Running Rebel (Part Six): The Recounting

Transcript

JROT 23
1/7/2024
Running Rebel (Part Six): The Recounting
Jonah 2:1-10
Jesse Randolph

Well, after a long hiatus we are finally back in the book of Jonah on Sunday evenings. I looked back on this and the last time we were in this book Thanksgiving was still on the horizon. The Huskers were 5-3 and a lock for a bowl game. Jonah had been thrown into the sea. That was where we left off. He’d been swallowed by a great fish as Jonah 1:17 tells us. He “was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.” Well, I’m excited to finally turn our attention back to this powerful little book this evening to get back into it, to gain some momentum and to eventually complete our study of the book.

Now, because we’ve been out of this book for so long, it has actually been multiple months now I do think it would be wise to do a quick review of some of the territory we’ve covered so far. What we’ve seen, and you can track along with me here in Jonah chapter 1, that Jonah was this prophet of Yahweh and specifically, was a prophet to the ten northern tribes of Israel, he was on the run. That’s what I’ve laid out for you so far as we’ve worked through this text. Hence the title of this sermon series, “Running Rebel.” Jonah was told to go to Nineveh, this major city, this powerful city, in pagan Assyria. God had given Jonah the task of going to that city and to Assyria to preach against the paganism in that part of the world. We see Yahweh’s command to Jonah there in Jonah 1:2 where He says, “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.” But Jonah, we know didn’t go to Nineveh. Rather he left his native town of Gath-Hepher and instead went down to Joppa, a port town where he boarded a ship to Tarshish which was about as far from Nineveh as one could get in this time and this age. Tarshish and Nineveh, to give you a point of reference, were about as far away from each other as Lincoln, Nebraska is from Venezuela. That’s how far Jonah wanted to get from his original command and from God ultimately. Jonah boards the ship for Tarshish and after the ship disembarks the Lord threw, He tossed, we see the word hurled there in verse 4, “a great wind on the sea.” That wind in turn caused this great storm to fall upon on the sea and the ship on which Jonah was a passenger it says, “was about to break up.” We knew this was some sort of cargo ship and Jonah wasn’t the only person on the ship. Rather the ship had at least a captain and we know that there were some pagan sailors on this ship that reported to that captain. These mariners who surely had seen their share of nasty storms in their years were in this state of panic as this storm came upon this ship. They are pictured here in Jonah 1:5 as crying out to their gods and then they are pictured as throwing their cargo overboard to basically save themselves and to save the ship. In the case of the captain, he goes down into the hold of the ship, verse 5 we see, and he finds Jonah there sound asleep. In fact, in a Then deep sleep. in verse 6, this pagan sea captain is described as urging Jonah to wake up. Look there at verse 6. He says, “Get up, call on your god. Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish.”

Meanwhile, above deck the sailors had cast lots to see who might among them might be responsible for bringing this storm upon the ship. As we saw there at the end of verse 7, it says “the lot fell on Jonah.” Well, naturally, in this day and age or in this time that would have piqued the sailors’ curiosity because this violent storm had suddenly come upon them. They had had to resort to throwing their precious cargo overboard. The ship they were on was threatening to break apart. Meaning their ship, which was their source livelihood, was about to go out of commission and their lives now are in danger. So, they asked this flurry of questions in verse 8. Which can essentially be boiled down to who are you? This is directed at Jonah and where are you from? In verse 9 the prophet answers. He says, “I am a Hebrew,” and not only that he says, “and I fear the LORD God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.” Well, to this point in the narrative Jonah certainly wasn’t acting like he feared “the LORD God of heaven.” But what the sailors heard was that this man’s “God” was Yahweh. A God they surely had heard of by then and they were surely to some degree acquainted with in light of all His victories on behalf of the people of Israel. What they heard was that this man’s God had “made the sea.” The very sea from which this violent storm had been birthed. What they heard was that this man’s God had made “the dry land.” The very land they so desperately wanted to get back to. They asked Jonah this series of questions. First, in verse 10, they asked “How could you do this?” The sense here was "how could you bring this calamity upon us?” "Why would you do such a thing”? In verse 11, they say, “What should we do so that the sea may become calm for us?” They are asking, what can we do to calm these waves down? "How do we still the storm?” Then Jonah in verse 12 gives them a solution. He says, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea.”

As I attempted to explain to you the last couple of times, we’ve been in this book I do not believe this is the humble act of self-sacrifice that it might first appear to be. This I don’t believe is Jonah falling on his sword or repenting or typifying the future atoning death of Jesus on the cross. Rather, this instead is an example of Jonah doing things he was customarily doing Jonah’s way instead of doing things God’s way. Rather than asking the captain of the ship, this is what repentance would have looked like in this scenario, to turn back to Joppa so that he could carry out the mission God had given him to preach to the Assyrians, to preach to the Ninevites, Jonah instead asked to be thrown into the sea. In other words, Jonah was expressing here that he would rather die than act in accordance with God’s will and to obey God’s commands. He was expressing that he would rather drown in those waves than do the will of God. I think you could even extend it to say he was communicating that he would rather see those Ninevites perish than preach to them.

