A Prayer from the Deep

Transcript

We're in week two of Jonah, and this week is going to be especially puzzling for us because we come up against an aspect of God's character that most of us have heard of before but never really get, most of us don't truly believe in our souls. We're going to come up against this aspect of God's character: his deliverance does not depend on our excellence or our behavior. Now when I use the word deliverance, I'm not talking about delivery as in delivering a baby, although pretty much everyone has that on their mind at the moment. I'm not talking about delivery as in two-day free shipping for Amazon Prime members, which is always on my mind. I'm talking about the kind of deliverance that's more like a rescue against all odds, something that no one expects to happen, something that seems to defy logic.

Like when your wife, trying to be sweet and nice, says to you, "Let's watch a movie together, a romantic movie," and you go, "No." Then she entices you, she makes it sweet, there's popcorn involved and hot chocolate involved, and you know that the night is going to be horrible anyway. You're looking forward to hot chocolate, but not a romantic movie. And then it comes on, and you know what? It's kind of cute. The movie wasn't so bad. It kind of, you know, that movie delivered against all odds.

But beyond that, we're talking about deliverance where the God of the universe, creator of the heavens, creator of the seas, the dry land, creator of land animals, sea animals, birds in the air, insects... I don't know why he did that... the creator of man says to one specific man, "I want you to do something for me." And that man says, "Nope." Then God sends a giant fish, of all things, a giant fish, and says, "I'm going to make you do what I told you to do." And the giant fish scoops him up, travels I don't know how far, and spits him out and says, "Get on your way." We're talking about that kind of against-all-odds deliverance, something that should never, ever have happened, that blows our minds, that doesn't seem to make sense in any way. And we're going to learn that when God does deliver, it's not based off of anything that we do, but purely on his grace.

Now, we typically oppose that notion. We don't really believe it. We think that on some level, in some capacity, I can do something that contributes to this transaction. Most of us on some level still think that if I just do something, if I just be good, that will contribute something to this scenario. And even people who don't believe in God say, "If God did exist, surely good people would be blessed and bad people would not." This whole human transactional understanding that we have of what's fair and what's not fair is that good people deserve good things and bad people deserve bad things. It's kind of just ingrained in us.

But today's passage is tough because Jonah is a guy who knows a lot of the Sunday school answers. Obviously his parents sent him to kids' church, and he learned it from a very young age. He knows how to say good things about God. But then when it comes down to doing them, when it comes to getting out there and doing what he's told, he bails and does the exact opposite. It's tough because Jonah's the guy, he's a prophet of God, he's supposed to be the one who knows what to do and does what God says, and then abandons that. So what happens? What happens when someone says one thing and does the opposite? What happens when someone knows what they're supposed to do and chooses not to do that? Does God still deliver people like this? Will he only rescue the people who actually deserve it, who do things to earn things from God? And what happens to someone who thinks they have it all right, thinks that they're doing the right things, thinks that they know things about God and that that will save them, but actually do the wrong thing? And could that be me? Could I be that person?

Go ahead and open your Bibles to Jonah chapter 2. If you have a Bible that looks like this, it's on page 502. If you have a different Bible, then it's right between Obadiah and Micah. You're welcome. Somewhere in the middle you'll find it. Jonah chapter 2. We're going to read the whole thing up front. We're going to make observations about it, so leave your finger in there. We're not going to do the thing where you read a passage, talk about it, read a passage, talk about it. We're just going to read the whole thing up front, so keep your finger in there. Basically, the whole time, it's Jonah praying, and that's why we would do this up-front thing. The whole time is Jonah's prayer. And what's interesting about reading other people's prayers is it gives you an insight into how they think. It gives you an insight into how they relate to God themselves, how they see themselves before God, and how they think God relates to them. And we're going to see that in Jonah chapter 2.

Father God, we praise you and we thank you for this morning. And we pray that you can reveal things to us from your word. And we pray that, most of all, we will grow in our love for you and not depend on ourselves to be saved. We know that we will come up short if that is the case, and we praise and thank you that that is not. Please be moving in our hearts this morning that we may learn from your word and put it into action in our weeks. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, we're going to read the whole chapter up front. But we're going to start in the last verse of chapter 1. So chapter 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. (Jonah 1:17-2:10 ESV)

So Jonah got thrown into the ocean by the sailors in chapter 1. He got swallowed by a giant fish, and while he was living inside that fish for three days, this was the prayer that he prayed.

