Dennis Tuuri

# Jonah 2: Personal Salvation

Sermon text is Jonah chapter 2. Actually, I’ll begin reading at the last verse of chapter 1, verse 17, through the end of chapter 2. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Jonah, beginning at 1:17.

“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. Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, saying, ‘I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. 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. Then I said, “I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.” The waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped about my head. At the roots of the mountains I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever.

Yet you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the LORD.’ And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your word. Bless us now with an understanding of it. Help us, Father, to see great hope and comfort in this text in the midst of our particular trials and tribulations. Help us to see in this text the advent—not just of troubles upon our life as in Jonah chapter 1, preparing us for your work—but then to see your work itself in salvation. Thank you for the coming of Jesus Christ who came to save sinners. In his name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

So there’s a great transition from Jonah chapter 1 to Jonah chapter 2. And in a way, Jonah 2 can be seen as sort of bracketed by one and three. In Jonah chapter 1, we see the conversion of a group of people, right? And we see Jesus portrayed in that by a substitute—Jonah being cast overboard and dying, as it were, for the sailors. And he’s willing to do that, friends. He’s willing to die for the sake of those sailors’ lives so that the sea would become calm. And that’s what happens.

And then after chapter 2, we see an even greater number—a much greater number of people, the great city of Nineveh. Next week we’ll see the significance of Nineveh in the history of the Bible, and it’ll add more weight to the story for you, I’m sure. But we’ll see that great city Nineveh, emblematic of all humanity, converted through the preaching and proclamation of Jonah.

So we’ve got these areas of group salvation on either side. And then in the middle of them, we have an intensely personal account. Now Jonah is removed from all humanity. Now it’s just him and the ocean and the great fish and the Lord God. And so I think that what we’re seeing here is at the center of this narrative of evangelism and salvation—the advent of trials that prepare people in the world for salvation through Jesus, and then the advent of eventually the conversion of all the world, we could say, or at least the great city in chapter 3. In the midst of that, we see the advent of Jesus Christ for what we might say is personal salvation. Although it’s not Jonah coming to faith for the first time, it is certainly a salvation account, and we’ll look at that in some detail.

What we’re going to do is we’ll look at that first by way of the structure. On the first page of your handout, just to sort of see the general movement of the text, there’s an arc to that particular narrative. And then we’ll look specifically at the prayer itself, which encompasses most of chapter 2—the prayer, psalm, song, whatever we want to call it. And we’ll look at that in some detail, in reference particularly, noting how filled it is with allusions to the Psalter. So it’s very psalmlike. That’s what we’ll do.

Right now we’re beginning a transition into this very personal story of Jonah. And if last week we talked about the need to serve and the need to skate or die and the need to see our job in reference to other people and the communities in which we live, this week the focus of this Advent sermon is God’s interaction with you personally and more or less, you know, without mediation. Right? Jonah has the word of God, and he’s clearly studied it a lot. He knows it. He delights in it. And as a man who is bathed in Scripture, in the midst of his difficulties, his words are filled with scriptural references as they should be. So there is some mediation of God’s word involved, but this is Jonah and the Lord going on in chapter 2. And so it’s very germane to us when we think of Advent to think in terms of the great big themes of it—that Jesus is coming to save the world. But it’s also important to think about our own personal interaction with the Lord and his advent to us.

Now, before we get into looking at this arc of the narrative here, I want to say a word again about Jonah in chapter 1 and its relationship to chapter 2. As I said last week, Jonah means “dove.” So we had kind of a great recreation or de-creation, recreation picture going on in chapter 1, and now it becomes intensely personal. We also said that there’s a relationship between what’s happening in the book of Jonah and Peter, one of the disciples. John S. pointed out a few things to me about this week in one of his emails, and I wanted to mention it to you.

What we have is that Peter, of course, is referred to as the son of Jonah. Now, in the King James and New King James, that’s what it says—”Peter, son of Jonah”—three times in the Gospel of John, in the closing chapter. Now, other biblical or original texts, Greek texts actually, say “son of John.” So if you’ve got an ESV or an NIV, it’s going to say “son of John.” But in the textual tradition of the KJV and New KJV, it’s “son of Jonah.” But both textual versions in Matthew’s gospel—Jesus refers to Peter as the son of Jonah. So there’s no doubt the Gospel writers are making this association—or rather, God is making this association between Peter and Jonah.

And it’s interesting. If you look at the King James translation in John, in the closing verses of John’s Gospel, you may not remember this, but remember they’re fishing. They see Jesus on the shore. They come to the shore, and before the boat gets there, Peter jumps out of the boat, right? He goes through the ocean, the water. He arrives on shore, dripping wet, of course, and embracing Jesus. And it’s at that point in the narrative where Jesus talks to Peter three times about the need to pastor his people and to be a pastor representing Christ, right? You know those three questions? Well, each of those three questions is prefaced by the address “Peter, son of”—and in the King James and New King James, “Jonah, son of Jonah.” So it’s interesting that if we saw the relationship to Peter and Jonah in chapter 1, in chapter 2 we also see a relationship.