In verse 13 though we see that the sailors did not heed Jonah’s requests. Instead, it says, they “rowed desperately” to return to land. They were furiously, frantically digging into those waves to get Jonah back to dry land. But despite their efforts, we see in verse 13, they could not. It says, “for the sea was becoming even stormier against them.” Here’s the final development of the narrative in chapter 1, which is where we ended last time. In verse 17 of course would be the one we are all most familiar with coming into this series. Look at Jonah 1:14-17. After being unable to get him back to dry land it says, “Then they called on the LORD and said, ‘We earnestly pray, O LORD, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life and do not put innocent blood on us; for You, O LORD, have done as You have pleased.’ So, they picked up Jonah, threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped its raging. Then the men feared the LORD greatly, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows. And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.”

Well, that catches us up. That brings us to the front door of the text that we’ll be in this evening where we’re going to encounter the next development in this narrative in Jonah chapter 2, and you heard it said earlier, we’re going to try to, attempt to cover the entirety of Jonah chapter 2 tonight. We’re not doing that because I feel like there’s a need to play catch-up after these weeks off. I’m sure we could break down and dissect each one of these words laboriously. But I’m doing this as one section because this is a single thought and development in the narrative, and I do think it’s best to take it as one block in one fell swoop.

Here’s Jonah chapter 2. I’ll read it first then we’ll go into it word by word, verse by verse. God’s Word reads, “Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the stomach of the fish, and he said, I called out of my distress to the LORD, and He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; You heard my voice. For You had cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me. All Your breakers and billows passed over me. So, I said, I have been expelled from Your sight. Nevertheless, I will look again toward Your holy temple. Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me, weeds were wrapped around my head. I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever, but You have brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God. While I was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to You, into Your holy temple. Those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness, but I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation is from the LORD.” Verse 10, “Then the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land.”

What I’ve just read to you and what we’ll be working through tonight is a real turning point in the book of Jonah. You know everything we’ve seen in this book so far has portrayed this sad, downward arc of Jonah and his life. Jonah has been portrayed so far as this privileged, yet rebellious, prophet of the Lord. As we’ve just gone through, the entirety of the first chapter of the book that bears his name portrays this real downward plunge that Jonah was on. He was a disobedient prophet. He was a reckless handler of his many distinct spiritual privileges. He was an awful witness to the pagan sailors the Lord had placed him around. Now as he finds himself thrown into the sea; he’s finding himself being swallowed up by a great fish.

As we turn now to chapter 2 here, we see this second act of this divine drama start to unfold. We start to see Jonah’s eyes opened, at least in some ways, and of all places, the pit of the stomach of a fish. Like chapter 1, chapter 2 here is couched in narrative. We see that in verse 1 and verse 10. Those are clearly narrative statements. Then sandwiched between the narrative in verses 2 through 9, is a prayer. The title of this evening’s message is “The Recounting.” I’ve given this sermon that title because what I believe is happening here in this section is that Jonah, who is the human author of this book and who is writing this, after the fact, biographically is recounting what occurred in the events that led up to him ending up in the stomach of that fish for three days and for three nights. There’s no indication that Jonah had a parchment and a pen or for that matter, light when he was inside the stomach of this fish. So, I don’t believe he scrawled out what we see here while he was sloshing around in the fish’s stomach. Rather, he would have written out what we have here once he was heaved out onto dry land. At that point he would have recounted, remembered all that he’d experienced from being tossed overboard to starting to sink into the ocean’s deeps to being in the fish’s stomach. And at that point he would have written out the prayer he prayed and, in the footnote, here in verse 10 about eventually being vomited out by this great fish. Hence, again, the reason for the title this evening, “The Recounting.” This is Jonah on dry land recounting, remembering, recalling each of those significant events.

It’s a very simple outline for this evening. In verse 1, we have the request. In verses 2-9, that’s the prayer, we have the remembrance. Then in verse 10, we have the result. I couldn’t think of an “r” word that goes with vomit so it’s just “the result.” Let’s get into it. Starting with verse 1 and the first few words of verse 2. This is the request. It says, “Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the stomach of the fish, and he said” and I’ll stop right there. See when Jonah hit the water back in verse 15 of chapter 1, he must have expected death. There was no Coast Guard in those days. There were no ships with sonar or airplanes with radar. There was no GPS scanning the ocean’s deeps for people or men that had gone overboard. There was just Jonah. There was only Jonah. Not another human soul around. He’s sinking further and further into the inky blackness of the sea; and surely, at this moment, he must have been thinking something like that’s it. I’m done. I have mere moments left live. But then this great fish swoops in and swallows him whole.

What that looked like we don’t know. Whether we went in headfirst, or rump first we don’t know. Whether he was right side up or upside down when he went into the fish’s mouth we don’t know. What the force of the current was that he was riding as we went into the fish’s stomach we don’t know. All we know is that he was swallowed whole and alive by a great fish. All we know from this text is that somehow Jonah went all the way from that fish’s mouth, all the way down to its stomach. Jonah 1:17 “the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.” All we know, from Jonah 2:1 right here, is that somewhere during Jonah’s stay in the stomach of this fish he not only became aware that he was not dead, but that he was, in fact, very much alive; and all that we know, what we do know from his reaction, after coming to this awareness is that he prayed. After coming to realize that I’m not dead, I’m alive, I’m somewhere dark, his reaction was to pray. “Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the stomach of the fish.”

