Wednesday, 19 June 2024

 


            Jonah 1:17-2:10 Running Into God – 25th April 2021
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In this short chapter we see the experience of Jonah’s spiritual decline as well as his spiritual
renewal. His spiritual decline began when he turned his heart away deliberately / defiantly away from
the Word of God / Remember when the Word of God came to him / he rose and fled from it /
And as it is always the case his turning away from the Word of God led him to turn away from
the presence of God

We can say Jonah’s spiritual decline is seen in his turning away from the Word of God and in
his turning away from the presence of God. Here is a prophet who turned his back on God /
refusing Him. And even preferring death over obedience.
His spiritual decline kept spiraling downward till he came to the point when he couldn’t even
give an answer when he was asked by the sailors “What is your occupation?” He declined to
the point when He could no longer identify himself as a man called by God with a prophetic
calling / How far down has Jonah fallen

And yet, here in this chapter we see the precious attribute of the mercy of God in Jonah’s life.
Jonah may have chosen to defy God but God will sovereignly / mercifully / pursue him in
order to restore him. Right through the Mediterranean Sea and right down into the waters /
and right into the belly of a great fish / God will orchestrate events around him to save him
from any further decline. What will God not do to deliver Jonah / and not just deliver him but
restore him and then reinstate him as a prophet who will go on to preach successfully to an
entire evil nation.

If the first chapter portrayed for us a prophet in his spiritual decline this second chapter
portrays for us a prophet who by the mercy of God is being restored and renewed.
We do not know for sure if Jonah prayed when the sea captain urged him to. But now
incarcerated in the belly of the fish he humbles himself and he prays.
Notice v.1 says “Jonah prayed to the Lord his God”. Jonah prayed not just to the God of
creation or the God of providence. He prayed to God as his covenant God and Father. And he
comes to see that he is receiving nothing short of the chastisement of God.
And even though it was the sailors who cast him into the sea he says in v.3 “You cast me into
the deep, into the heart of the seas.”
Jonah knew it was God’s doing
He refers to the waves as “your waves” and the billows as “your billows passed over me”
Jonah sees the hand of God in his dire straits.

Sinclair Ferguson: “He was virtually drowned under the mighty hand of God”
The language he used is the language of death. All the terms used are significant.
“You hurled me into the deep” “the deep” (2:3) a return to the primitive chaos; the void
“into the very heart of the sea” – water in the OT – signifies swallowing up and death
“the currents swirled about me”
“your waves and breakers swept over me”
– gives the impression that Jonah is being wrapped in grave clothes
“the engulfing waters threatened me”
“the deep surrounded me”
“seaweed was wrapped around my head”
Then he said “I am driven away from your sight” “cast out from thy presence”
And then most acutely / he said “out of the belly of Sheol I cried”
Sheol – the realm of the dead – situated in the mountains and is closed off by a gate with bars
and by bolts / and he said he laid there at “to the roots of the mountain”
“I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever”
Bryan Estelle: “Sheol refers to a place of divine judgment, a curse often wished on the
ungodly.” Jonah senses he’s in Sheol / he senses a curse of death upon him
Kevin Youngblood sums this up well / He says: “Taken together these [words] give the
impression that Jonah is being wrapped in grave clothes and buried in a tomb.” He knew he
was a dying man

Of course he has all these physical threats to deal with but what he feels most anguishing is his
spiritual alienation from God: He says
“I am driven away from your sight”
He feels he has been banished from the presence of God
But as always there is grace in the midst of chastisement. And here we see a shadow of the
gospel
For Jonah is here represented as a type of Christ. The writer of the Book is pointing us forward
to Jesus.

We see the image of the atonement when he was flung overboard to save the sailor / and we
see Jesus’ resurrection from the dead when he was vomited out of the mouth of the great fish.
Now you and I would be a little hesitant to make an analogy between the
retching of the great fish and the resurrection of Jesus but that didn’t stop a number of
Church fathers like Augustine and Cyril of Jerusalem from making an explicit connection
between the two.
Our Lord Himself spoke of Jonah as a sign. He said:
“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”
Matthew 12:39,40)
It’s amazing how many times this little prayer points to Christ
We see it again V.5 “The waters closed in over me to take my life”
“the waters” metaphorically, speaks of afflictions and troubles.
The prophet is here in deep affliction and sorrow / But again this is pointing to Christ. In his
last hours our Lord Jesus is said to be “exceeding sorrowful” “even unto death” Matthew
26:38.

