Give Thanks: Salvation is from the Lord! - Jonah 1:17-2:10

Give Thanks: Salvation is from the Lord!

Jonah 1:17-2:10

Introduction: Once again, my careful planning, months in advance, is evident, as the Sunday before Thanksgiving we come to a text focused on giving thanks to God. No… not really. God in His sovereignty must have planned our fifth week in this series on Jonah, the prophet’s Song of Thanksgiving, to come Thanksgiving week! I did not. In fact, initially I thought we’d be finished with Jonah by now, but you knew better! There is a lot to learn in this little book, a lot to learn about God and a lot to learn about ourselves. We see in this book the holiness of God, His wrath against sin, and also His mercy and grace. We see how he is working in Jonah to mold him into a more usable disciple. We also see Jonah as a mirror that will expose our own hearts that are so prone to wander and rebellious. Last week Pastor Al preached about “Kingdom Prayers: Touching Heaven to Change Earth.” It may be that is a major point of the book of Jonah. But Jonah is not there yet.

       We have seen prayer already in the book of Jonah, but not on the lips of the prophet. The pagan sailors first prayed to their lifeless idols in the storm, and then, they, not Jonah, call on Jonah’s God for mercy. The storm ends suddenly when Jonah is cast into the sea – and the sailors recognize the awesome power and presence of God, and respond to Him in worship as the true God. Jonah’s prayer in chapter 2 shows that finally, as Jonah is sinking into the depths, nearing death, he finally looks up and cries out to God…

The Maine* Idea: In every situation in life we can give thanks to God our Savior!

Context: “I was sinking deep in sin…” (cf. 1:17). We left Jonah in the fish’s belly…

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…

       We know from Jonah’s prayer in chapter 2, that as he was going down, tangled in seaweed, almost out of air, that he prayed to God… and God heard his prayer. Though the answer probably wasn’t what he would have expected!  What would you have thought if you prayed to God for help, then turned around and saw a giant fish coming at you? “God, I said ‘Have mercy’ not ‘I’m Sushi!’” God hears the prayers of his people, and He is good and He does good… all the time. True, the answers might not be what we would expect, but we can trust Him, always. In every situation in life, we can give thanks to God our Savior!

      There is some irony in the language here. The Lord “appointed” a great fish to swallow Jonah, and it does exactly as it was supposed to do, later it vomits him onto the land when God tells it to do so. In chapter 4 the same word is used three more times, as God appoints a plant to grow, a worm to kill the plant, and a scorching wind to blow on Jonah. Nature obeys, precisely fulfilling the role that God had for it. Jonah first resisted God’s call to go to Nineveh, and after a storm, nearly drowning, and three days cramped in the fish’s belly, will he reluctantly obey, though we’ll see that still his heart is not in it, at least not in terms of having  compassion for the Ninevites. Jonah had some lessons still to learn about being thankful to God, our Rescuer, trusting and believing Him in every situation in life.

I. Thank the God who saves: Seeing what we’ve been saved from, we’ll be thankful (2:1-7).

Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish,  ² 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.  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.  ⁴ Then I said, 'I am driven away from your sight; Yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.'  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; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God.  ⁷ When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.

       Jonah’s prayer begins with a general statement, “I called out to the Lord in my distress, and he answered me…” He then addresses God directly, “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and YOU heard my voice…” The two lines are parallel, affirming that God heard Jonah’s cry for help. I called… He answered… I cried… You heard… God hears and answers the prayers of His people. This is the language we see in Psalms of Thanksgiving, songs where the writer looks back and remembers how God has delivered him and answered his prayers in past times of crisis. It is praising the God who saves. Jonah realized that he had been running from God, and he didn’t have any right to expect God to save him. Like the prodigal son when he returned to the Father, “I have no right to be called your son…” But God is rich in mercy. As he prays, Jonah looks back on his near-death experience, as he was about to drown, and recounts how God heard and answered his prayer.

    Jonah also makes it clear that he is not the “innocent victim of blind justice,” cast into the sea by no-good pagans. On the contrary, he recognizes God’s hand in his circumstances…

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.  ⁴ Then I said, 'I am driven away from your sight; Yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.'