Now, by all appearances, Jonah was in this utterly hopeless situation. Fish are cold-blooded creatures and the ocean water inside that fish would have been cold and Jonah’s surroundings would have been dark. Not only that, but it’s also not like being in the stomach of the fish was going to be a long-lasting situation for Jonah. If he had any understanding of how digestive processes work in any of God’s creatures, he would have been able to put two and two together and realize this wasn’t going to end well for him. It was only going to be a matter of time before he became a victim of that fish’s digestive process in hours, days, he didn’t know. He was alive. He was aware that he was alive. But surely, he must have known and gathered that he was somehow in the jaws of death and that being swallowed up by what we now know was this fish was only a stay of execution. This was a dangerous situation. This was a perilous situation which makes Jonah’s reaction here, which was to pray, all the more significant.

Now, remember. This is the same Jonah who mere moments before, verses before, was sleeping in the hold of the ship during an earlier rough encounter with the sea. This is the same Jonah who was put to shame by pagan sailors on the ship who first prayed to their god and then prayed to Jonah’s God before Jonah did any praying at all. This is the same Jonah who, up to this point, was openly in rebellious and open about his rebellion against God and on the run from God. Finally, we see Jonah here in the stomach of this fish doing what he should have been doing all along which is somehow, someway turning to God rather than turning his back on God and continuing to run away from God.

With that we’ll get to the content of his prayer which brings us to our second heading for tonight which is again, “The Remembrance.” As we get into this again, I’ll mention that I believe this prayer was actually prayed while Jonah was in the fish’s stomach and then Jonah actually wrote out the content of this prayer after he was expelled, vomited onto dry land. I also want us to note as we work our way through this prayer that what you see here is not Jonah pleading with God for deliverance. There’s not one petition or request in this, this statement here, in this prayer. Rather, this is a prayer of remembrance as Jonah here reflects and recounts on what the Lord did for him by rescuing him as he was sinking to the bottom of the ocean floor.

His prayer begins with the first few words of verse 2, and as we see here his prayer reads somewhat like a Psalm. He recalls what he has just been through and what the Lord did for him. He begins by recalling, you can see it there, he says “I called out of my distress to the LORD, and He answered me.” What this is referring to is those moments, how many seconds or minutes, we don’t know, we just know it couldn’t have been very long because he is, he had a human limitation on how long he could breathe and stay alive. This is recounting that moment when Jonah was barreling to the bottom of the sea after having been thrown overboard by the sailors in Jonah 1:15. It was during this time as he’s sinking into the depths of the Mediterranean in this clear moment of distress with his mouth closed and bubbles coming out of his nose and his body tensing up in its natural protective state of panic that he called out to the Lord. “I called out of my distress to the LORD.” Now the “call” Jonah mentions here is not necessarily a reference to a shout of a drowning man. His drowning shout wouldn’t be heard. Instead, this is most likely describing what he was thinking within himself and expressing to the Lord as he was sinking.
Look what comes next, here in verse 2. It says, “And He answered me.” How did Yahweh answer Jonah? Did He do so audibly? Did He say audibly to Jonah “Don’t worry, Jonah, I’ve got this.” “Don’t worry, Jonah, I’ll deliver you.” “Just let go and let God, Jonah.” Is that how God answered him? No. God answered Jonah’s prayer of desperation and distress as Jonah was flailing around in the depths of the Mediterranean and sinking down further into the sea by sending the great fish to swallow him up. Recall the words of Jonah 1:17, “And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah.” In other words, that fish was not some stray sea creature that was just sort of aimlessly cutting its way through the currents in the sea. Rather, this fish was like a cruise missile sent by God to reach its intended target. It was sent by God to reach that specific point in the sea where Jonah was about to be thrown.

Does that fact amaze you? Does that comfort you that God is so meticulously and sovereignly in control of all things? To know that God appointed this fish at this time to be in this exact place at that specific moment to accomplish God’s specific designed end? That fact really should wow us. That fact really should amaze, and that fact should actually comfort us because the God of Jonah’s day is the God of our day. Just as He appointed that fish to swallow up this disobedient prophet so as to rescue him, He has appointed every incident, occurrence, occasion, circumstance, situation, victory, trial that you and I ever will ever have. He has appointed the people who will come into your life. He has appointed the opportunities that will come before you. He has numbered, as Jesus would later say in Matthew 10:30, every single hair on your head. He has appointed the date on which you were born; and He has just as surely appointed the other date that will be on your tombstone one day, the day that you will go into the ground. He is sovereign over it all. He has sovereignly appointed it all. That truth should not be some source of exasperation or even debate. Rather, that truth should be a source of comfort and joy to know that every little intricate detail of our lives, details that, if we’re being honest, we would only mess up if we were in control of them is under the protection and care of an all-wise, all-good, all-sovereign and all-protective, God.

Here’s another really amazing truth. For some reason though He certainly doesn’t need us to God allows us to pray to Him and He uses our prayers to accomplish His already decreed and ordained sovereign ends. He doesn’t need our prayers to accomplish His purposes in saving unregenerate souls, but He uses our prayers to accomplish His divine ends in saving those souls. Here in the case of Jonah He didn’t need Jonah’s prayers to bring about the deliverance Jonah received through this great fish. But He somehow used Jonah’s prayers to accomplish His own predetermined end of to have that fish be in the right place at the right time to swallow up this prophet.