Jonah, by the end of this account, is going to be spewed onto the land, having gone through the water and probably clothed in some sort of liquid. We don’t know what—but maybe seawater, maybe whatever it is in the belly of this fish. But he comes out on the land. Then, in the same way, Peter emerges from being in the water onto the land, and Jesus refers to him as the son of Jonah. So it’s a connection in the text. And what happens then? Well, Jonah is going to go to Nineveh, and he’s going to save man and beast there, right? And we’ll talk about that more next week—why beasts or cattle are talked about there. But what about Peter? Well, Jesus asks—rather, tells—Peter to feed his sheep, right? To feed his people, which are designated as animals again. So there’s a connection. And just as Jonah, by the end of chapter 2, is vomited out on the land so that he can then go and win a Gentile bride, we could say, for Yahweh—convert a people who are part of the bride of Yahweh. That’s the imagery in the Old Testament and the New. In the same way, Peter, having come out of that water, comes to the shore, called “son of Jonah,” asked about, commissioned to feed the lambs, and given then this commission to again secure a bride for his people. And then when we see that played out, well, then we see the connections back to chapter 1, in the book of Acts, where Peter goes to Joppa and then is sent as the first representative to the Gentiles, to Cornelius, et cetera.

So there are these connections, and there’s this connection to Peter specifically from chapter 2 because of this emergence from the waters and then being referred to as the son of Jonah. So that’s the transition. We’re going now from de-creation, recreation imagery. And there’s still a little of that here. We’re in a flood situation. The dove is in the flood, but mostly this is an intensely personal account of Jonah’s salvation, we can say.

So let’s look at this. One last word before we get to these personal accounts, and that is that there is still a little bit of corporate stuff going on here in that we can see the associations. Remember we said last week that Jonah isn’t just prophet to Israel. He is prophet as Israel. And Israel is going to be sent into the sea, into the belly of a beast—a series of empires—and that beast will keep Israel safe. In the same way, the beast here is not so much a picture of death, but mostly the great fish is salvation for Jonah. It prevents him from drowning. And so in the same way, you know, Jonah is this picture of Israel in exile, and then Israel is spewed back on the land. Jonah is spewed back on the land. Israel will be brought back, and then they’re supposed to do what’s right. But the book ends in a question, and the question is: Will Israel, once it’s gone through exile and returned, will they indeed have the right attitude? And of course they won’t, because it’s a picture of failure of men and the success of the advent of the one who will bring all this to pass, the Lord Jesus Christ.

By the way, that question at the end of Jonah also connects up with Peter, son of Jonah, in John’s Gospel, right? Because at the end of Jesus’s interaction with Peter, he asks him a question. So we’re left with this question to the audience, identifying with Peter or Jonah: What will we do with the material before us? And significantly, I think here in chapter 2, we’re told specifically what it is that motivates Jonah. And so hopefully our answers will connect up with the experience of Jonah as we go through chapter 2.

So if you take a look at your handout on the first page—is the text. And it really is pretty obvious there’s a movement and a narrative here, right? So the text begins with the Lord. By the way, it begins with the Lord, right? And we read in verse 17, “And the LORD.” So this is not a story of Jonah and the whale. Ultimately, this is a story of the Lord. And John interprets it that way. By the end of his prayer, he says, “Salvation belongs to the LORD.” And I think that’s a comprehensive term. It just doesn’t mean just that we can’t save ourselves. It is the nature of the LORD to save, okay? I think that’s what he’s saying at the end.

So Jonah gets that by the end. And if we look carefully at these bookends—at the beginning and then how the narrative ends—they stress not really the story of Jonah. They stress the LORD’s sovereignty, what he is doing in a particular time and in a particular place to affect salvation, because he is the Lord of salvation. So it starts with the Lord in verse 17. So I would circle that if I were you. I’m going to remember that this is a story of the Lord and that the Lord is doing this stuff. And the last verse says the same thing: “Then the LORD spoke to the fish.” By his word, he brings about the resurrection, we could say, or the second commissioning of Jonah. Likely, by the way, he’s back to where he started—he’s back to the Palestinian coast. And now he’ll do it right.