But Jonah tells us of his experience of being delivered from death to life. He says in v.6 “yet
you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God”
Jonah on his own could do virtually nothing/zilch to deliver himself / Had it not for God
delivering him, he would have laid and rotted there. But when deliverance seemed impossible,
Jonah sees the Lord delivering him from the grave. Truly / outside of God / there is no hope.
Here again, Jonah serves as a type of Christ. Though Christ laid in the grave, He was not left
there to see corruption, Psalm 16:10 “For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your
holy one see corruption.”

He comes to the point when he begins to long for the temple of God
“I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ v.4”
As he is sinking down / the Temple flashed across his mind / He is way down there in the
depth of the Mediterranean Sea and yet now he longs for the holy Temple. The Temple was a
place very dear to Jonah. He would go there every Sabbath and worship the Lord but that’s
gone now. He now hopes that he would be spared alive to worship God in Jerusalem.
As Sinclair Ferguson says “He is now able to say that he knows that in God’s right hand there
are pleasures for evermore!”

But why is he looking to the temple?
Keller makes the point that the reason Jonah looks to the temple is because
in the temple there was the mercy seat.
The Mercy-seat was a solid slab of pure gold which formed the lid of the Ark of the Covenant.
And underneath it – was written the Law – the Ten Commandments – the Law that demands
a life of wholeness and holiness
But the vital thing is this: On the mercy seat blood was sprinkled.

Now / of course Jonah didn’t have a full understanding of the atoning work of God
like we now do because we live on this side of the Cross.
But / he knew in some shadowy way / that in spite of his rebellious ways there / on that mercy
seat in the temple / God will show grace in spite of his failure / And God will show grace
because he receives the payment of a Substitute.

Jonah comes to see that although he has fallen short / over top of the mercy seat / blood was
sprinkled / and a Substitute will cover up for his failings
This is a huge turn-around for Jonah / He stops dwelling on his disobedience
on his depravity / He begins to pin his hope in the Substitute / He comes to see that his only
hope is in the Substitute.

By the way / little did Jonah know as we now do / that he Himself will become a picture of the
one who can pay our punishment. When Jonah was thrown into the ocean, the sea ceased from
its raging, and the sailors were saved.” Little did he know that he will prefigure Jesus Christ
Who thrown into the storm of God’s wrath and justice, so that we might be saved. For the
storm of God’s wrath has now stopped its raging for those who confess their sins repent of
them / and trust in Him.

It would be easy for us to think that Jonah is a bit late in remembering God.
Yet he said “I remembered the Lord” (v.7)
Jonah remembers God’s covenant promises. He recalls God’s former mercies, lovingkindness,
grace and mercy. He remembers God’s readiness to forgive; and His willingness to take back
the backsliders. He remembers a God Who loves graciously and tenderly and compassionately.
And remembering the Lord, Jonah prays. Calvin says:
“We then see that Jonah so remembered his God, that by faith he knew
that [God] would be favorably disposed [propitious] to him; and hence was his disposition to
pray.”
But notice here that Jonah’s confidence in God’s mercy is growing stronger
Even though he is still confined in the belly of the fish / he sees his prayer has having reached
the Temple / and in fact has now been answered

He says confidently / “and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.”
And he realises that it is only through the blood of the eternal covenant
that his cry could have reached the presence of God / and heeded

This is almost an echo of Psalm 3:4
“I cried aloud to the LORD, and he answered me from his holy hill”
But Jonah not only comes to himself. He puts his finger on the cause of his
problem. He comes to see that idolatry lies at the heart of his problem
He cries out in V.8 “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. “
Now / who does Jonah think is idolatrous?

