We left Jonah last week sinking to his death in the depths of the Mediterranean. Given what we learnt about this rebellious prophet it’s surprising that there’s anything more to say. He’d abandoned himself to the ravages of the sea and the wrath of God. That should have been the end of it. But it’s not because, as we’ll see in this chapter, God’s condemnation doesn’t have to be the last word He speaks into a person’s life. For this is a chapter about the salvation of Jonah brought about through the grace of God. It’s all about God’s generosity to an underserved man. And in that sense it has a massive amount to teach us about our own lives here in Balham.

But Jesus also understood this particular incident to teach us something about his own life. In Matthew 12 Jesus implied that there’s correspondence between Jonah’s experience with the fish with his own experience with the cross. We’ll think more about how Jesus fulfils the sign of Jonah when we get to the end of the story. But note in passing that though we may find the whole tale about the whale hard to swallow, Jesus assumed it was historical.

Act 2 of the Jonah drama begins in (17). The scene has shifted from the ship’s deck to the ocean. Look at (17).

17 And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

At this point we’re not sure whether this is good thing or a bad thing. But there’s a hint, at least, that his ordeal comes to an end after three days. And so in (1) he prays.

2:1 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish,

Verses 2-9 are Jonah’s prayer. They were prayed as he sat inside the fish as he reflected on his watery ordeal but obviously recalled some time later and recorded for us. It expresses thanks for deliverance at God’s hand and so it’s the first time in the book that we’re onside with him. It’s a prayer we could pray or should pray. His prayer is a typical Old Testament psalm of thanksgiving. It’s structured in the same way. It consists of two stanzas in (2-4) and (5-7) and a conclusion in (8&9). The two stanzas say the same thing twice. In essence the psalm is his personal testimony of how he was brought back to the Lord from his backsliding.

Let’s look at that in three stages.

1. the Lord cast him into the deep

Jonah was a prophet on the run. Three times in chapter 1 we’re told that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord. Like all people on the run he was escaping from the authorities. But the authority that Jonah was trying to escape from was divine and therein lay his problem. God’s response to his disobedience and rebellion was judgement. And it’s always been that way with God. He consistently responds to those who refuse to do what he says with judgement. For him not to do so would be unimaginably neglectful. He simply cannot let immorality go on without acting. He may not choose to act immediately as he did with Jonah but He’ll do so eventually. And so it’s likely that in a gathering like this some of us await the day on which God will act to punish our immorality. But, as for Jonah so too for us, condemnation needn’t be the last word God speaks into our lives. In this prayer Jonah confesses three facets of God’s judgement.

a. There’s descent to the deep

Look at (3). 3 For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.

This is not metaphorical it’s literal. He was literally engulfed by the forces of God’s judgement. I don’t know whether you’ve ever been lost in the waves. It seemed to happen every time I tried surfing when we were in Australia. But being dumped on the sand is one thing, being unable to come up for air is another.

b. There’s distance from the Lord

Look at (4). 4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’

Jonah said he wanted to be free from the Lord’s presence and so God gave him what he wanted, his absence. But we’re talking about relational distance not geographical distance. In chapter 1 we learned that there’s nowhere to which we can run to escape the Lord’s presence. But the Lord will put relational distance between us and Him as part of his judgement against us. And it’s more frightening than it sounds. To be distant form the Lord is to be absent from his blessing.

c. There’s death as the outcome

Look at (5). 5 The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head 6 at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever;

Jonah sank to the bottom of the seabed from where he had no expectation of return. It’s very clear that God takes rebellion very seriously.

• This is a warning to those of us who are Christians.

God won’t allow us to rebel against him forever. Sooner or later we’ll experience his heavy hand of discipline against us. He’ll do that of course because he loves us. Any Father worthy of the name would discipline us if he knew we were engaged in inappropriate activity. It may be that we’re currently pursuing an inappropriate relationship or perhaps harbouring an ungodly ambition that’s sinfully motivated. Whatever it is, the Lord may well give us what we want until at the depths of our misery we realise how wrong we’ve been. He probably won’t discipline us in the same way as he disciplined Jonah. But if you’re persistently being rebellious against don’t for a moment think that the Lord is unaware and that He’ll remain inactive. 

• This is a warning to those of us who are currently unbelievers.

The precise nature of Jonah’s rebellion is unique and so are the details of his death. But he’s only unusual in the way that he died. His experience of death however, is universal. Rebellion always leads ultimately to judgement and hell. But it needn’t be that way, as we’ll see.

2. The Lord answered his cries of distress

Look at (2) & (7). “I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol [the place of the dead] I cried, and you heard my voice.

7 When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.

Jonah called on the Lord out of his distress, but not until he feared for his life. God had to drive him to his knees and get him to this point to get him to admit his need of help. Only once he realised how desperate he was did he cry out to the Lord for deliverance. Knowing that we stand under God’s judgement is an experience that all God’s people have had. For some of us His hand was heavy upon us until we relinquished our proud independent stand against Him.