So the Lord then appoints a great fish. We don’t know what kind of fish. Maybe a dogfish shark. We don’t know. It doesn’t make any difference. In a way, this could be a one-off from God, right? This is something special that God is doing. And we don’t need to, you know, get into speculation in terms of what that looked like. The Lord simply appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. So he’s in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Now, this is interesting. If you’re looking at this as the story, right—what was the storyline in chapter one? At the center of it, what was going on? Frantic action. Where’d you come from? Where you going? What’s going on? The storm is going. They’re trying to save themselves. They’re dumping stuff overboard. They’re rowing hard. They’re asking Jonah a million questions. It’s a frantic thing going on. But now, now we’re in relax time. Now it’s reflection time. I mean, Jonah sinks down, and that’s pretty frantic for him, as we’ll see. But when God sends the fish to swallow him up, he’s in there three days and nights. Yes, it’s obvious the reference to Jesus in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. So we have to say that the fish, even though it’s salvation for Jonah, is salvation through another picture of death, right? So there is a relationship to death. But mostly it’s that he’s being saved, and we’ll get to that in a couple of minutes. But the point is he’s got three days and nights in there. He’s got time to reflect on his situation, his distress, what’s happened to him. He’s got time to think, to think reflectively, to bring to bear what he knows about God and the Scriptures. And he’s got time to compose his own psalm.

Now, prophets were particularly good at that. I mean, this is what they did. They wrote stuff. They were good at language, most of them. We always think, you know, God just sort of grabs a guy and throws all this stuff into his head and he starts writing like an automaton or something. It doesn’t normally work that way, right? He uses Paul’s learning. He uses Luke’s medical knowledge and ability to document things, et cetera. He uses how—he said he’s prepared men for particular jobs, and Jonah is one of these prophets that knows how to write. He’s a man of letters, and specifically, he’s a man of letters. If you’re a writer, what you want to do is be well-versed in the Scriptures, because that’s the ultimate song of songs. Those are the best psalms. Those are the best narratives. There it is. You’ve got your grist for the mill by understanding and getting in line with how God writes, and that’ll make you a better writer. So Jonah, he can do this stuff. He knows how to write poetry. Most of these prophets did. So this is not against his nature. And in that three days and three nights, in that period of time, now the fish is doing his job, right? Jonah is contemplating, and the fish is swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming, depositing him on the shore for a task. But in the midst of that, in the midst of his difficulties and distress, now he’s got time to reflect on what God is doing.

And brothers and sisters, the point of what I’m going to be saying today is that as we look at this text, what’s in it for us? Well, this tells us a lot about our own personal trials and tribulations. When we look at the specific language of Jonah’s prayer from the belly of the fish—his song, his psalm—it’s general enough to where it fits any particular circumstance, much like the Psalms are. Yeah, we can think through historic things, and there’s some references to the ocean here, but you know, the ocean is used throughout the Old Testament as an image for other sorts of trials and tribulations. So what we have in Jonah 2 is the meditations and reflections and the processing of tremendous problems. And as we go through tremendous difficulties, right, there are times of contemplation that will assist us in thinking through these things. He had three days and nights. You may not have that much time, but there are times at which you have time to sit and reflect. And that’s important for you to process the difficulties, the trials, and tribulations the way Jonah does here.

So there’s three days and three nights. And then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish. And that’s why we know this was composed there, in this time of reflection. And then the second section is saying, and then he records now his deal. So we’ve got God doing this stuff, Jonah thinking, and then praying, and then we’ve got the content of his prayer, his psalm, his song. And then at the end, of course, what we’ve got is the LORD speaking, the LORD acting again—he speaks to the fish, spews him out. So it’s a simple ABA sort of structure. Now, there’s a little bit more to it, and I’m not saying this is the end, the last word—it probably isn’t. It’s fairly simplistic, kind of a topical movement of this narrative, but it’s interesting to me that in the B section, Jonah says, “I called out to the LORD out of my distress he answered me out of the belly of Sheol I cried and you heard my voice.” Now I think that’s a separate section, and we’ll get to the next page of the outline in a couple of minutes. That’s the summary of what Jonah has experienced, so he summarizes it first. But he talks here about his distress and the summary is that God delivered him.

Well, that matches up with the B-prime section at the bottom of the page with what? With thanksgiving. Jonah is pledging to give thanks, to pay his vows to God. It’s a thanksgiving psalm. And it’s a psalm of thanksgiving in the midst of the belly of a fish, in the midst of not knowing yet where that fish is taking him, in the midst of darkness without light, right? How does he know it’s three days and three nights? We don’t know. Maybe he didn’t. But whatever it is, you see, my point is he offers the thanksgiving in the midst of continuing trials and difficulties. Yes, there’s been salvation from being drowned, but he’s in this belly of a fish. Can you imagine Sharon’s coloring page drawing at the last page of your handouts today? You know, you got a little dead fish, bones in there and stuff. You probably got some gastric juices. I don’t know what all is in there, but it is not a pleasant passageway. It’s not the kind of—you know, a birth you want on a ship traveling across the ocean necessarily. It’s not pleasant. And in the midst of difficulties, great difficulties being encompassed now by a fish—he talks about being encompassed by the waves, the water, right? Closed in. Well, think of it now. If you’re claustrophobic like I am, man, being in the belly of that fish… And you know what? Everybody’s claustrophobic, because the Bible says that hell is being hemmed in, and that salvation is a broad place, right? So there’s a sense in which we all kind of resonate with that, whether it’s literal closing in or being closed in by circumstances and difficulties of our life. But the point I’m trying to make here is he gives a summary that God has delivered him. And he matches that by the end with saying that he’ll give thanks to God for that deliverance.

