Sermon
The Gospel According to Jonah
Chapter
2 of 4 in the OT book of Jonah.
We naturally think of the NT as the home
of The Gospel, and rightly so. But, as you can tell from the title of today’s
talk, there are certainly clear presentations of The Gospel in the Old
Testament too… and this prayer of Jonah’s in Chapter 2 is among the most clear
presentations we might find.
It is good for us, whether we
are seasoned saints or beginning believers (even disgruntled
disciples), to continually remember and rehearse the simple presentation of The
Gospel:
·
God’s Good News that He loves us
·
That despite our poverty, He
makes us rich
·
Even in our bumbling and
disobedience, He leads us and cares for us
So with eyes looking for The
Gospel, I want us to rehearse this prayer, verse by verse
In
verse 2, at the beginning of his prayer, Jonah states the obvious, he is in distress. Jonah has become
fish food.
Dr. Anderson gave us a detailed
account, last week, regarding precisely how Jonah got into this predicament. We
can quickly recount how he got to this distress:
·
God called Jonah to
·
Jonah ran the other way –
instead of heading 500 miles to the west, Jonah set out for Tarshish, 2,500
miles (5X) to the east.
·
A terrible storm arose in the
Jonah was certainly in distress…
and in his distress he called to the Lord. The text maybe should have said that
he finally
called to the Lord.
These are the first words
recorded that Jonah spoke to God! The sailors talked to God… but Jonah didn’t
appear to utter a word to God until now… until this distress.
We are left to wonder what
if
·
What if Jonah would have prayed
in the beginning instead of running the other way?
·
What if Jonah would have prayed
on the ship, during the storm? Would he have saved the sailors there trouble,
and goods? Would he have saved himself from this distress?
What might be surprising here,
even remarkable, is that when Jonah
finally did call to the Lord, the Lord answered Jonah. “From the depths of the
grave,” from deaths door itself, God listened to Jonah’s cry.
The Gospel truth in verse 2 is
simply this: No matter where we are, or what we have done to get there:
·
God hears,
·
God listens,
·
God answers.
In
verse 3 Jonah acknowledges that the storm, and the sailors’ action to toss
Jonah into it, were demonstrations of God’s righteous judgment on Jonah’s
disobedience.
In the natural, this was a death
sentence; there was no way that Jonah would survive the storm. He was destined
to drown and then would quite likely be eaten by the creatures of the sea… not
miraculously swallowed whole by a great
fish, but eaten, like most things are eaten, one manageable bite at a time.
The Gospel truth in verse 3: disobedience
comes with a price.
For the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23)
In
verse 4 we see a bit of irony, don’t we?
Let’s not forget what got Jonah
into this mess; Jonah thought he could run from God. Jonah thought he might
somehow escape from God’s sight. But now, Jonah has an entirely different tone.
Note here that Jonah says “I have been banished.” He couldn’t escape God’s
sight; but maybe now he deserves to be banished. But he knows that God is
merciful; he knows that he will see the holy temple… which is to say that he
will see God.
The Gospel truth in verse 4: we
are never beyond the sight, and care, of our loving God.
Verse
5 continues to drive the point home
that Jonah was sunk, in a hopeless situation with the deep waters surrounding
him. Jonah was hung, with seaweed wrapped around his head. In the natural,
there was no hope.
This is also a good time to
point out that Jonah’s prayer is almost entirely pulled from various parts of
the Psalms. This verse, for example, closely resembles the opening verses of
Psalm 69.
When Jonah was in trouble, he
went to his Bible knowledge. Now, it could very well be that Jonah’s actual
thoughts and prayers weren’t quite as polished or succinct when this was
actually happening. I join Dr. Anderson in believing that this literally
happened; Jonah was in the belly of a great fish. He was in there for three
days and three nights… and it wasn’t like Pinocchio and Gephetto inside of
Monstro on the Disney classic (floating around with other ship wrecks, able to
light a lantern). I doubt it was all that expansive, or all that comfortable. I
don’t think Jonah had opportunity to roll out his scrolls on a desk and pen a
well crafted prayer. Here’s what I do think happened… when Jonah finally came
to his senses and began to call out to the Lord, he pulled from his memory. He
recited God’s word; he prayed the Scripture that was hidden in his heart. Jonah
knew that the best words to turn to in this distress weren’t his own words… but
God’s word. And when this was all over and it came time to write this all down,
he was able to go back to God’s word again to give us this testimony that has
stood throughout the ages.