Now let's keep one thing in mind: Jonah got here by disobeying God. This wasn't just like a random thing that he decided to do. Jonah got here by disobeying God. He was told to go to Nineveh, and instead he planned to go to Tarshish. He was told, head east, but he headed west. The dude is now trapped inside a giant fish.

Most times when we think about this, and in fact most times when it's illustrated, when it's in a cartoon, maybe in a Bible story sermon series, it gets cartoonified. It gets made nice. There's theme music, like, trouble. And so the life of Jonah is summarized in disobedience, swallowed by a fish, delivered out on land, on your merry way. Let's time out and go back to the living-inside-a-fish thing for just one moment, because it intrigues me.

I've smelled a fish before from the outside. It wasn't very nice. It was okay. And then you put a knife in it, and you slide it open, and the guts fall out, which is gross. I know that. I'm sorry. But that doesn't smell any better. Jonah was inside those guts for three days. I have been on a boat before. I've felt this thing that I thought was imaginary called seasickness. Boats rock. I guess submarines would be even worse. They would go underwater and move around a good bit. Jonah's inside a fish. Those things wiggle, and then they jump, and then they dive down, and then they go up. And he's inside the thing, like floating, presumably in fish guts and water and nastiness. I assume he probably got seasick. I would. He probably vomited, and then it splashed back up on his face when the fish went down. Jonah was from the Middle East. He probably had a giant beard. He got fish guts in that beard. They don't come out real quick. I have a little itty-bitty mustache, and I get smells stuck in that, and it's right under your nose. Jonah was inside a fish with little fish-gut smells inside his nose. It cannot have been nice.

And what's worse is, I assume there's no light in there. I don't know if you've ever been in pitch black before. I have. It's terrifying. If you go down this hallway that way, the guys' bathroom lights are on a motion sensor. Do you know how stupid crazy that is? When you go to the restroom in the morning and the lights time out and you're stuck in pitch black in a restroom in a foreign school, you will never be more thankful for your iPhone in a moment like this. Jonah does not have an iPhone. He's feeling sick. He's inside a fish. But thankfully, this is the time when he chooses to pray.

Now, I know that's what I can be like sometimes. I wait until the final moment. I wait until life gets really tough. Maybe not that tough. But I wait until life gets tough, and that's the moment that I choose to pray. It's almost like when things are going good, things are going well, life, you're feeling healthy, you've got enough money to get through this week, you're feeling okay, there's not really any need to pray. And then as soon as you get chopped off at the knees, suddenly you're sick and you've got no money because you spent it all on medicine. Suddenly, now it's time to pray. And we've got a little bit of this urgency in times of need like that.

Now, in this whole story, the first time we hear of Jonah calling out to God is once he's been thrown off the boat. This is a time when he needs something to rely on. I don't know if they have this saying in America. I kind of grew up with it, at least in the church. Someone coined the question way back in the day: is Jesus your steering wheel or your spare tire? Do you turn to Jesus when you've got a flat on the interstate? Does he only ever come out when life is tough in the moment, and then as soon as the problem's fixed he gets put back in his little spot in the back? Or, alternatively, is Jesus your steering wheel, the one who guides the path at all times, gets you from A to B, completely relied upon for direction?

Now, it might be old, I don't know, that might be the first time you've heard it, but it's a valid illustration of what's going on in this situation. And you could say that, given that he hasn't prayed up until this point, he's left it until the very last of minutes. The time came for prayer earlier, and he didn't until he was drowning in the ocean. Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with calling out to God in times of need. In fact, definitely call out to God in times of need. I say that, I do that, the Bible says that. The question is in motivation and attitude in the whole situation. What's going on in the thought processes, and what drives you to pray in that situation?

We have a guy here who's done a serious wrong by God, that God's chosen to rescue anyway, at least physically in this moment, at this point in time, and regardless of his disobedience. You might expect this to be the time when Jonah starts to repent. That is, he acknowledges his own sin and apologizes for it, feels broken about it, and says, "God, forgive me." You might expect this to be a time when he realizes how disobedient he is.

And on the surface, when you read through this passage, there's a bunch of things that look really good that he says. A number of really good things. In verse 2 he says, "I called to the Lord." Good. You should do that. In verse 4, "I will look upon your holy temple." Good. In verse 6, "You brought my life up from the pit." True. In verse 7, "I remembered the Lord." You should do that. Remembering God is good. Verse 9, "I will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord." Good. Good. It sounds like Jonah's on the right track, at least that he's starting to get it.