So it kind of fits topically. The narrative moves from God saving Jonah for a particular task, right? He spews him out on land for a task. And that summary of Jonah’s experience is matched with his statement that he’ll give thanks to God for the experience itself, for what’s happened, for his deliverance. Now the C and C-prime goes into the details of what Jonah went through. “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.” So now he describes the actual occurrences in some detail. He wants you to identify with it. He wants you to feel that difficulty, the pain and problems he was going through. And at first he says, “Well, I am driven away from your sight. Yet I shall again look to your holy temple.” As he’s going down, right? “Well, I’ll look to your temple. I it’s what I should do, and God will probably save me.” But then look at the middle section. “The waters closed in over me to take my life.” The loss of hope is there in the D section. “The bars closed upon me forever.” Now the C sections match up because both of them reference the temple. “I’ll see the temple again, and your prayers—my prayers are heard in your temple.” And so C moves from “you casting me out. He’s going down.” And that matches up with, after the middle section, “God brings him up. You brought me up out of all of that.” So the thanksgiving based on the summary statement, then the next bookends—is a description of God casting him down but still hoping in the temple, and God bringing him up because he heard Jonah’s prayers in his temple. So they kind of match up.

And if that’s right, it means that the center of the narrative is loss of hope. The turning point is giving up. The turning point is saying, “Well, my sins.” And of course, that’s what’s going on here. Jonah has been cast into the water for his sins. His disobedience to Yahweh is why the storm comes upon the sea. He’s not mad at the pagans. He’s mad at his people who won’t skate or die, right? So they’re going to die. So he’s going down. And my sins are such that I cannot save myself. And the LORD God is consigning me to hell. That’s what Jonah thinks. That’s what that middle section is. “The waters closed in over me to take my life. Uh-oh. I’m dead. The deep surrounded me.” He’s going down, down, down. Less and less light. The deep is all around him now. He can’t breathe. He doesn’t know where he’s at, but he knows he’s going down, down, down. “Weeds are wrapped around my head.” Now the weeds are growing at the bottom of that ocean, the Mediterranean Sea in this case. So now he’s stuck, and not only can he breathe, now he can’t have freedom either, because the seaweed is sort of caught him—is the picture. And he’s stuck now in this trap. “He’s dying at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever.” “Forever.” That’s the middle section, I think. Complete loss of hope, complete acknowledgment. You know, we could say that if God treats with us according to our sins, there is no hope. The bars of death, of hell, of being away from God will close upon us forever and ever.

So I think the turning point here—you know, that God had taken him down in C, and he’s going to bring him up in C-prime—a turning point has happened. He’s given a summation of all this, but then he’s actually pledged thankfulness to God at the end of it. He’s been cast into the ocean, and the fish has swallowed him, and the fish will spew him back out. He’ll be freed. That transition then that goes in the A, B, and C sections is based upon an utter hopelessness on Jonah’s part. A full realization that he’s dying. He’s not coming out of this alive—is the imagery that’s used here. A loss of hope. And you’ll remember that the sailors were the same way. “Cast everything you want out of the boat, it’s not going to do the task. Row as hard as you want, it’s not going to do the task. What’s going to do the task is the substitutionary atonement of the greater Jonah, the LORD Jesus Christ, who dies for our sins.”

And here, what’s going to do the task is a contemplation of that and God’s mercy to Jonah based upon the advent then, ultimately, of salvation from another. He has no hope in himself. And our distresses, brothers and sisters, come upon us to teach us that lesson over and over and over again—that ultimately, yeah, we got things we got to do. Jonah’s going to be commissioned. He was supposed to do things. You know, he’s going to do things. But ultimately, the advent of Jesus Christ is the advent of gospel mercy—that our works cannot save us. That we are consigned to the depths of hell. And our trials and tribulations that seem so horrifically enclosing to us are given to us to remind us of the gospel over and over and over again. The bars of death enclose us forever, apart from that gospel ministry, that gospel mercy of Yahweh, whose very character is to bring us to the end of ourselves so that he might deliver us and receive thanksgiving and praise from us. That’s what’s going on here.

I mean, he’s punishing Jonah’s sins, but ultimately Jonah can’t get out of the punishment for those sins through anything in himself. He has to acknowledge his eternal death is what will happen based on what he does. He needs salvation to be of the LORD, ultimately through the substitutionary atonement of the LORD Jesus Christ, taking upon himself the suffering for us.

