Salvation Belongs to the LORD! (Jonah 2)
We will feast in the house of Zion (chorus)
Call to worship/OT reading:
pastor zack mcguire
Psalm 116
NT reading:
pastor bobby owens
Matthew 12: 38-42
Song: something greater
Historical reading:
dr. alex loginow
Apostles Creed
Song: lord have mercy
Confession & Pardon:
Pastor michael champoux
Song: The lord almighty reigns
Sermon:
dr. brett eckel
Salvation belongs to the lord! (Jonah 2)
Introduction
What is the worst day you have ever experienced? Have you ever woken up and found yourself doing something you never wanted to do or somewhere you never wanted to be? In my day-to-day experiences I often meet people on the worst day of their lives. Sometimes it is tragic events, sometimes it is a new crisis from a doctor breaking news, sometimes it is sudden death of a loved one. What all these occurrences bring to the forefront is a reckoning with our mortality. Jonah 2 gives us a biblical window into such a reckoning. Last week we witnessed Jonah being commissioned by God to call the Ninevites to repentance with Jonah attempting to flee from God’s presence. Last week Pastor Andrew rightly pointed us towards Jonah’s unfaithfulness and today we begin with Jonah having been hurled into the sea and in the belly of the great fish. Today we meet Jonah on perhaps his worse day.
One quick interesting note to make is that in the Hebrew text the second chapter actually begins with chapter 1:17 in the English text.[1] While we’ve talked in the past about how these verse breaks are arbitrary it is important for us to note that this is one continuous story. We can learn much from Jonah but most importantly we must learn to whom Jonah points us to.
Today we will trace 3 major themes that Jonah’s prayer presents for us.
Judgement
The first major theme that jumps out of this prayer is that of judgement, particularly in the judgment that brings death. The commission Jonah was given was one of coming judgement, the storm that came to Jonah and the sailors was a form of judgment, and now Jonah finds himself in v. 1 in the belly of the great fish in judgement. This fish we saw was appointed – language which would’ve invoked kingly rule. God ordered the fish. The late great reformed pastor Tim Keller points out that God “appointed” the fish just as God appoints the growing plant in chapter 4 stating that “God orchestrated a circumstance in history to teach Jonah something he desperately needed to know.”[2] Judgement is present, and it is not just for the wicked Ninevites but is for Jonah himself.
Biblical scholar Peter Craigie pointed out how up to this point “the text has been depicting Jonah as descending—going down to Joppa, down into a ship, down into the depths of the ship—and now, finally, he goes even further downinto the very depths of the oceans.”[3] As Jonah sinks to the bottoms of this aquatic hell it is important for us to recognize the reality of what is going on here. Jonah prays here realizing that the storm came because of his disobedience, the sailors hurled him from the boat because of his disobedience, and now he would faint into the watery abyss because he was being judged.
We may ask ourselves, did Jonah realize that God’s judgement justly fell on him? It is ironic that even amidst the reckoning of being judged Jonah still operates from a sort of delusional thinking. Jonah’s prayer in v.8 reads: “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.” To this we offer our yes and amen, but the irony here is that Jonah fails to see this includes himself. Jonah fails to hold onto the promises of old and forsakes his hope of the steadfast love that would be offered to the nations – the covenant love between God and his people. Keller points out that Jonah “sees the literal idols that the pagans worship and doesn’t see the more subtle idols in his own life that keep him from fully grasping that he too, just like the heathen, lives only, equally by God’s grace.”[4]
I want us to step back as we think about God’s judgement in this story and reflect particularly on how three elements this prayer highlights.
1. Belly of the Fish / Belly of Sheol (v2)
Here Jonah highlights our theme of judgment with the language of the belly of the fish, the belly of Sheol which invokes images of death and the grave. When Jonah is hurled into the sea and begins to faint into the deep one can only assume death is coming for Jonah – and that is the point. From the belly of Sheol there is no return. Protestant reformer John Calvin writes that Jonah “cried to God from hell itself”[5] – that is Jonah was heading towards the underworld.
While being swallowed by the big fish might feel like salvation to our ears, the original audience would have heard continued judgement. Being swallowed by the great fish is not only a cute children’s story we’ve always heard growing up, where Jonah checks in as it were to the Belly of the Fish Inn where he’s got the local Hebrew sports channels and news outlets. The great fish itself when ordered by God is even described as vomiting Jonah out. This language of vomiting is itself a sense of disgust. Vomit is not only gross to modern cultures even in the Hebrew scriptures this idea was associated with judgement. It’s almost as if the vomiting of Jonah was God’s way of showing Jonah that his own emergence from the watery grave from the gates of death itself were because God’s plans would not be thwarted rather than any result of Jonah’s newfound sense of brokenness or a contrite spirit. Jonah sinks to the watery graveyard of Sheol and we must not miss that.
2. The Aquatic Hell (2.3,5-6a)
The second element for our theme of judgement is what I described a moment ago as the aquatic hell. Look back with me to the middle of this prayer beginning in verse 3.