But actually, what we see of Jonah's character up until this point, and spoiler alert, in the future as well, is that he has a very self-centered understanding of his faith. He has a very self-centered attitude toward how he relates to God. He thinks that things he can do are what govern his relationship with God. We actually find in this prayer the inner workings of a man who is so self-centered that he ignores his own sin the whole time. He believes that he deserves to be rescued. Now, whether he thinks he's entitled to it because of his position as a prophet, some people probably would feel that. Maybe he feels that he's entitled to it because of his heritage as a Jew. Most likely, he thinks he's entitled to it because of what he does. This prayer is all about Jonah because he thinks he's earned something.

Now, there's a difference between these two kinds of prayers. One kind of prayer focuses on self and the other focuses on God. A prayer that focuses on God, a legitimate, authentic, heart-changed prayer, would sound like this: God, please have mercy on me. I'm busted. I'm broken. I'm sinful. I can't do anything right. Please save me from me. Jonah's prayer, not so much like this.

Now, maybe I'm throwing you under the bus and lumping you in with my own sin here. We typically pray in a way that treats God like an exchange program. We typically pray in a way that says, "God, if you'll just give me this, then I'll give you that. God, if you'll just deal with this, then I'll stop doing that. God, if you get me out of debt, I'll stop using credit cards. God, if you help me get healthy right now, if I feel healthier by the end of the day, I swear I'm going to quit smoking. God, if you just get me a girlfriend, I promise I will stop playing video games until next week." And we treat the whole situation like it's a cosmic exchange program, like we have something to offer God. That's kind of how Jonah does it.

Let's read some of the things that Jonah says. He doesn't start with, "God, you rescued me, I'm a sinner." He starts with, "I called out to the Lord and he answered me. I cried out and you heard my prayer." I initiated this relationship. It's my turn to speak, and I've done something to earn your attention right now. Then in verse 3, when he should be recalling all the things that God has done for him, instead what he says is, "You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas and the floods surrounded me. All your waves and your billows passed over me." You put me here. This is your fault.

What Jonah's already forgotten can't have been more than a day later. What Jonah's already forgotten is that he put himself here. He was thrown into the ocean by the sailors who came to him and said, "What do we do?" And Jonah said, "Throw me overboard." Jonah disobeyed God, ended up on a boat where the sailors thought they were all going to die, ended up throwing Jonah overboard, and now he's saying, "God, you put me here."

Then toward the end of his prayer, right down at the end, in verse 8, he says, "Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love." Here's one of those cases where that is a true statement. Those who have idol issues, have idolatry problems, they do forsake the hope of steadfast love. But what Jonah does is he puts these people over here and separates himself from them. Jonah doesn't see himself as one of those people. He's talking about the pagans, the sailors, the guys who were on the boat who threw him over. He says those who pay regard to idols do not have your steadfast love. What he doesn't realize is he's a part of that group, and actually the sailors are less a part of that group because they renounced their idols, they feared God, and they made sacrifices to him. It's a true statement, but he doesn't understand what he's saying.

And then he says, "I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will pay." Basically he's saying, I'm not like them. I have it right. And for the record, in the rest of the book of Jonah, there is no evidence that Jonah ever makes good on any of these vows. He never makes sacrifices, he never vows anything or comes through with any of this stuff. He might sometime in the future after the book ends. We don't know. But what we have here is a bunch of empty vows, empty promises. So while on the surface it looks like he's saying a bunch of good things, we actually have a guy who doesn't really believe the things that he says.

What Jonah doesn't see is that he's blinded to his own sin. What he doesn't see is that he doesn't think he's busted, broken, and disobedient. He thinks he deserves salvation. And even in his last-minute prayers to God, his emphasis is on himself, what he's done to earn that favor in the first place. And it's almost this half-hearted, last-minute, inside-the-belly-of-a-fish prayer to, yep, thanks for that.

Now, I know it sounds like a kind of a downer that we can be like that as well, that we think of this as a cosmic exchange program where we give him this and he gives us that, and it can sound bad to us that we can't do anything. It sounds really horrible that we have no power in this. But actually, if you see it in perspective, it's a massive relief. Because if God was a cosmic accountant and he had a list, a balance sheet of all your credit and all your debt, all your pros and your cons, all your good and your bad, your bad would be through the bottom. And you might be able to chalk up some good things, but you could never possibly tip that balance to the good-person status that we assume exists but doesn't. It's actually good news because we don't have a God that weighs us in the balance like this with a good and a bad list. We have a God who sets the list aside and loves us regardless. It means that we don't have to try to get more good than we do bad.