So the overall narrative moves that way. We’re moved to thanksgiving through an acknowledgment of our complete inability to do anything to save ourselves and a desire for the grace of God. Now, remember that so ultimately, at the center then, is a complete loss of hope—a loss of hope in ourselves. So that our only hope then is in the grace and salvation of Yahweh. We’re brought to our end so that Yahweh might be exalted in his deliverance of us. And remember that the thanksgiving here that Jonah offers is thanksgiving not, you know, when the misery is fully over, but in the context of that misery.

Now let’s look at the second page of your handouts. And what I’ve done here is, and it’s—I did it kind of hurriedly. I don’t know if it’s all that helpful to you or not, but I hope it is. We have here just the actual middle part, right? So it’s ABA—Yahweh’s doing this, Yahweh’s doing that. In the middle, Jonah writes this psalm. We’re going to look at the psalm now for a couple of minutes separate from the movement of the first page and look at four different elements that seem to comprise it. And each of those four elements are echoes of the Psalter. And so I’ve got “Praying the Psalms” at the top of this.

You know, did Jonah pray from the belly of the fish? Well, in one sense he didn’t, and in one sense he did. I mean, he did because it says he prayed. But so often we think that Jonah goes down, is swallowed by the fish, and that’s where he prays for salvation. But that’s not the imagery here, right? The imagery is he’s going down in the water. The seaweed captures him. He’s locked up forever. And that’s where his prayer went out—was in the midst of his difficulties in the sea. And the fish is really an answer to his prayers for salvation. That’s instructive, too, because a lot of times the answer to our prayers, you know, we’re looking for relief—won’t necessarily look like relief. I mean, it doesn’t, you know, you’d think that if you’re praying in the midst of water and drowning and darkness and you can’t breathe, and then you’re closed in by the seaweed and you’re just struggling for all you’re worth, you’d hope that well, salvation would look like “boom, I’m on the land. It’s bright out. It’s sunny. There’s great things. Maybe a nice cooked meal.” Whatever it is. That’s not how it normally works. It’s not how it always works. It’s not how it worked here. He gives thanksgiving for the deliverance of the fish, and he’s in that belly, in that dank, dark environment. And sometimes that’s what salvation looks like.

Well, in any event, so he does pray from the belly of the fish, but he doesn’t really pray for deliverance. He prays thanksgiving. This psalm is not a prayer for deliverance. This psalm acknowledges an earlier prayer for deliverance. But what it is—is a psalm of thanksgiving to Yahweh for deliverance. And that’s what he composes in the belly of the whale.

Okay. So the summary statement then, looking at “Yahweh’s Deliverance”: “I called out to the LORD out of my distress. He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol, I cried and you heard my voice.” So the “belly of Sheol” is interesting. The place of the dead. And you would probably think about the belly of the fish. But again, what I’m saying is it seemed like that prayer for salvation happens at the bottom of the ocean. And so the belly of Sheol is the bottom of the ocean. And you can sort of see it as well in the belly of the fish. But the fish is both death and resurrection in terms of imagery. It’s the answer. It’s salvation for Jonah. But the point I want to make first here is that this is a very generalized summation. You know, you’ve got deathlike stuff. “From the center of death, I cried and you heard me. Out of my distress, you answered me.” Notice, by the way, that when God hears, it’s not “oh, he heard my prayer.” No, it’s “he heard and answered.” That’s what hearing is. God is not like us. He doesn’t just hear things and not react. He—when he hears a prayer, he’s answering it in the hearing of it.

But what I want you to see here is the generalized description of Jonah’s distress, the belly of death. The Psalms are like that. They’re, you know, what some would say, pancultural, panaltitudinal. In other words, all cultures, all difficult circumstances, distresses, trials, troubles, encounters with deathlike things—these are all included in this summary statement. And the Psalms are the same way. Yeah, you can sort of see some specific elements going on here with Jonah and the water, but there’s all kinds of psalms like that. And not because somebody was in water. The sea and water, et cetera, are images for death or for resurrection. But my point is just that the Psalms and this particular psalm by Jonah—they’re intended for you to use. They’re not intended for you to say, “Well, if I ever fall overboard, I can pray this psalm.” No, they’re intended so that you, when you have distress in your life, can understand this psalm, pray it, and express your commitments to God in it. Okay? Or in psalmlike statements of your own. So immediately the text takes on a significance for us because of the way it’s written in a generalized way.

The summation particularly, all of a sudden, we can be brought into the story, right? And so, you know, Kathy up there with her son who might have parts of him being cut off, going through all these operations, burned—and again, we’ll have an offering for Sean’s family and that house fire today connected to the benevolence offering of communion. But those are deep waters for a mom. Can you imagine? No, of course you can’t. I mean, some of you have gone through similar things. Deep waters. You feel like there’s nothing you can do. The circumstances get worse, and then you got to deal with this. Well, then there are people involved, and the people she’s having to deal with—some of them are quite one of them is particularly evil. And so these circumstances—and I didn’t ask her permission. But the point is, each of us are going through things at different times in our lives that have distress, and we feel like we’re in the belly of Sheol.