All of what I’ve just mentioned is tied in with the first part of Jonah’s prayer in verse 2 where he says, “I called out of my distress to the LORD, and He answered me.” Now, before we get too much further into the prayer here, I want us also to note that Jonah was a man who apparently was steeped in the Scriptures of his day. He wasn’t only a Hebrew in name only. He was a Hebrew who apparently knew the Hebrew Bible of his time. Now we can say that with confidence because of the ways Jonah’s own prayers here in some ways mirror and in other cases echo previous biblical revelation. In fact, keep a finger in Jonah here and go back with me to Psalm 18 and I’ll show you what I mean. Look at Psalm 18 and we’ll start in verse 4. Psalm 18:4 says, “The cords of death encompassed me, and the torrents of ungodliness terrified me. The cords of Sheol surrounded me; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called upon the LORD,” does that sound familiar? “And cried to my God for help; He heard my voice out of His temple, and my cry for help before Him came into His ears.” Another one would be Psalm 118:5 which says, “From my distress I called upon the LORD; the LORD answered me and set me in a large place.” Or Psalm 120:1 says, “In my trouble I cried to the LORD, and He answered me.” Those all sound a lot like Jonah’s prayer here in Jonah 2:2 where he says, “I called out of my distress to the LORD, and He answered me.” Jonah, in other words, knew the Scripture. As he penned his own account of what happened to him in the stomach of the great fish it was natural for him to borrow from Scriptural language to describe his experience. If there’s something positive that we can take away from Jonah’s life and Jonah’s example it would be this right here. That he prayed Scripture back to God. That’s a principle that we can grab onto and cling to and apply to our lives today. To make sure that as we pray back to God, as we petition God, that we pray the truths that He’s already revealed about Himself, back to Him.

Now, as we move on into the prayer, still here in verse 2, Jonah gets more specific about the content of his prayer. As he finds himself swirling and sinking down into the waves he says, “I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; You heard my voice.” Now, mini-theology lesson here. “Sheol” in the Hebrew conception, in the Hebrew mind was the place of the departed. The place of the dead. It was thought of by the Israelites in Jonah’s day as a literal place where the dead went. We see that for example in Genesis 44:29 where “Sheol” used in the literal sense by Jacob. The scene there you’ll recall, I’ll just cut to the chase with it. It’s that scene where Jacob learns that he’s going to have to make some sort of swap. When he hears Benjamin is the trading piece that he’s going to have to send down there, he says “If you take this one also from me, and harm befalls him, you will bring my gray hair down to Sheol in sorrow.” “Sheol” there by Jacob was being used literally. He was saying, “I’ve already lost Joseph” and “if I lose Benjamin, too” I’m going to die. My heart won’t be able to take it anymore and I’m going to go to the grave. I’m going to go to “Sheol.” So, there’s this literal sense of Sheol being the place where the dead go. Sheol in that literal sense, was spoken of in the Old Testament as being located under the earth. Amos 9:2 says, “Though they dig into Sheol, from there will My hand take them; and though they ascend to heaven, from there will I bring them down.” “They dig into Sheol,” it’s underground. Those in “Sheol” were seen as somehow being separated from God. Isaiah 38:18 says, “For Sheol cannot thank You, death cannot praise You; those who go down into the pit cannot hope for Your faithfulness,” and yet “Sheol” was also still considered to be accessible by God. Here’s a familiar passage for most of you. Psalm 139:8 says, “If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there.”

Well, “Sheol” was not always used in a literal sense in the Old Testament. In fact, there are many times where we see the term used figuratively or poetically to speak of death. For instance, we see the term “Sheol” used that way, this poetic way, this figurative way in Psalm 30:3 which says “O LORD, You have brought up my soul from Sheol; You have kept me alive, that I would not go down to the pit. Sing praise to the LORD, you His godly ones, and give thanks to His holy name.” Or Psalm 86:13 says, “For your lovingkindness toward me is great, and you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.”

Now, if you remember our last sermon in Jonah where I took us from Jonah 1:17 about Jonah being in the stomach of the fish those three days and three nights and I leapt from there to Matthew 12, that scene where Jesus speaks of the “sign of Jonah.” I will tell you that there are many Bible interpreters and scholars and theologians as we saw in that last sermon who want to find Jesus or at least allusions to His death on the cross way back in the pages of Jonah. This camp would be quick to find “types” in the Old Testament. They’ll read the Bible backwards and they’ll assume wrongly, I would say, that the whole Bible is about the cross and the whole bible is about our personal individual salvation through Christ. I won’t rehash all those arguments now. You can find the arguments on Sound Words. But what I will say tonight, is this. In their haste and their zeal to find Jesus on every page of the book of Jonah those same authors and scholars will often conclude that Jonah must have died in the belly of that fish. That he was somehow brought back to life, from death to life in the belly of that fish. That he went through what we Christians now known as “resurrection” making him that perfect match, that perfect type of Jesus and His resurrection.

A couple of responses to that line of thinking. First, to be a type of Christ, Jonah didn’t have to die in the stomach of the great fish. To be the bearer of what Jesus would later call “the sign of Jonah” Jonah didn’t literally need to die. No. Jesus Himself said in Matthew 12, in referring to “the sign of Jonah” that it was him going into that belly of the fish for three days and for three nights that makes it the sign of Jonah. Just as Jesus would go into the earth for three days and for three nights. The “sign of Jonah” is not that Jonah died. The sign of Jonah is that Jonah was in the fish for three days and three nights typifying what Jesus would later do in the heart of the earth.