       Jonah doesn’t overtly confess his sin as the cause of his circumstances. At least one writer called “repentance” the “missing note” in Jonah’s song. But as He says God is the one who cast Him into the sea, the One who owns the storm, he is implicitly recognizing the judgement, or at least the chastening, of the Father. As his life was nearly slipping away, perhaps in his last seconds of consciousness, he remembered the Lord, and his prayer went up to Him, into His “holy Temple.” (v.7).  As Jonah recognized God’s chastening, He looked up, seemingly with a repentant heart, determined to cry out to God. As I taught this part of Jonah to our Olympian kids, the “sticky thought” we tried to emphasize was, “No matter what, no matter where, talk to God, He is there!” Like the Father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, the Father is always watching and waiting, ready to receive us.  

       Jonah cried out to God in His Temple. Think about the Temple in Jerusalem, which was a tangible representation of the throne of God in heaven. In the holy of holies was the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the tablets of Moses, the Ten Commandments. A gold covered lid, the Mercy Seat, covered the box, with Cherubim on either side. The symbolic presence of God was there, between the Cherubim and above the mercy seat. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would sprinkle blood on the mercy seat. It is a striking picture: All humans are guilty of breaking the commandments, we would have no hope of approaching the Holy One. But God sent the Son, the Lamb of God, who shed his own blood for us. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that the Son, our great High Priest, entered not the earthly Temple, but heaven itself, and not with the blood of a lamb or a goat, but with His own precious blood. Remember what happened to the Temple veil when Jesus died? It was ripped in two, from the top to the bottom. Because of Him, in the name of Jesus, we have access to the God of Heaven who made the sea and the dry land. And so, “No matter what, no matter where, talk to God, He is there!” His mercies are new every morning – that is truly amazing grace! And so, in every situation in life, we can give thanks to God our Savior!

II. Thank the God who is: A Thankful heart will reject vain idols (2:8).

⁸ Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.

       The NLT seems to clarify the sense well: “Those who worship false gods turn their backs on all God's mercies.” Idols are vain, empty, powerless, unable to hear or to help in time of need. Jonah is saying that choosing idols, “gods” that we make up in our own mind, means that we are rejecting the ^chesed, the steadfast love, the covenantal faithfulness of the true God, the God who “is.” Yahweh is the God of Heaven who made the sea and the dry land. He is our Creator, mighty and merciful. The Phoenician sailors had been idol worshipers before the storm. The Ninevites had their false Gods. But the Jews? Modern westerners like us? Does this warning even apply? We would never carve an image, call it our God, and worship it… would we? Tim Keller says,

“An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, ‘If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure’” (Counterfeit Gods, xviii).

Your job, your account balance… Whenever we look somewhere else for our ultimate meaning and purpose and fulfillment in life, we are worshiping the creation rather than the Creator. I truly believe that God wants us to enjoy life in His creation. At its best, we get glimpses of the way life should be, the way life will be, in the New Heavens and the New Earth. But they are only glimpses. Like C.S. Lewis said, we live in the Shadow Lands. The future God has in store for us is more and better than we can imagine! The best part, will be that the veil will be removed, sin will be gone, we’ll know God and fellowship with Him without our vision dimmed by our fallen nature. Because that is our sure hope, even as we live in this fallen world, in every situation in life we can give thanks to God our Savior!

III. Thank God with an offering of praise: A Thankful heart is prepared for true worship (2:9a).

⁹ But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay.

      Think of the faith, and the hope, that is expressed in these words! Jonah is speaking from the fish’s belly!  The English translations all translate this as a contrast with the preceding verse. In contrast to those who give regard to worthless idols, Jonah vows to praise and worship the true God. The implication is that he will experience the ^chesed, the steadfast love, the covenantal faithfulness of the true God, the God who is. That concept is at the heart of God’s dealing with humans. He graciously chose a godly line, and made a promise to keep them, and to one day bring a Seed into the world who would crush the serpent’s head, a Rescuer who would deliver a remnant from every tribe and nation.