This psalm relates to us in those things. The advent of the salvation of Jesus comes to us as we go through those trials and tribulations. You know, there’s death experiences that are going on in our lives frequently, several times in a lifetime of real intensity, but frequently, right? Illness, you know, if you’ve had a bad illness and you just feel like those waves are crashing over you and you try to fight it and it gets worse and you’re down, you know, for days, you feel like you’re going to die, right? So illness can be this sort of distress. And so this psalm can be our psalm when we go through the distress of illness.

Financial woes, right? A lot of people over the last few years—our finances are crashing and burning, and all of our hopes for the future are taken away, and we’re cast into this ocean of financial difficulties, and it doesn’t get better. It just seems to get worse, and there’s a long slow grinding downward movement in our financial health, and we’re liquidating assets, or we’re not making any progress, and we feel trapped. We feel like there’s seaweed wrapped around our heads, holding us to this lousy, deathlike state, and the waves are crashing over us of new bills and new problems, right? And this psalm is intended to address us in that. It’s general enough to talk about those things.

Interpersonal relationships. You can—every relationship starts to break down, and you can’t find a friend, you know, to save your soul, so to speak, and you feel isolated, and it just seems to get worse, and you’re sort of trapped. You’re trapped in these particular friendships and associations, and yet they’re the very ones that remind you all the time that nobody—at least you think—really loves you. I mean, we all go through these things, folks. At least a number of us do. Interpersonal relationships can just be deathlike, tremendous distress to us.

Marriage relationships, right? You know, we’ve got a couple of women here that have had to go through a complete death experience in terms of the person they wanted to live the rest of their lives with. I mean, and as you’re starting to experience that in a relationship, as divorce starts to work its way through, or just through separation of goals and visions, excommunication, whatever it is, you know—you can feel like man, this is just deathlike. I don’t know what to do. And you get panicky, not sure what you should do. Then you calm down, you try to think, “well, it’ll be okay.” You feel a little bit of hope. And then, you know, the next thing happens, and the seaweed feels like it’s wrapped you around the neck, and you can’t breathe, and waves are crashing over you. And it’s distress. It’s distress and difficulties.

You don’t need any of that external stuff. You can experience that just in the depth of your own soul, for no reason at all. The LORD might bring to pass, in his providence, a depression upon you. Maybe he’s made you prone to depression. And those who have suffered through depression—I, you know, I’ve never really gone through it as much as some people have in this congregation—but they’ll tell you that it’s you can’t get out. It’s like a big black hole, and you fall down into it just like Jonah fell through the layers of water till he’s at the bottom, and he can’t see this way or that, and he feels trapped and he’s stuck down there. And you know, people say, “Well, just get up. Get moving.” I can’t, man. The depression has wrapped me up like seaweed. I can’t breathe. I don’t know what to do. Depression can be a similar sort of distress that connects up with this setting.

And Jonah says he’s cut off from the presence of God. And so let’s throw that one into the mix. Maybe you’re doing fine with relationships and marriage and finances and depression, but you feel like God isn’t there. You feel cut off from the presence of God. Maybe you are. Maybe you’ve become fairly secular in your perspective, and God isn’t alive for you anymore in your own life personally, and you don’t really know how to get out of that. And it can feel again like entrapment. The entrapment of that secular perspective. You’re cut off from God. You’re not sure how to get back. You’re not sure if he wants you back. Even there’s all kinds of things that we go through as some of us age. You better understand that as you age, it’s just not all “oh, we get wise and happy and great.” No, there—aging is a series of death movements, right? In one sense, your body doesn’t work the way it did. Your mind doesn’t work the way it did. You can’t do all the things you used to do, and you become feebler and feebler. And there’s no way to get out of it. You’re trapped. You’re confined again in that particular state of mind. It’s distress.

Well, and I’m sure there’s, you know, a dozen others that I haven’t mentioned here. But all those distresses, brothers and sisters, are identifiable with what Jonah is going through here. Now, Jonah was a good guy. Yeah, yeah. I know. He, you know, fought God’s plan for Nineveh, but he gets on it. But even when he’s fighting God’s plan for Nineveh, he’s willing to die for those sailors. Let’s not, you know, write Jonah off as some kind of bad guy. So as you go through your distress, Jonah is a reminder to us that good people go through those things. Now, it’s for his sin here, but sometimes it’s not. And so this psalm is a reminder to us that it’s okay, you know, to identify with this, to cry out to God in it. And the psalm reminds us that we may completely lose hope. That’s at the center. And yet, even when we lose hope, that’s when God acts. When he takes us to the end of ourselves frequently, that’s when God brings us then salvation. So the psalm is a psalm of hope. It’s a psalm of hope mediated through tremendous distresses.