Now at the end of the prayer, the very last line of his prayer, he says, "Salvation belongs to the Lord," which is again a great statement of faith. You can't deny that he knows some good things. But what's interesting is this is a person reciting a textbook answer that doesn't understand what that means. It's like he studied for the exam but didn't understand the content.

Now, if you've passed high school, you're probably familiar with this concept of studying for exams but having no idea what's going on in that class. At least in Australia that was the case for most of us. For example, I took trigonometry. I can tell you the cosine rule. I'm pretty proud of it. A squared equals B squared plus C squared minus 2BC cos A. You impressed? Yeah. I even know the song. That's how I remember it. A squared equals B squared plus C squared minus 2BC cos A. And then you clap. A squared equals B squared plus C squared minus 2BC cos A. People in exams would clap in Australia. It was crazy. Thing is, I know it's to do with triangles. Something to do with sides. Cos means an angle. I know that. I have no idea how to use that. I may know the formula, but I still can't pass the exam. And it's the same thing that's going on with Jonah. He studied the formula but failed the exam. He knows things about God, but doesn't understand how that impacts life.

Now I reckon at this point in time God is pretty disappointed with Jonah. After the whole running-away thing, I can't imagine that he's in the good books, even though Jonah for some reason thinks he is. And I like to imagine the whole scenario. If Jonah's thoughts were right and God did like him, maybe it would be different.

We've established that being inside a fish is a gross way to do things. So if Jonah was in God's good books and God wanted to rescue him in a nice way, perhaps it would have looked differently. Perhaps it would have been he parts the sea and Jonah gets to walk back. That could have been nicer. Perhaps it could have been he's just back on land. But the funniest thing, and the best thing to me in this whole story, is that that's not how it happens. God kind of gives him a little slap on the back of the head, a bit of a bruise on his ego, and has a fish vomit him. That's the best.

God says, it says that God spoke to the fish, which I think is also funny because he... I don't know if it's a pet or if it's like, fishy, fishy, fishy. Fishy, fishy, go and vomit Jonah out on dry land. I just imagine the fish being like, woohoo, and then going off and doing that. It could have been even nicer with the fish. God can speak to fish, obviously. He could have said, fish, deliver Jonah to the dry land. Or fish, go and open your mouth on the beach and let him walk out. But instead God says, vomit him out. Make sure he gets the point that he's done something wrong. Make sure he gets a little bit of fish guts in his beard for the rest of the walk. I love it.

And that's how chapter 2 ends. Brilliant. Jonah walking on his way to Nineveh from the beach covered in fish guts and rancid smells that take weeks to go away. And that's the story of chapter 2. That's how Jonah got from in the ocean to a fish's belly, prayed to God, spit back out onto the sea.

Now let's pause for a second, set that entire story aside, and let's think for a moment on how it could have happened differently, what it could have looked like if Jonah actually got it, if Jonah understood from the start how it all could have happened. Option number one would be God says, Jonah, go to Nineveh, and Jonah goes to Nineveh. Yeah. Option number one.

Option number two: God says, Jonah, go to Nineveh. Jonah says, no, that sounds scary, I don't want to do that. Maybe I should. And then he goes back and goes to Nineveh. That's option number two. That's valid. That could have happened, would have worked. God would have been pleased with that. Option number three: Jonah, go to Nineveh. No, bump that, I'm getting on a boat, I'm getting out of here. Oh, this was a bad idea. Something's going to go wrong, I can just tell. Guys, turn the boat around, we're going to Nineveh. Turn around, go to Nineveh.

Option number four, this can go all day. Option number four: God says, Jonah, go to Nineveh. He says no, he gets on a boat, gets on the boat, goes to sleep, sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. The storm comes, the sailors come to him and say, Jonah, pray to your God. And he goes, I should have done that earlier. He prays to God, the boat turns around, they go back and they go to Nineveh. At any point in time in the story, Jonah had an option of repentance. At any point in time in the story, Jonah could have done something. The only thing he could have done is repent. He could have said, God, I was disobedient. And he chooses not to.

The entire time, he is strictly disobedient. He sets himself up in his prayer as someone who deserves to be saved, when the exact opposite is true. But that's exactly the point. He doesn't deserve to be saved, but he is. Our actions do not govern God's deliverance, because he doesn't choose to save people based on their individual merit. He doesn't choose to save, to rescue people from sin, based on how good of a person they are.