Second, that use of “Sheol,” the use of Sheol in this passage in no way compels the conclusion that Jonah actually died. Rather, as we’re going to make our way through this prayer what is being described here is the fear of death, the encounter with potential death which had gripped Jonah in this encounter. In other words, Jonah was using the term “Sheol” to convey how he felt while he was struggling in the water in his state of deep distress and severe affliction. He’s speaking metaphorically here of the dire prospect that’s facing him of joining the dead and actually going to Sheol. This wasn’t an actual death experience for Jonah. This was a close brush with death for him. He realized he’s on the brink of death and he’s crying for help. “I cried for help,” verse 2, “from the depth of Sheol.” Then we see here that God listened to his cry for help and went to his rescue. Look at the last few words of verse 2. It says, “You heard my voice.” As we’ve already seen God not only heard Jonah’s cry of anguish, but God also responded to Jonah’s cry by providing for him in his need by appointing this fish to swallow him up and save him from certain death.

Now, as we continue to work our way through Jonah’s prayer here, specifically, as we get to verses 3 through 7, we’re given even more details about what took place in Jonah’s moments of despair and struggling here in the sea. Look at verse 3. It says, “For you had cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas.” Now right away, we are struck yet again with this additional statement about God’s sovereignty as Jonah here, as a good Hebrew is recognizing and affirming here that God is sovereign. God is in control. We saw back in Jonah 1:15 that it was the sailors who threw Jonah into the sea. There’s no debating that or getting around that fact. But here we see in Jonah 2:3 that it was actually God who had hurled him into the “deep.” Into the hopeless bowels of the oceans from which no one typically survives. Now that word “deep” there in verse 3 recalls Psalm 69:1-2 where the same term is used metaphorically by David when he says this. He says, “Save me, O God, for the waters have threatened my life. I have sunk in deep mire, and there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and a flood overflows me.” Jonah though was in no metaphorical deep. Rather, he was in the physical deep of the ocean and he had no problem putting his finger on the fact that it was God who had cast him into the sea though it was the sailors who were instrumentally used to accomplish what God had designed. “For You had cast me into the deep.” Yahweh was behind the sailors’ actions just as He has always been behind all actions for all of mankind. The Canaanites of old and the Chinese government today. There’s nothing that is outside His sovereign control. Not only had God “cast” him “into the deep,” as it says. It says he had been cast “into the heart of the seas” which, like the “deep,” in that same verse speaks to the depth of the trouble that Jonah was in.

God was sovereign not only in casting Jonah into the “deep” and casting him into “the heart of the seas,” next we are going to see that He was sovereign over each of these additional elements Jonah found himself surrounded by as he started tasting all the salt water all around him. Look at the next part of verse 3. He says, “And the current engulfed me.” The word for “current” there, nahar is typically translated “river” or “stream.” Here it’s being used to describe the ocean currents. The pull of the waves. The undertow. Look at what comes next at the end of verse 3. It says, “All of these randomly moving breakers and billows, in a total chance encounter, passed over me.” Is that what your Bible says? Mine, either. No, it says “All Your breakers and billows passed over me.” Those words again highlight that Jonah was highly biblically proficient and highly biblically literate with Scripture coursing through his veins. These aren’t randomly selected words. Rather they echo similar sentiments from the Psalms which Jonah apparently was familiar with. That includes Psalm 42:7 which says, “All your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me” or Psalm 69:1-2. We saw this one already, but it says, “Save me, O God, for the waters have threatened my life. I have sunk in deep mire, and there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and a flood overflows me.” But the point is they are God’s waves and God’s deeps. Now, while in these Psalms the experience of drowning was pictured more metaphorically or figuratively, again Jonah here is describing the physical experience of drowning that he was going through as he struggled for oxygen. As water started to fill his mouth and his nostrils. Again, note this. That even as the currents of the Mediterranean were swirling around Jonah, he never apparently lost recognition of the fact that it is God who controls the oceans and the seas. It is God who controls the wind and the waves and the breakers. That’s why he calls them “Your” breakers there in verse 3. The ocean here is not being described as some inanimate object, some ordinary force of nature. They’re God’s waves which were threatening to swallow the prophet.

I just want to mention that is a biblically healthy and a biblically correct way for really anybody, any follower of God to think about the world in which we live. To recognize that God is sovereign over it all and in control over all and that the various elements of the world whether it be the air we breathe or the animals we depend upon for food or the crops that are grown or the water sources that we need, they are all subject to Him. None of us lives in or is abandoned to a world of complete irrational chance. What a sad and hopeless world that would be if that were in fact the case. To think of the situation in Israel or the Middle East is not under God’s control. To think that the 2024 elections are not under God’s control. To think that the whole season of COVID was not under God’s control. To think that our individual or collective futures is not under God’s control. But they are. All of our lives, all of our experiences are under the divine superintendence of the sovereign Lord over heaven and earth.