And that’s all given to us here in the summary statement. And I’ve got some citations from the Psalms there, right? For instance, in Psalm 18:6, “In my distress, I called upon the LORD; to my God, I cried for help. From his temple, he heard my voice.” Those are—that’s almost verbatim the first half of it. Psalm 120:1, “In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me.” See, you know, he’s just basically praying the Psalms here, even with reference to Sheol. Psalm 30:3, “O LORD, you have brought up my soul from Sheol.” So that’s the summation.

And then we get to his particular distress. “You cast me into the deep.” All right. So we got all these problems that happen. And yeah, there may be human agency involved. But ultimately, what did Jonah tell the sailors? God created all this. He’s in charge of all of this. So when the problems happen, when the waves crash over our heads, Jonah acknowledges the sovereignty of God. And we must in our problems. “You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me. All your waves, your billows passed over me.” And the idea here is they’re just coming one after the other. You know, it’s not just one-time thing. There’s a continual process here where he’s just being engulfed by this sea, and waves are billowing over him. He’s trying to stay up, but he can’t stay up. He’s trying to do, you know, stay alive, but he can’t. The waters are taking him down, down, down.

“I am driven away from your sight. Yet, I shall again look upon your holy temple.” He’s got hope at first. And you’ve gone through this, I’m sure, when you go through your distress. At first, you have hope. But then the billows keep happening. The waves keep going over you. And you’re sinking now. Now you’re not just struggling against problems. Now the problems have won, and you’re sinking beneath them, brothers and sisters. That’s what happens to Jonah. First, he says, “Yeah, yeah, it’ll be okay.” And then “the waters closed in over me.” So you get the picture. He’s struggling away at the top of the ocean to stay alive, and he’s going to see God again. He’s got hope in him, and then that goes away, and he sinks below the waters themselves.

“The waters closed in over me to take my life. Deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped about my head. Foots—roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever. Forever.” And so this is great distress, but it’s all distress that’s happened from the hand of God. So Jonah begins with a summation, then describes his particular distress. And I’ve given you a number of Psalms there that seem to reflect the wording, the very specific wording that Jonah uses as well. Now, I’ve got a verse in there, 2 Chronicles 6:38, that is a reminder that this is Israel in exile as well. When Israel is in exile, when they have problems, they’re supposed to pray toward God’s holy temple. Pray toward the temple, and God will hear and answer them. And Jonah does that. He prays toward God’s holy temple. So he’s kind of like Israel in exile. But mostly here, what we’re stressing, and what the chapter stresses, is his own personal trials and struggles.

Psalm 116:3, “The snares of death encompassed me. The pangs of Sheol laid hold upon me.” So—summary statement, depiction of his distress that we can relate to, and then “Yahweh’s Deliverance” is the third section. “Yet you”—again, the sovereignty of God. “You brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God. Full expression that Yahweh is our strong one and deliverer. “When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD. My prayer came to you into your holy temple.” So God has heard from that temple. And what does it tell us? It tells us in the midst of all the distresses and trials we have, we remember the gospel. When he says, “I remembered you,” it’s not like “Oh, yeah, there’s Yahweh. I can pray to him.” That’s not what’s going on. He’s remembering who Yahweh is. That salvation belongs to the LORD. That Advent season is a reminder that Jesus came to save us from our sins. That’s what Jonah’s being saved from here, and from all of our distresses. The LORD God has come to save us. And whatever circumstance we find ourselves, we’re to remember the LORD—at the bottom of that black sack of illness, approaching death, depression, problems with relationships, you know, God taking away our very—close half of us, ripping it apart from us in marriages that have tremendous troubles. In the midst of that, we’re to remember the character of Yahweh. We’re to remember who he is. What is it? It’s the gospel. It’s the good news that Jesus has acted to accomplish our salvation. Everything is being mediated to us through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Advent certainly is about saving the Gentile sailors. And next week, it’s certainly about Jesus coming to save the whole world. But friends, brothers, and sisters, at the heart of this, in the middle of those three chapters, the gospel, the advent of Jesus Christ, Christmas is about Jesus coming to save us from our sins. And we remember that, or at least that’s what we’re called to remember as we remember Jonah’s distress and God’s deliverance.

God’s deliverance comes in relationship to a memory of who he is, a calling to mind who he is. And then there’s the response to grace, which is what this is. Pure grace of God has to be responded to. “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you.” Well, it’s kind of ironic, isn’t it? Because this is happening down in the ocean with this fish, right? But up on top of the ocean, in that ship that he had been tossed out of, the sailors who had relied upon vain idols—which are nothings. That’s kind of the intent of the word here. Who are looking to nothing for salvation. They’ve turned away from those, and they have indeed found mercy from God. And they’re sacrificing and giving their vows to him just like Jonah’s doing at the bottom, right?

