Jonah 2

Simon Donohoe preaching from Jonah 2.
April 26, 2026

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Chapter 2. 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 breakers and your waves 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 around my head. To the roots of the mountains I went down, to the land whose bars closed upon me forever. Yet you brought me up, 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 in 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, and so reads God's word.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

And we're going to be having a look at Jonah chapter two. So if you've got a Bible handy, I know I can see some guys up in the dark, you mightn't be able to see as well, but hopefully you can read Jonah chapter two. It'd be good to have that open to follow along with me. But before we get into God's word, let me pray for us as we listen to God. Let's pray. Our loving Father, we thank you that you are not a God who is silent, but you've made yourself known. Thank you that you speak to us in the Bible. And we ask now that you would give us by your Spirit ears to hear, give us eyes to see the beauty of Christ. And we ask this in his precious name. Amen. Maybe one of the things that so many of us wrestle the most with is this kind of sense that we're a little bit inconsistent. That it's a little bit of a difference between how we present ourselves, how we show ourselves to others, maybe even try to show ourselves to God, and what it's really like inside. We can sometimes feel a little bit like we're wearing a mask, putting on a bit of a performance to try and prove ourselves, to maybe others around us, maybe even thinking that'll convince God. But inside maybe we're struggling, we're anxious, there's all sorts of things we don't want to admit. One of the areas in our lives where this can show up the most is how we approach prayer. I've met so many Christians who felt embarrassed and a little bit ashamed about how prayer is going for them. Yet they find it really, really hard to admit that or to ask for help with that because, well, everyone else seems to be doing fine. If I'm really honest, um my prayer life so often feels inconsistent. There's a bit of inconsistency between what I say I believe and how I pray. So I believe God is good. I believe God is in control of absolutely everything. Yet so often when life looks like it's going all the wrong way and turning into complete mess, my first instinct instead of praying is to worry about it. Or maybe there's an inconsistency between what I say to God in prayer and how I actually live, what I do. Maybe we come to a prayer gathering and we pray for more people to come to know Jesus. Then I'm talking to my neighbor, and conversations turned around to spiritual things, and I wimp out. Or we're praying that the Lord would grow his church, but someone new comes along, and I hope that someone else will speak to them so I don't have to. There could be an inconsistency between what we say to God and how we act. But here's the reality really that shows none of us live lives of perfect consistency. And our prayer life, how we pray, how we approach prayer, can show that up. Now, I'm guessing some of us might feel a little bit uncomfortable as we begin to talk about these things. Why talk about this? Well, my aim is not to make you feel absolutely rubbish about yourself this morning. My aim is to bring you comfort. And that's where we're going in Jonah chapter two. That there is real deep comfort here as we struggle with the inconsistencies we find inside ourselves and as we pray, how our prayers feel so often inconsistent. In Jonah chapter two, we see the Lord's medicine for our inconsistencies, the deep, deep mercy of God. Let's have a look at Jonah. Um if you were here last week, I wasn't, but if you were here last week and you looked at Jonah chapter one, you may have noticed in chapter one that Jonah is a very, very inconsistent man. Think about it. He claims to fear the God who made absolutely everything. And he tries to run away from him. Can't get much far. Can't get very far, can you? He claims to worship the Lord, yet when God sends him on a mission, he refuses to take part in God's mission. He'd rather not go to the Ninevehites. The Lord wants to show mercy to them, but he doesn't want to go. He refused to go, he runs the other way. And when he's on this boat, all the pagan sailors that the Lord has mercy on, Jonah doesn't care about them. He's very inconsistent. Now, we rightly are meant to laugh at Jonah. The book's written a little bit like a comedy. They were meant to laugh at Jonah. He is a bit ridiculous, isn't he? But then he worships God who made everything and then tried to run away from him. But one of the things the book is doing is it's acting like a mirror. It was written to help God's people to see themselves a little bit more clearly. As we see how ridiculous Jonah is, it begins to shine a light on ourselves and the inconsistencies around our own lives. The Israelites were meant to see themselves as they looked at Jonah. But in chapter two, we begin to see the Lord's medicine for our inconsistencies. It's uncomfortable. Jonah shows up the ugliness of some of the things going on in our hearts. But it's the Lord's medicine to help us to find healing. Now that medicine is uncomfortable because it exposes some of the ugliness of our inconsistencies, but it's also deeply comforting. But it helps us to begin to experience the deep mercy of God, who