Every single one of us needs to recognise our desperate need of God’s help. Only then will we cry out to the Lord for help. I understand that there was a saying in the Second World War that went, ’there are no atheists in fox holes’. That’s a great phrase. In other words, we may need to be scared out of our complacency. Our material comfort may have convinced us that we’re in no immediate danger. But we’re deluded.

I heard someone once use the illustration of a trap door to try and convince us just how precarious our position is. We stand on a trap door and all God needs to do is pull the lever and we fall through it into death. Many have gone through already and some have gone through into hell, it’s happening all the time around us. We stand on that trap door, a lever’s pull away from our end. Why won’t we cry to the Lord? How bad have things got to get before we’ll give in? How rough does God need to be with us before we see sense?

3. The Lord brought his life up from the pit

Look at (6). yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.

At this point in the narrative the fish enters. We’re not sure what kind of aquatic dweller it is. It’s a red herring! See what I’ve done there?! But for this chapter at least he’s the key actor in the unfolding drama. It took me a while to work out whether the whale was a good guy or a bad guy. Perhaps like me you thought that just when Jonah’s life couldn’t get any worse along comes the fish to eat him. But the fish didn’t come to swallow him but to shelter him. It wasn’t a messenger of judgement but the miraculous and gracious means of salvation. God saved Jonah through this fish. God decided to rescue this rebellious, obnoxious and unrepentant man. The appearance of a man eating fish is quite something. But the biggest shock is not that he was kept alive by a fish but that he was kept alive at all. It’s the very opposite of what he deserved and perhaps the opposite of what he imagined would happen when he prayed to God. I suspect that most of us have a view of God that has him strong on punishment but weak on compassion. But what a lie! He’s hot on both. And what’s amazing is that his mercy wins out. That’s why Jonah responds as he does in (8&9)

8 Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. 9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

He concludes his psalm with a simple contrast. On the one hand we can cling to worthless idols. Idols are the substitutes that we fashion to replace God. They’re the things that occupy our affections and ambitions. They take our religious devotion and they give us nothing in return. Though they make us happy for a while none of them can save us from hell for heaven. If we cling to idols we’ll sink to the depths and experience only judgement. On the other we can call upon the Lord for whom salvation is His thing. This is what He does. He saves people.

Imagine for a moment that you’re drowning in a swimming pool. Two people throw things towards you. One is a life belt and the other is a brick. Which would you grab as your life ebbs away into unconsciousness? Which is it going to be? Cling to idols and sink or call on the Lord and be saved? It’s a ‘no-brainer’ isn’t it?

As I mentioned at the start, these events are fulfilled in the experience Jesus Christ and in all who follow him.

a. It’s a foreshadowing of Jesus’ experience

Turn with me to Matthew 12.

38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” 39 But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 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. 41 The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

In response to the frequent requests for a sign Jesus offered only one, the sign of Jonah. The sign of Jonah is his experience of salvation from judgement. He went down into the depths under God’s condemnation but God sent a fish to rescue him. At the point of God’s judgment he received God’s salvation. Jesus reflected on Jonah’s experience and said that it would be just like that for the Son of Man. He points us to the cross where he would be forsaken in judgment abandoned for our rebellion yet saved three days later in resurrection. In both Jonah’s miraculous rescue and Jesus’ death and resurrection we see the grace of God in the midst of the judgement of God. As far as Jesus was concerned the cross is sufficient evidence to convince us to believe in him. In fact on the day of God’s final judgment the men of Nineveh will condemn our unbelief because as we’ll see next week they repented on the basis of less information. They’ll stand up at the judgement and say, ‘you muppets, why didn’t you repent, all we had was a bloke smelling of fish but you had the cross’.

b. It’s a foreshadowing of our own experience.

If we’re a believer this account is a foreshadowing of our own salvation. If we belong to Jesus Christ we share in his salvation from judgement. We’ve been rescued from the depths of hell and brought back to life in resurrection by the grace of God. We don’t deserve it, our situation was helpless Therefore it ought to provoke in us three things. Look at (9)

9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

i. we need to make sacrifices to the Lord: not animals in Jerusalem but lives at the Lord’s disposal

ii. we need to fulfil our vows and be obedient to the Lord’s commission to take the gospel to the nations

iii. we need to rejoice in our salvation from hell for heaven and  actively remember God’s mercy to us

Conclusion

Act 2 concludes with one final event.

10 And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

At the Lord’s command the fish vomits him onto terra firma. Surely a chastened Jonah is a changed man. Yes and no. He’s going to be obedient this time round of that we have no doubt, he’s said so. But there’s still no repentance. Even his vow to pay what he owed smacks of obligation rather than delight. He’ll go but only because he doesn’t want a repeat of the watery brush with death. But one thing is absent, he lacks compassion for others. He’s happy that his own skin has been saved but at the end of chapter 2 he’s not about to head off to Nineveh, he has to be told that in chapter 3. I wonder whether that’s why the fish couldn’t stomach him.

We need to take the message of this chapter to heart. God is a God who judges but He’s also a God who has mercy to those who call on Him. When we pray to the true and living God we’ll learn the lesson of our life. Salvation belongs to the Lord. And so judgment needn’t be the last word God speaks into our lives.