[Read v. 3 – skip down to v.5-6]
Jonah here in poetic detail explains the depths of his despair. He says the floods surrounded me – your waves and your billows passed over me (3). Note that the waves and the billows are not a coincidence, they are divinely placed for Jonah to experience. He says the waters closed in, the deep surrounded him, the weeds wrapped about his head (5). Jonah felt his world collapsing around him as he began to fade away. Try to place yourself in this scene and feel the smothering experience Jonah is going through. This is terrifying. Jonah says that he went down to the land whose bars closed upon him (6).
What does that line make you think of? In the ancient world the sea was often viewed as the entrance portal to the underworld – that place of the dead. When Jesus uses the language in Matthew 16 of the gates of hell your mind ought to make the connection here. A couple months ago when I preached from Revelation, I highlighted a similar concept found there of Jesus being the key holder of Hades. The gates of hell will never prevail over the kingdom of God, the bars will never finally close on the saints in death because Jesus holds the keys of Hades and frees them with the gift of eternal life.
3. Human Condition
The third element of our theme of judgment relates to the human condition. Jonah gives us a true tale, a historical lesson, a moral reality to observe this morning on what it looks like when we try to live free apart from God. Jonah here experiences his worst day because he proactively sought to run from God. Jonah is not the hero in our story. He wasn’t last week, he isn’t this week, and he won’t be in the following weeks. But if we are humble, we do have some things to glean from the prayer that Jonah leaves us through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
For example, Calvin points out how this prayer utilizes common prayer language found elsewhere in the Psalms and presuming Jonah was familiar with the Psalms then it was as Calvin notes, “natural for him to incorporate sentences taken from them with his own language.”[6] Like Jesus’ own moments of agony on the cross Jonah utilizes the prayer book of God to pray in ways the people of God always have. Calvin again writes, “for when the Lord heavily afflicts us, it is then a legitimate and seasonable time for prayer.”[7] Lord, help those in such a season. This prayer highlights the human condition by showing us that above all else Christians should take comfort that God is in control, we are broken and lost without God, and our purpose is ultimately to serve God.
A) God is in Control Over Everything
Look back with me to 2-3; 6,9-10
2 I called out to the Lord … he answered me; … I cried, and you heard my voice.
3 you cast me into the deep … all your waves and your billows passed over me.
6 you brought up my life from the pit
9 Salvation belongs to the Lord!
10 the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
May we walk away from this passage this morning and see the mighty ways in which God oversees all things. God’s judgement and his sovereignty cannot be separated.
What was your worst day like? Did you find your spouse lifeless? Did you lose a job? Get the call that the tumor is cancerous? In your seat now reflect upon that day. What is the worst thing that you can go through? Or even worse still where are the depths to which your sin can take you? Like Jonah maybe you’re running as fast as you can away from God or maybe you find yourself falling into despair and the belly of Sheol.
To this we can look at the story of Jonah at take heart that God is always in control. Keller writes, “It is only when you reach the very bottom, when everything falls apart, when all your schemes and resources are broken and exhausted, that you are finally open to learning how to completely depend on God…you never realize that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.”[8] Do you know that? Do you believe that? Do you feel that?
B) Lost Without God
In Jonah 2:6 we see somewhat of turning point in our theme of judgement. In the first half we sit Jonah hit rock bottom. – “I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever;” and in the second half of the verse we see deliverance – “yet you brought up my life from the pit”.
When thinking about the human condition here what is important is that Jonah recognizes he is lost without God and completely broken. Jonah cannot save himself. Jonah’s fate is death. We too are all sinners, and our fate is death. When he recognizes that he cannot save himself he calls upon God and looks toward his presence as the only place of salvation.
This is familiar to many of you because recognizing this condition is necessary for having faith. Here at Christ Community Church when we use words such as faith we do so in continuity with the Reformed tradition – knowledge, assent, and trust. To have knowledge of the gospel is to know what the gospel is – the key components of what make the gospel the good news. You must know that our Triune God is holy and that you are a sinner in need of redemption. You must recognize that you too are destined to eternal death apart from the saving grace of Christ. You must know that Jesus died for your sins, that he was buried, that he rose again and having ascended to the right hand of the Father he is coming again to judge the world and live with us forever. But to know that alone doesn’t save you. People all over the world know these things but do not believe they are true and don’t embrace them. You must know the components of the gospel, yes, but you also must assent to their validity. You must know them, believe them, and then finally you must place your trust in Christ alone to save you. Our faith is rooted in resurrection and here in Jonah 2 we see a foreshadowing of resurrection.
Resurrection
Our second major theme for today is resurrection. I want to be clear this morning: the point of Jonah 2 is that Jesus would emerge from the grave and resurrect to bring salvation to the nations. If you take anything from today, please let it be that. The sign of Jonah which we will look at in a couple weeks shows us that Jonah 2 is about resurrection more than it is about anything. The prayer of Jonah is not ultimately about the miracle of a “whale” swallowing a human, or the mass conversion of a group of people generations past. The prayer of Jonah 2 was written so that the people of God would read it and in time see Jesus.