And yes, we have this sense that there's a little bit of Jonah in all of us. We have this sense in us that there are small things we can do to influence God in some way, small transactions we can make where he will bless us if we do good for him. And if we think that, then we're just like Jonah. And if you think you're off the hook and that you're not like that at all, then you've proven that you are on the hook, but you're blinded to the hook and you're a whole lot like Jonah.

What we see in the story of Jonah is the prayers of a self-righteous man, one who thinks what he does will give him credit against God. But he's blinded to the fact that he's a sinner and has something to atone for before God. Yeah, God chooses to rescue him physically, at least by means of the fish in this moment. But the fact that he was physically saved by a fish does not necessarily transfer over to spiritual salvation, spiritual deliverance. There's a difference in this case between physical deliverance and spiritual deliverance.

And honestly, we don't know about Jonah at this point. So far, he has yet to repent. He's yet to admit that he's a sinner and ask God for help. And so the jury's still out on Jonah. But here's something interesting. Seven hundred and fifty years later, when Jesus was walking around, he was on the way to Jerusalem and he was confronted by a crowd, and he spoke to an incredibly similar situation. He spoke to a situation where there was the group of guys who thought they knew everything, thought they had it all under control, thought that God liked them because of the things that they had done, and they held it over other people.

So I don't want you to turn there, but I'm going to read from Luke 18. This is the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.

> He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt:
> "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
> The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men,
> extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
> I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.'
> But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'
> I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. (Luke 18:9-14 ESV)

Seem pretty similar? The Pharisee emphasizes his own importance, his achievements, his credentials. He listed reasons why God ought to love him. And then he distances himself from other people. He distances himself from the tax collector. He distances himself from people who he thinks God doesn't love. He says, I'm not like them at all. And the tax collector, he beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

There's a massive difference between these two guys, and sadly Jonah's a whole lot more like the Pharisee. Only, at least the Pharisee actually did do some stuff. Jonah didn't do anything. So when it comes to spiritual deliverance, God chooses to deliver people not based on their merit, but by their faith and trust in him. God doesn't choose to deliver based on merit. He chooses because of his abundant mercy and amazing grace. That's what puts the tax collector, this guy who's lived a life of sin, miles ahead of a Pharisee who lives his entire life by the rules, trying to obey and do things to earn favor with God.

But Jonah did nothing to deserve being saved by God. He ran away from him and tried to escape him. So yeah, God did save him physically. We know that it's not because he deserved it. He definitely didn't. It's because God doesn't save on account of merit. He saves on account of his love and mercy. Now we don't know if Jonah even will be delivered spiritually. The jury's still out on that. But we know the truth that repentance and faith in Jesus are what grant deliverance.

I'm going to invite the band back up. We're all going to zoom out a little bit and try to land this plane. Let's distance ourselves from these figures, these characters, these stories. How do you picture yourself and your relationship with God? Do you picture God as the cosmic accountant, the one who keeps score of all the bad things you've done and weighs them up against all the good things? Or do you see God as a loving father who sets the score aside because he loves you?

When you pray, do you bargain with God as if you've got a stack of chips that he wants and that you can offer him things and that in return he'll give you things? Or do you praise him for what he has done in your life and beg him to forgive your sin? Do you see clearly your own sin and live rightly based on the merit of Jesus? Or do you point out the sin of other people and try to live by your own merit before Jesus? Is God the hero of your story, or are you the hero of your own story?

Do you trust yourself to make every good decision? Do you trust yourself with the steering wheel? And do you treat Jesus like the spare tire that only ever comes out when life gets tough? Or is Jesus your steering wheel, who guides every direction that you ever take? Do you know stuff about God like Jonah does? Or do you actually know God and understand God?

Jonah had one thing right. Jonah knew that salvation belongs to the Lord. But Jonah thought that his actions at least in some way affected what God does. We know that only faith in Jesus can save. Your only hope in salvation is trusting in God. It's the only way. The things that you do will not and cannot earn it for you. So trust in him, not in your own ability, not in your own talents, not in your own credentials. Trust in the God who laid his life down so that you wouldn't have to do that. Only he can truly save.

Let's pray. Father God, we thank you that you are the only way. We thank you that we can rest in your love, knowing that by the death of Jesus we can be saved. We thank you that you're not a cosmic accountant. We thank you that you do not give us a score based on the good and the bad that we do because we know that we can never match up. We thank you that you forgive us of our sins when we ask of it and that we can be saved through our faith in Jesus. And it's in his mighty name that we pray. Amen. Amen.