Now, as we turn to verse 4 Jonah’s after-the-fact description of his prayer from the belly of the fish continues. He says, “So I said, ‘I have been expelled from Your sight’.” Now, I don’t want us to lose sight of how remarkable those very words are. As Jonah here is flailing around in the ocean aware that he was about to die, this is before the fish swallows him up. His thoughts internally expressed, that’s what he means here when he says, “So I said,” he’s talking to himself here, was the fact that “I have been expelled from Your sight.” Those words are truly stunning because when you think about it at the beginning of this book, when you go to the very beginning Jonah 1:3 isn’t being out of God’s sight exactly what Jonah wanted? Jonah 1:3, look over there, “Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.” He wanted to get away from God but now as we get over to Jonah 2, from the “deep,” he’s in “the heart of the seas.” He at least now has this wherewithal to admit the folly of how he had been thinking all along as this running rebel. To admit where his sinful rebellion has gotten him as he realizes, I’ve now “been expelled from your sight.” He wanted to get away before. Now he’s realizing the folly of his ways. But then look at these next words, in the second half of verse 4 because they are equally stunning. He says, “Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy temple.” Now later in this prayer as we’ll see in verse 7, Jonah’s going to refer to his prayers coming to God in His holy temple which we’re going to see I think is a reference to God’s heavenly throne room. But here, in verse 4, I take these words “I will look again toward Your holy temple,” to be a reference to the physical temple in Jerusalem during Jonah’s day. Cast into the sea because of his sins of disobedience and apparently still expecting death to come soon, Jonah here turns course and says, “I will look again toward Your holy temple.” This is a confidence that God’s going to rescue him and deliver him. If Jonah were to actually die, of course, he would have no opportunity to look toward God’s temple in Jerusalem. But if he were to live and survive, he would have that opportunity to once again look in the temple’s direction. To “look again toward Your holy temple.” His words here in verse 4 are reminiscent of Psalm 84:1-2. It’s a Psalm of the sons of Korah which says, “How lovely are Your dwelling places, O LORD of hosts! My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the LORD.” That’s what Jonah was describing here. His “soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the LORD” there in Jerusalem.

Here in verse 4, then, we see not only these expressions of Jonah’s deepest despair, “I have been expelled from Your sight,” what a terrifying thought. But also, the heights of hope as he says, “I will look again toward Your holy temple.” As we turn to verse 5 and into verse 6, Jonah seems to speak, through prayer, of this last judgment of God on his life as his final breaths leave him. He says, “Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me, weeds were wrapped around my head. I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever.” We won’t spend too much time here but what Jonah is describing in these verses is the fact that in his peril as the waters were threatening to take his life, what we have in this verse is this vivid description of Jonah’s plunge into what appears to be this watery grave, and he starts by saying here in verse 5, “Water encompassed me to the point of death.” He’s literally in over his head. There is no place for him to come up for air or to take a breath or to get a taste of any precious oxygen. As it says here in verse 5, he was at “the point of death.” The point of being close to losing consciousness and passing out and eventually perishing. He goes on to say, “the great deep engulfed me.” Before he was later swallowed up by the fish he was first swallowed up by the ocean. Anyone who’s ever been knocked over by a wave or pulled aside or out to sea by a current or drifted by a riptide knows what Jonah is describing here. He’s describing that helpless feeling of being swallowed up and overpowered by the matchless might of the ocean. He was very much at this point feeling he was a prisoner of the sea.

Next, he says, “Weeds were wrapped around my head,” as if it weren’t difficult enough to be encompassed by the water to the point of death and be engulfed by the great deep. As Jonah’s muscles grew more and more weary, as his breath got shorter and shorter as his whole body became more panicked, at the same time seaweed was entangling itself around him. Which for any of you have spent anytime in the ocean know that it can actually be a harrowing experience; because seaweed is surprisingly thick, surprisingly durable, surprisingly annoying as it can trip you up and tangle you up in the most inconvenient moments. As we get to verse 6, the portrayal shifts as Jonah describes himself as descending to the roots of the mountains where the earth with its bars were around me forever. This is a debated subject, among commentators but the references here to the mountains and the earth withs its bars in connection where Jonah was located in the sea; most likely is Jonahs’s way of expressing just how far he had sunk before this miraculous moment when the fish swallowed him whole. In other words, the fish didn’t snatch him from the surface of the water, rather by the time he was swallowed up, Jonah had sunk perilously low, to the point where he could describe these underwater mountains meaning the floor of the ocean, the floor of the sea and the earth with its bars in the ocean’s deep. Now, that phraseology there, the “bars” of the earth under the ocean is sort of an odd expression. Where does it come from? What’s Jonah referring to? Well, it appears to be capturing the way that the Hebrews conceived of the concept of the boundaries of the ocean or the boundaries of the basin floor under the ocean. In fact, we pick up on this way of thinking in Job 38:8-10 where Yahweh says this to Job. He says, “Or who enclosed the sea with doors when, bursting forth, it went out from the womb; when I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and I placed boundaries on it and set a bolt and doors, and I said, ‘Thus far you shall come, but no farther; and here shall your proud waves stop?’” So, there God to Job is describing how He put limitations on the ocean, its depths and its boundaries. When he, Jonah here is speaking of descending “to the roots of the mountains” and saying “the earth with its bars was around me forever” what I believe he is expressing is that feeling of being in the deepest part of the ocean without any help or hope from any human support, any human beings. His long and harrowing journey down to the bottom of the ocean had gotten him to this place where he really thought he was going to die. He really had this feeling of being entombed by the sea. These verses here, verses 5 and 6, what they do is express his extreme great despair and hopelessness as he says, “Water encompassed me to the point of death.” Well, another way that we know how far Jonah had sunk in the ocean is what comes next at the end of verse 6 where he says, “But You have brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God.” Now that expression, “You have brought up my life” indicates that by causing him to be swallowed up by this great fish the Lord actually had snatched Jonah from the jaws of death. For the reasons I’ve already mentioned I don’t believe this means that Jonah was dead, and that God resurrected him. I don’t believe that this is describing Jonah going to physical, literal “Sheol” which is described as a “pit” in the Old Testament. Rather I believe what this is describing is God physically rescuing Jonah from what otherwise would be a watery grave, a “pit” and sparing his life, physically. “You have brought up my life.” Even that word “up” is significant. "You have brought it up from the depths of the ocean” would be the context here.