Our family recently watched the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, and I was struck by the story of The Dark Knight Rises where billionaire Bruce Wayne gets his back crushed by his enemy Bane and is put in this pit only to have his resilience tested to see if he would rise from the ashes to save Gotham from judgment. Don’t lose the imagery there or the imagery our culture constantly goes back to in similar stories where we long to see one rise from the ashes. This is the same imagery that Jonah is giving us here. Jonah 2 is about death and resurrection. Having gone into the belly of Sheol – the place of grave – Jonah emerges to fulfill God’s plan of redemption. Come back next week to hear how that goes.
We must ask ourselves this morning when we read this passage will we read it as Christian scripture, or will we miss the gospel before our eyes? The gospel is that Jesus died to save sinners and resurrected to give them life. Our whole faith rests on that historical reality for which Jonah served as a signpost. Which leads to our third and final theme for today, namely that Jonah 2 is about the salvation of the nations.
Salvation
While thinking about our final theme of salvation we must note that the vocation of Jonah is crucial to the story. Jonah was a prophet of God given the commission to preach repentance to a sinful people and indeed he does the opposite. For the parents in the room, you know exactly what I mean. Jonah 2 shows us a picture into the human soul, an example of failure and disobedience to God, the depths of the grave and despair, but more than anything it shows us that Jonah pointed us forward to Jesus who fulfilled his Messianic role having been born of a virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead, and buried. Jesus of Nazareth was the long-awaited Messiah that Jonah longed for – the fulfillment for which his story pointed to.
Last week Pastor Andrew appropriately demonstrated ways in which Jonah and Jesus stacked up against each other. We’ve seen how Jonah did not follow God’s call to preach judgement but instead ran. Jonah found himself amid judgement and cries out to God and God permitted the vomiting of Jonah from the watery graveyard as a foreshadow of resurrection and deliverance. You see Jonah was an architype of the one to come who would truly obey God and live the life of obedience that he nor we ever could. Jesus would come preaching the kingdom of God and healing people willingly and with grace and peace. Jesus unlike Jonah cried in Gethsemane in the angst of the judgement he would experience and heard no such comforting words of deliverance.
This prayer concludes with one of the most famous phrases in the Bible with the mantra: “Salvation belongs to the LORD!” (v9) which is as beautiful a statement as there can be. Jonah notes with bold exclamation that salvation belongs to the LORD and Jonah was correct. One commentator wrote that “Though the line reflects on Jonah’s experience, it also describes the experience of the sailors and, more importantly, the outcome of the mission to Nineveh.”[9] In God’s providence Jonah was given new life so that he could preach repentance and the nation of Ninevah could be saved. Jesus too went to the belly of the grave like Jonah for 3 days and nights and resurrected to secure salvation for his people from every nation, every tribe, every people group, and language (Revelation 7:9-10).
Conclusion
We started off this morning reflecting on some of our worst days. For some of you those days have hopefully already passed. For some of you those days may be lingering and may strike soon. For some of you, like Jonah you’ve moved from flirting with sin to embracing sin and are willing to take on incoming doom for it. Theologian Russell Moore once wrote these words:
The worst thing that can possibly happen to you is hell, being cut off from the presence of God, condemned under the curse of the Law. If you are in Christ, then you are crucified with him (Gal. 2:20). That means your worst-case scenario has already happened, and can never be repeated.[10]
So, I want to encourage you this morning Christian that you ought to live in hope and a with a tremendous sense of peace. Like Ninevah you heard the gospel of salvation and were given the gift of faith. Jesus could not be held in the tomb. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. But the Belly of the Sheol could not hold Jesus down. Because Jesus resurrected from the grave and now sits and reigns at the right hand of the Father Almighty we too can rest in his mercy.
[1] Notes from online text, https://netbible.org/bible/Jonah+1
[2] Timothy Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy, (New York: Viking, 2018), 70.
[3] Timothy Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy, (New York: Viking, 2018), 71. Italics original.
[4] Timothy Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy, (New York: Viking, 2018), 781-82.
[5] John Calvin, Jonah, in vol. XIV of Calvin’s Commentaries 500 Anniversary Edition: Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, ed. by Rev. John Owen and trans. from original Latin, (repr., Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009), 75
[6] John Calvin, Jonah, in vol. XIV of Calvin’s Commentaries 500 Anniversary Edition: Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, ed. by Rev. John Owen and trans. from original Latin, (repr., Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009), 73-74.
[7] John Calvin, Jonah, in vol. XIV of Calvin’s Commentaries 500 Anniversary Edition: Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, ed. by Rev. John Owen and trans. from original Latin, (repr., Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009), 74.
[8] Timothy Keller, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy, (New York: Viking, 2018), 72.
[9] John H. Walton, Jonah, in vol. VIII of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Daniel – Malachi, Revised Edition, General Ed. by Tremper Longman III and David E.Garland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 477
[10] Russell Moore, The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear without Losing Your Soul, (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 2020) 276.