Firstly / the Ninevites! – he thought of them as those filthy idol-worshipers he couldn’t care
less about them before / but now he comes to see that grace is as much theirs / as it is his / and
he’s now concerned that they not be forfeited the hope of steadfast love.
But secondly / Jonah has now been awakened to realise that he too has been idolatrous / that
he has an idol lodged in his own heart. In the context of the book it would look like his idol is
his exaggerated patriotism to Israel. He didn’t realise it before but his nationality has become
more important to him than his God / he has become more a patriot than a prophet. And he
has been bowing to that rather than to the will of God.

That was his functioning saviour, his self-righteousness – that he belonged to a more superior race 
than the dirty stinking Ninevites
And he warns us “Those who pay regards to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love”
He’s now grateful for this realization / And with a deep sense of gratefulness he says “With the
voice of thanksgiving

I will sacrifice to you – what I have vowed I will pay.” V.9
Remember how that when the sailors were saved / they made vows to God Here Jonah ends
his prayer saying to God “what I have vowed I will pay” He realises with sorrow that he didn’t
make good on his prophetic vow. He’s now filled with a new resolve / He will now go back, put
his prophetic cloak on, pick up his marching orders and head off for Nineveh.
Finally he declares: “Salvation belongs to the LORD!”

Until you put your faith in the LORD, you can have absolutely no hope of salvation. He is the
only One whose mercy you and I need. He is the only one who can save, to the uttermost.
Every and all deliverance from danger and death is from God.
If you think of yourself as unworthy of Him then you still don’t get it. Because He is your
worthiness. If you have a desire for God, that desire has come from Him / If you have a sense
of your own sin that is grace. “Salvation comes from the LORD”

And with that affirmation / “And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out
upon the dry land” (v.10)
The God who had pursued after him in the wind and prepared the great fish to consume him
now commands the fish to vomit him out on dry land.
He is now chastised and ready to heed the Word of the Lord.

I want to tie all this up with a few points
First / I want us to look closer at Jonah’s cry in the belly of the fish.
It is a cry of anguish in the face of abandonment.
800 years after Jonah prayed this prayer / it echoed back in what is called the Cry of
Dereliction “My God My God Why have you forsaken me?” It is the anguishing cry and it came
from our Lord in His darkest hour on the cross.
Bryan Estelle writes: “The expression of grief voiced by the strained human poem of Jonah /
finds its ultimate echo in Christ’s cry from the cross.”

Estelle says for Christ this forsakenness had at least three aspects:

One / abandonment by God meant withdrawal of all creaturely comforts – It will mean that for
Christ the sun was gone / only darkness was left / there was no angel to support him in his
darkest hour / His honour had been put to shame.

Two / the abandonment of Christ was an active wrath exerted upon him by his heavenly Father
/ God the Father was sending all the torments of hell against the Son

Third / This was a veritable (total) descent into hell for our Saviour. Christ had to be identified
with mankind in every respect, including the full experience of death itself / this was hell / He
went through hell

When you consider those three points / you will come to see that One greater than Jonah had
to come because Jonah isn’t our ultimate deliverer
Jonah had no power over death / He had to be saved from the watery grave
Jesus on the other hand affirmatively tells us “I have the keys of Death and Hades” / And He
says “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay
it down, and I have
authority to take it up again.”

Jonah did not actually have to die
Jesus had to / to save us from our sins
Jonah’s hell was his own personal existential experience of Sheol
Jesus as the Creed says “descended into hell”
The crux is this: Jonah was never truly abandoned by God / Jesus was
See / there was a storm fiercer and more deadly than all the storms put together

It is the storm of God’s wrath
In that storm / Jesus was truly banished from God’s sight / and forsaken
He didn’t just hit the bottom of the sea / He hit the bottom of the hell
What rammed into him wave after wave / were not the waves of water
but the waves of God’s eternal justice

But it is only because Jesus was thrown into the storm that we can now live
So that today when you’re buffeted by the storms
there’s love and grace and mercy in the heart of those storms
And they are meant for your good / to get your boat around
But the critical thing to note is this
The reason why there is love and grace and mercy in the heart of your storms
is because there is no love and grace and mercy in the heart of the storm
God sent upon His own Son

Today / if you are a Christian / you will still need to face some fierce storms
but the one ultimate deadly storm that could’ve have taken you out
for all eternity has been quelled because Jesus the innocent One was thrown in there for you.

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