Well now, as we turn to verse 7, we see this next stage of development in Jonah’s prayer. Seeing that he was about to die by drowning and that his life was ebbing away he prayed to God for deliverance. You see the words recorded there. Verse 7 says, “While I was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to You, into Your holy temple.” Occasionally I’ll be asked, not that often, but occasionally, why I preach from the Old Testament so often, and the answer I give is always the same. It’s two-fold. Number one, the Old Testament is Scripture. It’s God’s Word. II Timothy 3:16 says “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.” That’s why I preach the Old Testament. Second though, is that the Old Testament has so much application and so much truth and so much relevance to today. Does it not? I wonder if there’s anyone here this evening for instance, as you’re facing whatever valleys you are walking through or trials that you’re walking through, going through whatever depths you’re going through can relate to Jonah here. Now surely, there’s a distinction here. We know he was physically sinking and physically declining and physically fainting away. But the principle here is true and applicable. He “remembered the LORD.” What a simple and profound truth for all of us to grab onto tonight as we go on to this week and face whatever we’re going to face this week. When you feel like things are slipping out of control physically, spiritually, however they are as they are with Jonah here, how important it is to remember the LORD. To remember who He is. To remember His attributes. To remember His character. To remember His promises. To remember His faithfulness.

Getting back to the original context of Jonah here, he was getting closer and closer to physically expiring, to dying. That’s what’s meant by the words here in verse 7, then “while I was fainting away.” But again, he says “I remembered the LORD.” Not only that, but he also says, “And my prayer came to You, into Your holy temple.” Back in verse 4 I mentioned that that reference to the “temple” there appeared to be to the physical temple in Jerusalem of Jonah’s time. He believed that he would one day see that temple again. Here in verse 7, though what Jonah is referring to are prayers, his prayers coming to God in His holy temple. This is not a reference to the Jerusalem temple. This is a reference to God’s heavenly throne room as we see it in Psalm 11:4 where the temple there is described as God’s throne in heaven. It says, “The LORD is in His holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven.” Jonah’s prayers, in other words, as we see here in verse 7 were reaching God in heaven. Those prayers, we’ve already seen were answered when God sovereignly appointed later in Jonah 1:17, the “great fish to swallow Jonah.” Which was the means of rescue God provided to bring Jonah’s life up from the pit, to preserve his life and to grant him this stay of execution.

Now as we turn to verses 8 and 9, we come to a new section of Jonah’s prayer and really the concluding words of his prayer in which he indicates that he had learned some important lessons from this experience. He says, “Those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness, but I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation is from the LORD.” Jonah caps off his prayer to Yahweh with these words which really are words of thankfulness we will see. He starts with these words about the folly of “regarding,” verse 8, clinging to, that would be another word for “regard” there, trusting in “vain idols” worthless idols. The word “vain” there is hevel, Solomon’s favorite word in Ecclesiastes. Now this thought is not a random toss-in by Jonah. Rather, having just interacted with pagan sailors on this ship and surely being familiar with the idolatrous practices which which were starting to take over Israelite worship practices at this time, this matter of idolatry would have been fresh in Jonah’s mind. His major point here is that no lifeless, worthless idol could ever bring about the deliverance that the God of heaven had just brought him. That’s what he means when he’s talking about “those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness.” But what does it mean when he says, “forsake their faithfulness?” That sort of stands out there. Well, that word there for “faithfulness” in the Hebrew text is hesed which can also be translated “steadfast love” which can also be translated “mercy.” I believe what Jonah is saying here is that those who put their trust in helpless, hopeless, worthless idols in the place of trust in the living and true God, they have forsaken any hope of ever receiving mercy or as in his case here, deliverance in the way that he had just experienced mercy and deliverance. Figurines and trinkets made of wood and stone have no mercy, show no mercy, and certainly cannot rescue a man from the bottom of the sea.

In verse 9, turning his attention from idolaters Jonah rightfully turns his attention to where it ultimately should go which is to Yahweh. He begins by saying, but “I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving.” Grateful for God’s deliverance Jonah here was pledging to make a sacrifice of thanksgiving. It’s the kind of sacrifice that we see mentioned in Leviticus 7. A thanksgiving offering, Leviticus 7:12-14 would be a reference. Not only that, but Jonah also declared “That which I have vowed I will pay.” That word “pay” can also be translated “make good” meaning, Jonah here is saying “I will ‘make good’ on all I’ve promised,” of “all I’m required, as a prophet of Yahweh, to do.” From this point forward, God I will be faithful in keeping my vows to you. I think that’s what he is saying here. Which also would include his vow as a prophet of God to carry out his commission to preach to the sin in Nineveh. More on that when we get to chapter 3 and 4.

