toward Thy holy temple. Vs 7 – when my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came in unto thee, into thy holy temple! Why the temple? Because Jonah remembers that the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land has revealed himself particularly and chiefly in the temple as a God who delights in mercy. There stands the altar – not because Israel bargained with God until God was willing to accept it. But because God insisted that Israel have an altar. God reveals himself on the altar as a God whose holy anger can be appeased and satisfied. This is proof that God forgives sinners. So by faith Jonah looks towards the temple, from the depths of the sea, and puts his trust in Jehovah’s mercy.
How much greater reason do we who live in the New Testament have? How the convicted sinner should rush to Christ, who is the temple, who is living proof that God delights in grace for sinners? How the cross of Christ should assure the afflicted hearts of the contrite that God delights in grace. Jonah got a mouthful of salt water, and the billows of God’s wrath tumbled over him. Christ got more than a mouth full of salt water. He had to drink the cup of God’s wrath down to the last drop. He has done so, and God is satisfied.