       The psalms focus on worship, the response of humans to God. Lament psalms show humans crying out to God, voicing their pain and confusion, pleading for deliverance. Hymns are declarations of praise to the God who is, focusing on his nature and his attributes. Thanksgiving psalms are similar in that they are praise, but they describe how God has delivered and saved the psalmist or the nation and offer praise and thanksgiving for His intervention. That seems to be Jonah’s prayer here. He remembers how he cried out to God and how God answered. He was still in the fish’s belly, but somehow, miraculously, he could breath, he was alive. Only God could have done that! Even if the answers to your prayers have not been what you would have expected, can you trust that God is working, that He is present in your life? Can you believe that He is good, and that He will cause every detail to work together for your good and for His glory? That brings us back to the Maine* Idea: In every situation in life we can give thanks to God our Savior!

IV. Thank God through witnessing: A Thankful heart will proclaim the Good News of Salvation by grace alone (2:9b-10).

“…Salvation belongs to the LORD!"  ¹⁰ And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

      Jonah makes a profound theological declaration. Some have called it the most concise and profound theological statement in the entire Bible: “Salvation belongs to the Lord…” The language of 2:9b is saying that God alone is the source of salvation. He alone gets the glory. Salvation is not something that we can earn, or merit, or add to or complete. As Paul said in I Corinthians 1:30, “He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus…” Jonah couldn’t save himself. And he had no right to expect anything from God but judgment. Neither do we. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. His sacrificial death provided redemption for all who believe. As Jesus said in the Good Shepherd discourse, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me… I give to them eternal life and they shall never perish…” (John 10:27-28). Jonah’s final declaration in the belly of the fish may well have been part of his prayer of thanksgiving, but he also reflected on that as he later wrote the words down in the document that we have before us. So, he is testifying to his readers that the Lord saves, that He is our Rescuer, He alone is the source of life – and the eternal life for which we were created.

        Notice again in v.10 that God speaks to the fish and it obeys. He told the fish to swallow Jonah and it did. Now, as Jonah voices his thanksgiving and worship to God, affirming Him alone as the source of salvation, God speaks to the fish and it “vomits” Jonah onto dry land. That word appears only twelve (12) times in the Hebrew Bible. In every other case there is a negative implication, an expression of disgust or judgement. In Leviticus 18 the word appears three times in a context warning the people not to follow the abominations of the pagans in the land…

²⁴ "Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean,  ²⁵ and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.  ²⁶ But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you  ²⁷ (for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean),  ²⁸ lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.

That is quite a picture, and quite a warning! We’ll see that God was not finished with Jonah. Though the prophet had realized his sin in running from God, and had vowed to obey the Lord’s call and to worship Him, we’ll see that His heart was not yet right with respect to the Ninevites. He did not long for their conversion, but still hoped for their judgement! As he saw His own need for the grace and mercy of God, he still needed to learn to express that same grace and mercy, even to pagans, like the men on the ship, who it seems Jonah never did pray for. Like the inhabitants of Nineveh, who were about to face the judgment of God. Jonah wasn’t there yet, and the fish “vomits” him onto the land… God knows Jonah’s heart, and he will continue to patiently work on Him. Just as he is working on you and me. We’ll see that God gets the last word in this little book, and if we take it that Jonah was the writer, the implication is that Jonah finally gets it…

What is God saying to me in this passage? The Maine* Idea in this passage, in Jonah’s prayer from the fish’s belly, is that in every situation in life, we can give thanks to God our Savior! As Paul told the Philippians, “…do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:6,7).

What would God have me to do in response to this passage? The pilgrims traveled to this continent in search of a new life, the opportunity to live freely and to worship without being persecuted. God supplied their needs through the kindness of some indigenous people, pagans who were ignorant of the true God. Those early days in a New Land had to be very hard, but they could see God’s hand providing, protecting, rescuing them from certain death.

       Jonah was at the brink of death, and he finally cried out to God, and God was ready. The answer must have been on the way before Jonah even prayed, and it came in the form of a great fish! Don’t get distracted in debates about the fish, or the whale, or the sea monster, that is not the point of the story. This story is not about a great fish, it is about a Great God, a God who is real, not an idea made up by humans. A God who has spoken, who has revealed Himself to us. A God who is holy and just, and who is merciful and gracious. A God who works in history for our good, and for His glory.  He is the Father, waiting for the prodigal to turn homeward, to see His need and to trust that God is the only hope… Have you been there? Maybe you are there now. No matter what, no matter where, talk to God, He is there. He loves you so much that he gave his only Son… Salvation is from the Lord… In every situation in life, give thanks to God our Savior!  AMEN.