So, here at the end of this prayer we find Jonah in the same position. This can’t be lost on this. As the sailors back in Jonah 1:16, look at Jonah 1:16 up the page. When they got at that place and it says, “then the men feared the Lord greatly and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.” Jonah’s a little late to catch up and he’s the Hebrew! It shouldn’t have taken him that long to get there but it did and here he was. Then we see these words at the end of verse 9, “Salvation is from the LORD.” Now, again, there is a temptation, very prevalent, very real to over-read New Testament truths back into what Jonah is saying here and to ascribe to Jonah something that he’s actually not saying. Now it is true of course, and we can find this truth all over Scripture, that salvation in the spiritual soul sense, is of the Lord and comes only through the Lord. But in the immediate context of Jonah’s experience and his prayer what he is really saying here when he uses that word “salvation,” a synonym for this word as it’s used here would be deliverance or rescue. What he’s really doing is he’s setting forth the contrast of the inability of false gods, the gods of the idolaters, to rescue anyone from their peril, whatever that peril looks like, physical perils, sinking to the bottom of the ocean. But through Yahweh “salvation” meaning deliverance here, in Jonah’s case, being delivered from the deeps of a potential watery grave, is possible. Does Jonah 2:9 stand for as some have articulated the “gospel according to Jonah”? I don’t think so. Rather this is declaring simply the delivering power of Yahweh. That’s it. Let’s not make it say more than it actually saying.

Of course, there’s one burning question when people see Jonah 2:9 especially. They see those words “Salvation is from the LORD.” He’s like the apostle Paul in Romans chapter 3, right? They’ll want to say this is when Jonah got saved. This surely, when he says “Salvation is from the Lord” this surely is that moment that he became a child of God. Surely, he experienced salvation. Surely this means he repented. Surely this means he is now this willing prophet. My answer would be to go back through the prayer that we’ve been working through this evening and to see if you can find anything that indicates that Jonah’s heart was fully now in alignment with Yahweh’s. I don’t see anything in this prayer ultimately that indicates that Jonah had a David in Psalm 51 type of moment. I don’t see anything in this prayer that indicates that Jonah’s now anxious to pack his bags and head off to Nineveh. Rather, I tend to believe that what Jonah experienced here at most, and this is going to come into sharper focus when we get to Jonah chapter 4. He's expressing amazement that he was physically delivered. This physical deliverance was naturally coupled with a prayer of thanks to the God who had physically rescued him much like any unbeliever in our day might do as an act of religiosity to offer up some sort of religious sounding prayer to thank them for being spared when they were in otherwise in dire straits.

Well, in the moment that apparently was good enough for Yahweh because after Jonah prayed this prayer Yahweh responded. After bringing about the violent storm in Jonah 1:4 and causing the lot fall on Jonah in Jonah 1:7 and calming the sea when Jonah was thrown overboard. In Jonah 1:15 and commanding the fish to swallow Jonah in Jonah 1:17 and causing the fish to transport Jonah safely for those three days and three nights. Yahweh next, in this next exercise of His sovereignty causes the fish to spew, literally, to “vomit” Jonah up on to dry land. Verse 10 says, “Then the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land.”

If you’re a notetaker, our third point for this evening is, “The Result.” After all of this, the pouting prophet, the running rebel, was back where he began on dry land. Whether he was covered in goop and scales we don’t know. Whether he was bleached white from the fish’s insides we don’t know. Is it all that important that we know that information? I don’t think it is. We know what we know. We know what the text tells us. What the text tells us is that Jonah was in this fish praying to God and on account of his prayers God caused him to be spit out on dry land. The text does not tell us that God saved Jonah’s soul on that occasion. The text does not say that Jonah believed God, and it was counted to Him as righteousness. No. Just as Jonah’s demise was physical as he was thrown into the sea his rescue, as we can tell from the text, was also physical as was rescued from the sea and expelled from the great fish and spit out onto dry land. As one commentator notes, “God concluded his assignment for this fish by commanding it to relieve itself of its cumbersome cargo.”

Was Jonah, at this point, repentant? Again, I really don’t think we can reach that conclusion based on what we see in this text. But as we’re going to see next time, when we get to Jonah 3 Jonah was about to be used of God to bring an entire people, the Ninevites, to a place of repentance. We’ll cover that next time when we open the book of Jonah.

Let’s pray. God, I thank you for this time together. I thank you for just a rich day of study of Your word and a time of fellowship with Your people. Thank you for the many things that You have continued to bless us with individually and as a church. Thank you for the many gifts and the many graces You show us day over day and week over week and year over year. I pray that tomorrow as we have been told there will be ice and snow and potentially dangerous travel that You would keep everybody here safe. I pray that we would all remember until that snow comes, and that ice comes that You are sovereign. That You are in control. That You protect Your people. You love Your people, and You will control all events according to Your perfect plan and will. God, I do pray that today’s time of diving into Your word has been edifying, has been convicting at times, and ultimately brings us to a greater confidence and understanding and renewal in our understanding of who You are, what Your purposes are, and what You’ve done for us in Christ, now how we are to live. Thank you for this day with these dear individual saints. I pray that You would go before us and help us to honor You all week long. In Jesus’ name, amen.