The Gospel truth in verse 5:
God’s word, the Bible, is reliable, and useful, especially in times of trouble.
Here
in verse 6 we begin to see the answer that Jonah, and each of us who reads
this, longs for. Jonah realized that there was no place lower to go… but God
brought Jonah’s life up from the pit.
The plain Gospel truth in verse
6 is simply that it is God who brings life out of the pit.
In
verse 7 Jonah says that he remembered the Lord. Now, really, there was no way
that he could have forgotten about the Lord. God had invaded Jonah’s
circumstances in the most blatant way. But what Jonah must have remembered was
that God cared for Jonah, that if Jonah would repent, God would respond. Jonah
remembered who God was; he remembered God’s character… and he prayed.
The Gospel truth in verse 7
mirrors verse 2: God hears our prayer.
In
verse 8 Jonah makes a theological
statement.
To himself he must have been
ashamed at the idol to which he did cling; it seems that Jonah’s idol was
himself. Jonah did cling to his own pride, safety, and sense of righteousness.
Jonah did cling to his own will and forfeited the grace that was his.
It is also worthwhile to place
this in a nationalistic context.
Jonah wasn’t the only prophet active in
Could this be another reason
that Jonah so resisted God’s direction to preach in
The Gospel truth in verse 8: We
have to let go of our own worthless idols to enjoy God’s gift of grace.
And
finally, verse 9.
Jonah doesn’t really have
anything to give. No animal to sacrifice, no offering to give.
So he gives his best, a song and
a vow.
Jonah sacrifices with a song of
thanksgiving. And he determines to serve God with his vow.
And he declares the most
profound Gospel truth of all: Salvation comes from the Lord! We offer our
praise and thanks, we determine to serve the Lord as best we can, but nothing
we have is, on its own, effective for salvation. Salvation comes from the Lord!
Praise God that He is our
Salvation. We who are here today, we who believe and have found God to be our
Salvation, understand that we don’t bring anything that merits salvation. We
can say that we are saved, that we are God’s for eternity, only because of our
trust in God… specifically our trust in Jesus as our Savior. We believe that
His sacrifice paid the price for our wrong. We believe that we can enjoy God,
now and forever, because we have placed our trust in Jesus.
So
what? We’ve walked through this great passage, understood a bit of what it
means, and now we have to ask ourselves, “What do we do with this?”
We certainly can apply each of
these Gospel truths to our lives and circumstances:
·
God hears us when we call out to
Him
·
There are consequences for
disobedience, wages for sin
·
We cannot escape His sight or
care
·
His Word is effective, especially
when we are in distress
·
He can reach us, no matter how
far down we have sunk
·
That even when our circumstances
are difficult, we can trust God’s character
·
We must release our grip on
“worthless idols” and receive the grace that is ours
·
And Salvation comes from the
Lord
But what more can we draw if we
step back just a bit. What if we step back from the verse-by-verse approach and
try to pick up something from the big picture… but that might take that last
verse in chapter 2…
It
is a little gross… OK it is really gross.
Just think of it. Take out
Jonah’s name and put in your own. Don’t say it out loud! Can we all agree that
we never want to have anything like that written about us?
The real point here is that God
saved Jonah with the fish!
Yup… it is really gross, but in
this disgusting ordeal, Jonah was saved from certain death. He wasn’t just sneezed
back out into the water; he was delivered to dry land.
In spite of Jonah’s
disobedience, his running from God’s call, his endangerment of a whole crew of
sailors, God saved Jonah.
And not just his body, but his
mind and spirit. Jonah came to his senses through this ordeal. That brings us
to another great point… it is fairly common that God speaks to us through our
misery. Right? I doubt I’m the only one that has to get miserable from time to
time before I wake up to God’s direction. I wish I would immediately sense his
direction, and realize that whatever it is that he is leading me to is the best
destination… but I usually have to get a little miserable first before I’ll
move.
It is like the proverbial eagle
that takes out the soft stuff from the nest, leaving the sharp twigs and
branches exposed so that the eaglets will finally get out of the nest, learn to
fly, and get on with life.
God doesn’t waste pain; God will
use momentary misery to get us moving in the right direction.
So
today, let’s take heart, and courage, and hope… and purpose to enjoy the grace
that is ours: God’s grace. Let’s choose his grace over whatever it is that we
might cling to instead. Let’s apply these Gospel truths to our lives again, a
new.