Jonah says, “Well, you know, if you rely on idols, no hope. But I will sacrifice and pay praise to God. You know, praise God and thank his name and commit myself in service to him.” Some people see this as hypocrisy. I don’t think I see it quite that way. I think instead it’s almost confession, because Jonah is where he is because of his sin. I think he had a vain idol, and I think the vain idol—which will continue with him. His sanctification isn’t done—is that too much love for his people, for his family, for his church, right? Remember I said last week that’s what upsets him. He’s not mad about Gentiles becoming Christians. He wanted all those sailors to become believers, right? But he knows that when Nineveh converts, it’ll be the beginning of the end for Israel and Judah. His people are going to be burned with fire, taken into captivity. But in any event, I think this is confession. Whatever the vain idol was, you know, Jonah, I think, recognizes that he’s turned from that and is going to worship God. And at the top of the water, the sailors are doing the very thing. This is exactly what’s happened in their history. They’ve forsaken now the idols that they look to in which there is no hope, right? And instead they’ve turned to Yahweh, and they’re doing just what Jonah says he is doing—they’re doing on top of the water. So it shows us a double witness of the response to the advent of Jesus Christ to save sinners.

What is our response? Well, “With the voice of thanksgiving, I will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the LORD.” So there’s a one-time act here of Jonah saying, “Okay, hey, you’ve saved me. Praise God. I’m going to give you thanksgiving. And then there’s a commitment to continually do that. I’m going to continue to… My vow has to do with the future. It starts in the present. What you’re doing here today is the end of this psalm. You’ve come here because you’re in the belly of the fish—the church of Jesus Christ, right? You’ve been saved from your sins. You’re here, joyful recipients of the advent of the one who brings the gospel to you and who applies the gospel to you day after day after day, if we’re getting with the program here.

And your response is you’re coming here to give thanks to Yahweh, to give thanks to Jesus Christ, to give thanks in the power of the Spirit. That’s why you’re here. You’re at the end of the thing. You know that whatever’s going on out there, whatever trials and tribulations, and you got to go back to some of them, but whatever they are, you know that your job, your primary job, your first and foremost great joy of life is to get together in the belly of the beast here, in the whale that saved you—or fish that saved you, a picture of the greater fish, Jesus Christ in the church. The ribs of the beast are around us. And we get together, and just like Jonah in that place praised God and thanked him. So we come together. Ultimately, this service is the proclamation again of the advent of the gospel and the response of God’s people with thanksgiving praise to him and commitments to serve him into the future.

“What I vow I will pay.” When you come forward with tithes and offerings, or whether you sit in your seat, brothers and sisters, I hope every one of you is vowing to serve the God whom you thank today. So that when God spews you out of this thing later on today, you’ll go back proclaiming the great news that you’ve personally experienced in the context of your particular salvation. Jonah will go back. He’ll go back to fulfill his vows to Yahweh. “Salvation belongs to the LORD.” And as I said, I don’t think that just means that he’s the initiator of it, he’s sovereign of salvation. It belongs to him. It is his very character. What is he doing in Jonah? He’s saving you and I. And beyond that, he’s saving the pagan sailors, and he’s going to save the city. He’s saving our little communities. He’s saving the great nation state of Nineveh, founded by Nimrod. It’s going to be the reversal of Babel. We’ll see it next week.

He’s doing cosmically wonderful things, and he’s doing tremendously beautiful things to each of us individually. And he’s doing it because that’s who he is. It is not an exception to his character. It is the very purpose of his character. And there is no greater way that God has of sustaining you in your distresses, in your deaths, in being locked up away with no hope. There’s no greater hope that you’ve been given than knowing that the Lord has brought it to pass. It’s his ways, his billows, and the Lord is doing it—not to punish you. The LORD is doing it to save you, to bring the gospel afresh into your life, to cause you to rejoice in the very character of God, and to give him praise.

“Oh that men would praise the Lord.” Isn’t that what he says? Psalm 107:23. “Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters. They saw the deeds of the LORD, his wondrous works in the deep. He commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven. They went down to the depths. Their courage melted away in their evil plight. They reeled and staggered like drunken men and were at their wits’ end. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad that the waters were quiet, and he brought them out to their desired haven. Oh, that men would give thanks to the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men. Let them exalt him also in the assembly of the people, and praise him in the company of the elders.”

Let’s do just that. Let’s pray.

Almighty God, we praise your holy name. We thank you for the manifestation of your character in the text before us. We thank you for the wonderful summation that indeed salvation is of the LORD. We thank you, Lord God, this is your very character. Forgive us our doubts. Forgive us our sins. Forgive us our rebellions. Forgive us our loss of faith. And acknowledge, Lord God, what we have done before you today. We’ve paid vows to you. We’ve given you thanks. Help us fulfill them in the power of the Spirit this week, by in the midst of our difficulties and distresses, remembering who you are, taking hope in that, and waiting for your deliverance. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.