could deal with all these things in our hearts. And for all, however Jonah's been acting so far, he deserves to be left to sink down, down, down to the depths. But he doesn't. The Lord shows mercy to him. He sends his fist to swallow him and then vomit him out three days later. It's not the most comfortable means of rescue, but God has mercy on him. Now, I know for some of us reading this, and to many modern readers reading Joan and the story, this fish swallowing someone and he's alive three days later out of the fish, it seems a little bit like a kind of fairy tale or a fable. But actually, if we look at how Jesus treats this, when we turn to the Gospels, Jesus treats this as a historical fact. And here's the thing if we if we believe that Jesus rose from the dead, we shouldn't have too much trouble believing that God could rescue someone through a fish. It's not so hard if he can raise someone from the dead. So this is a historical fact. But as Jonas spends these three days in the fish, he prays. Now we just read his prayer. Now, his prayer, as we first read it, it sounds like a great prayer. It sounds like the Psalms. Jonas sounds like he's a changed man. But when we look a little bit closer, his prayer begins to show that actually Jonah's not quite so consistent as he seems to be. But as we look at Jonah's prayer, we begin to see even more, another layer of the depth of God's mercy. And his mercy to us as we struggle with all our inconsistencies. Let's have a look at what we see about God's mercy. Let me just highlight three things from the passage this morning. First of all, in verse 2, we see, in mercy, he answers. In mercy, he answers. The Lord mercifully hears the prayer of this prayerless prophet. Look at verse 2 with me. Jonah's prayer sounds like so many of the Psalms. Verse 2, he says, I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, out of the belly of Shoal, Shoal is a place of the dead, out of the belly of Shool I cried. I called out to God. Here's a question. When did Jonah do that? Look back at chapter 1. Jonah is the only person in the boat who's not praying. Pagan sailors, they're all praying to their gods, and then they turned and prayed to the Lord at the end. Jonah refuses to pray. It also seems that when Jonah was thrown into the sea, he didn't do much calling out to God either. Look forward to verse 7. Verse 7 shows that he doesn't really pray until the very last moment when he's about to lose consciousness and slip into death. Verse 7 he says, When my life was fainting away, this is the very last moments before he dies. When my life was fainting away, I remember the Lord. My prayer came to you into your holy temple. It's only at the very last minute he prays. Jonah's been pretty prayerless. He's been building himself up as I call to the Lord. But in the Lord's mercy, God's mercy goes deeper than the depths of the sea, he answers Jonah's pretty prayerless prayer. Look again at verse 2. He answered me. You heard my voice. This is deep and lavish mercy. Think about what Jonah's been doing so far. Jonah has spent the book so far ignoring God, trying to hijack God's plans, refusing to repent, being utterly obnoxious to the kind of people that God wants to show mercy to. When he does finally prayer, pray, his prayer, it's really actually all about himself. He uses I quite a lot in the prayer. The scholar Daniel Timner says if you actually look at this construction of a language of Jonah's prayers, what he's doing actually is highlighting himself a little bit like a hero and minimizing what God is doing. His prayer is kind of all about himself. It's pretty selfish. What has Jonah been like? Well, think a little bit like this. Jonah has been like a son who's living in his parents' house and he refused to speak to his parents. He stomps about the house, complaining about his parents all the time. He just trashes the place. And I think there are all their favourite ornaments and things. He trashes them. Whenever his parents invite guests around, he's really, really rude and obnoxious to them and tries to chase them out of the house. And then he runs out of money and he asks his parents for help. That's what kind of Jonah's been like, but that would be an awful way to treat a parent. How much worse when you're treating God like that? Yet here's the wonder. God shows mercy to Jonah and he answers his prayer. Just think about how encouraging that is for us. As we struggle with our own inconsistent prayers. Now, do you remember one of the things the book is doing is it's holding up a mirror to us so we can see ourselves a little bit more clearly. And if I'm honest, I can see traces of the same disease that Jonah has in my own heart when I pray. You know, I face a difficult conversation or money is tight, and I'm far quicker to kind of worry about it or to try and come up with some plan of my own than to turn to God for help. When I do pray, so often my focus can tend to be on just me, me, me. I can be a little bit blinkered into my own little world, my little kingdom, my comforts, my my security. Not really much concerned for the glory of Christ, for the good of the lost. Our prayers can be like that sometimes, can't they? Yet here is a wonder. God hears us. He answers our prayers. Even with all their inconsistencies, he answers our prayers. In his deep, deep mercy, he takes our inconsistent prayers and he answers them in line with his good purposes, for his glory and for our good. Now, that doesn't mean he always gives us exactly what we ask for. But it does mean he gives us exactly what we would have asked for if we know what God knows. He mercifully takes our prayers and answers them. And think about how reassuring that is. God answers our prayers not because they are so perfect or consistent or because we got our prayers right. He answers our prayers purely on the basis of his mercy alone. Not because we've been so good at praying, not because our prayers are worded so right, because he is so merciful. And just think of the freedom that gives. I've got a freedom to draw near to God, to come to him, to pray to him, and not constantly worry, have I got my prayers right? Because it's about how merciful he is. He wants us to pray to him, he wants us to draw near to him, even if we haven't got it all together. So in mercy, he answers. That's the first thing we see. Then we move to verses three to seven, which read the body of Jonah's prayer, and we see that in mercy he delivers. In mercy, he delivers, he rescues. In answer to Jonah's prayer, God mercifully raises Jonah up out of the place of death. Just listen to how Jonah describes the situation. Look at verse 3. He's been thrown down to the depths. He says, For 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. Do you see the picture? He's been utterly engulfed by the waters. He's kind of helpless below the waves as they crash over him. And look at verse 4. He's been cast away from God. Verse 4 says, Then I said, I am driven away from your sight. And then we get in verse 5. This picture of the seaweed is wrapped around him like burial cloths, or maybe some sort of chains. And then look at the beginning of verse 6. What does he say? I sunk down to the roots of the mountains. Now, in kind of the Hebrew mindset, that is as far down in the whole of creation as you can go. He's gone down, down, down as far as is possible to go to the depths of creation. He goes down to this shadowy underworld. And he describes it as being locked in this kind of watery prison and dark. Look at verse 6. Verse 6, I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever. This is the place of the dead. The depths of darkness. You see, you don't understand how people thought in the Old Testament. The Old Testament thought the place of God's presence was up high. That's where life was. Traditionally, the Garden of Eden, where God walked with Adam and Eve, traditionally that's pictured as being up a mountain. And then you remember when Moses at the Exodus went up to meet God, he went up a mountain to meet God. That the temple was the symbol of God's presence among his people was it was up a mountain. That's a kind of symbolism of the Old Testament. What's Jonah been doing? What's his journey been like? Well, if you read through chapter one, we're told he goes down. He goes down to Joppa, he goes down into the boat, and now he's gone down to the depths of the sea, the bottom, the roots of the mountains. He's as far as possible as it is to be away from God. As a result of him running away. In light of all of this, just look again at verse 6. It's like someone's pulled back the curtains and this light pours into the darkness. Jonah's gone right down to the depths. What does verse 6 say? No matter how deep Jonah has sunk, God's mercy goes deeper. Verse 6. 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. God raises him up. Up, up from the deepest, darkest depths. That is glorious mercy that God is showing to him. And we see even more just how unfathomably deep God's mercy is when we look a little bit more closely again at Jonah's prayer. Can you spot what's missing in Jonah's prayer? What does Jonah not say? Not even hint at. Jonah never actually admits that he's been wrong. He never admits that the stuff he did in chapter one was wrong. He never says sorry. There's no sign here that he's he's repented of all the stuff that he did in chapter one. In the boat, he pretty much said, I'd rather die than repent than turn back to God. And you're gonna come on to chapter four and you'll see he's still in a bit of a mess. But you see what's going on here? That the Lord doesn't wait for Jonah to get his act together. God's already prepared a fish. God makes the first move. It's God's initiative, not Jonah's. And that means there's great hope for us. God doesn't wait for us to start climbing out of to whatever pit that we've got ourselves into. What does the Bible say? The Bible says, no, God has made the first move, He's come down into the depths to get us. That's who Jesus is. God come down into the depths. He's gone right down to the depths that he might lift us up. That's the picture of the storyline of the Bible. You see, our hope is not found on how well we turn back to God, how sorry we show ourselves to be. We should turn back. But our hope is not in how well we've done that. Our hope is in his mercy and what God is like. Some of us here may have made a complete mess of our lives. I don't know all of you. Maybe you're living with the consequences of some wrong that you've done. Maybe it's a broken body, broken relationship, broken future. Even if the consequences of what you've done are going to be with you for the rest of your life, know this. No matter how deep and dark the depths that your sin has brought you into, it's not so deep and not so dark that the Lord can't reach down and bring you up. His mercy goes far deeper than any of the mess we've managed to get ourselves into. But others of us might be a little bit more like Jonah. You see, Jonah was a very upright, respectable, religious man. He's proud of being a religious Jew. Now many of us can be very respectable and religious. Our lives might look quite clean. We're at church every Sunday, and we act very well. But like Jonah, we're ignoring God. Looking down on others. God's mercy goes deeper than any of our religious, respectable sins as well. In mercy he delivers. So he answers, he delivers. And why is he able to do that? Well, the third thing we see is in verses eight and nine salvation is his. Salvation belongs to the Lord. See, God's work of saving people depends from start to finish on God alone, not on what we do. Jonah's prayer closes with some more words that expose just a little bit how inconsistent and confused Jonah is in his heart. Jonah starts comparing. Himself with others. That's always an unhealthy thing to do, to start comparing yourself with others. And that's what Jonah does begins to do. He compares himself with the Ninevehes that he's been sent to reach. Look what he says. Look at verse 8. He says, those idol-worshipping pagans, they've blown their chance. Here's how he puts it, verse 8. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. See what he's saying? That those Ninevehes who bow down to idols made of stone or wood or whatever, they've blown it. They've blown their chance of experiencing God's covenant love. There is a right sense if we cling on to idols, we're not going to come close to God. But what Jonah's saying is a bit more than that. He said that those Ninevites have blown it. That's why I'm not going to go there. But then look how Jonah paints himself in verse 9. He paints himself as this faithful worshipper of God. Verse 9 he says, But I, with a voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed, I will pay. There's an irony here. The only people in the book to sacrifice and make vows to God is not Jonah. It's the sailors, the pagan sailors in chapter 1 who called on all sorts of gods. You see, Jonah is blind to the fact that in many ways he's just like the Ninevehes. He's just as much in need of God's mercy as the Ninevehes are. He worships idols just like the Ninevehes do. Just that his idols are hidden. You see, what is an idol? An idol is a false God. It's anything that we look to to give us significance or security in life instead of God. And that could be anything. It could be a career. It could be our reputation. It could be a certain relationship. Or in Jonah's case, it's his nationality, but also his religious pedigree. You see, it's clear that Jonah hasn't grasped the beauty of God's grace. And even more that he needs God's grace. He's just as much in need of God's grace as the Ninevites are. But then he says something that's wonderfully true at the same time. Look at verse 9. The end of verse 9. He speaks better than he seems to realize. Verse 9, he finishes prayer with salvation belongs to the Lord. What's that saying? He's saying salvation is God's. God delights to save whoever he chooses. It's God's initiative, it's God's plan. It's God's call who he chooses to show mercy to. And you see, if you understand what they're saying, we see that acceptance with God, being approved by God, doesn't depend on my background. It doesn't depend on my achievements or my efforts or what race I was born in, or what where I grew up, or what culture I'm from, or how I've achieved in work, or how religious I've been. No, our acceptance or approval with God is a free gift given because God is merciful to us. And that is, if we get that, that is absolutely liberating. Because it frees us from this endless cycle of trying to have to prove ourselves. If our acceptance before God is based on our achievements or our background, either we weren't born in the right place or context, or we have to constantly prove ourselves through our work. And that's like an endless hamster. You never know if you got there. It's exhausting. You can't live life like that. But it's basically because God is merciful. That's a free gift. That's liberating. We don't need to prove ourselves anymore. And see, this is what Jonah needs to grasp. Jonah knows the theological truth. He knows that his creed that God saves. But functionally, Jonah is living as if his Jewish pedigree and his achievements are what has earned him acceptance with God. That's why he looks down on the Ninevites. And that's why Jonah hates the idea of God showing mercy to the foreign nations. Like the Nineveh, the Nineveh were one of the most cruel and violent empires in history. And Jonah hates the idea that God would have mercy on the merciless. Why? Well, because if our acceptance with God comes as a free gift, then Jonah's got nothing that he can boast of. We're all on the level playing field, regardless of where we come from or how much we've achieved. And so this is why God is showing so much mercy to Jonah throughout the book. Because God is trying to change, or God is changing Jonah's heart, God's in control of Jonah's heart, and God is working to change Jonah's heart. You see, the only way for Jonah's heart to be healed of these inconsistencies and the apathy towards others is for him to experience the warm sunshine of God's mercy. For his hard and cold heart to be melted by that warm sunshine of God's undeserved love. And only as Jonah begins to see himself as a sinner dependent on God's mercy, will he begin to be merciful towards others. Now, remember, Jonah, is it like a mirror, the book? As we look at Jonah, we begin to see our own inconsistencies there as well. I mean, it's so easy if you call yourself a follower of Jesus, it's so easy to be able to say Jesus saves, isn't it? Yet to live as if my acceptance, my approval before God is based on what I do or where I come from. Think about the things that we try and mention to others that we want to make sure that people know about. Those are the things we're looking, we're basing our approval on, aren't they? Or things that we worry about not having. And when we base our relationship to God on the basis of how we have achieved what we've achieved of earning it ourselves, all sorts of ugly attitudes towards others begin to come in. Like Jonah, we can be slow to welcome people from different backgrounds or cultures. Because maybe we're proud of our culture as being more accepted by God than others. That's a really ugly thing. Or maybe we don't want to associate with messy people because that might tarnish my reputation. Again, an ugly attitude. Instead of loving others, we can begin to be envious of others or arrogant or get the sense of competitiveness. These are the things that creep in if we're relating to God on the basis of our works rather than his mercy. And healing comes as we experience once again the warm sunshine of his mercy to us. That we're accepted purely on the base of his mercy to us, not on what we've achieved. And we'll only truly experience that and have our inconsistencies beginning to be healed when we look to the only consistent human being that ever lived. There was only one human being who was perfectly consistent in and out, whose prayers were always perfectly consistent. It's the Lord Jesus. There was a moment when Jesus was confronted by the Jonahs of his day, the Pharisees in the New Testament were very like Jonah in many ways. And Jesus was confronted by them, and listen to what he says. This is in Matthew chapter 12. Jesus says this. And Jesus says this. He says, An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. Now what's that sign? Well, Jesus continues. He says, For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. So here's Jesus. Jesus is a one perfect, consistent human being inside and out. His prayers were always perfectly consistent. What does he say he'd done? He's the true Jonah who had mercy on the nations. People like us. And what has he done? Well, he willingly was plunged into the depths for us on our behalf. He went down to the depths of darkness and death on our behalf, taking upon himself all the consequences of our inconsistencies, taking them to the cross. He was plunged into the darkness of death under God's curse, and three days later he was vomited out by death, rose again. And this is the reason why God hears our inconsistent prayers and rescues us. Not because of how inconsistent we've been, but because Jesus has taken the punishment upon himself. He's gone down to the depths for us that he might raise us up. He's taken the full consequences on our behalf. See, he makes the first move, and it's out of the endless depths of his mercy. Not because of how great we are. And as we begin to admit our need of mercy and embrace him, what happens to us who are raised up from the depths to enjoy his life? More than that, we have the confidence to know that there's someone praying for us whose prayers are always consistent. That's what Jesus is doing right now. Praying for his people. As we pray, in a sense, he's saying, Hear their prayers, I died for them. Answer their prayers. And here's the difference this makes: the more we bask in the warm sunshine of what Jesus has done for us, the more our hearts begin to change. Those inconsistent, ugly attitudes towards others slowly begin to dissolve. And we'll find something happening. This little spring bubbling out of us of compassion towards others begins to run. Now that that's not going to be perfect. We're until Jesus returns, we're still going to be inconsistent, we're going to wrestle with that all of our lives. But he's changing us. And the more and more we gaze at his mercy, the more and more we bask in what he's done for us, going down to the depths for us and being raised again, the more we're going to be changed. So, yes, I am inconsistent. All of us are. There's different ways we wrestle with it, different ways we struggle, but we're all inconsistent, and our prayer life exposes it. But what do we see here? We see that there is hope for us in the mercy of God in Christ. Why? Because Jesus went down to the depths for us that he might raise us up. And so we can have real hope. God will hear our prayers, will answer our prayers in the midst of all our inconsistencies. Because he hears our prayers not on the basis of how good and right our prayers are. Because Jesus is good and right and perfect. And he's died for us. I'm going to be quiet for a moment. And then we're going to pray. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Loving Father, we praise you that you are the God who is perfectly consistent. And you are perfect and consistent in your mercy. We thank you for that mercy that goes down to the depths on our behalf in the Lord Jesus, that we might be raised up. We thank you that because of Jesus, you hear our prayers and you answer our prayers as inconsistent as we may be as human beings. We thank you that you are working in us to make us like Christ, the perfect, consistent one. Please, would you give us deep comfort and continue to do that work in us by your Spirit? And we ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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