BIG IDEA:
THE GOD OF THE SECOND CHANCE HEARS OUR DESPERATE CRIES DESPITE THE DEPTHS OF OUR DISTRESS
(GOD’S DELIVERANCE IS NOT CONSTRAINED BY THE DEPTHS OF OUR DISTRESS)
INTRODUCTION:
Do you ever feel that your situation is so hopeless and entangled that God could never bail you out?
The belly of the fish is a lot safer place than the depths of the sea. God is moving Jonah through various stages on the way back to following Him.
As long as you can still pray there is still hope.
Daniel Timmer: Although the structure of the prayer is similar to that of biblical psalms of thanksgiving, it follows that pattern only loosely, yielding the following structure:
- Introduction (2:2): a summary of the psalm (problem→ prayer→ provision)
- Lament (2:3–6a): the psalmist’s problem is described
- Proclamation (2:6b): praise of yhwh’s mighty act of deliverance
- Appeal (2:7): call to yhwh for help
- Testimonial (2:8): recital of yhwh’s greatness and glory (transformed into a condemnation of the ungodly)
- Thanksgiving and vow (2:9): praise of yhwh and promise of concrete acts of worship
Trent Butler: The fish apparently represents a safe haven for Jonah, a God-given vessel of safety escorting him out of Sheol. From inside the fish Jonah can look back at his distressful times in the sea before the rescue occurred. He describes Sheol as “a hyperbole for his brink-of-death experience (as in Pss. 18:5; 30:3)” (Barker, Breaking Old Testament Codes, 229).
I. (:1-2) ANSWERED PRAYER REACHES DOWN TO THE DEPTHS OF OUR DISTRESS
“Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish, and he
said, ‘I called out of my distress to the Lord, And He answered me. I cried for
help from the depth of Sheol; Thou didst hear my voice.’”
A. Prayer as the Lifeline Connection to our Personal God
“prayed to the Lord his God”
B. Prayer in the Nick of Time — Even as the Last Resort
– Jonah prayed
– I called out to the Lord
– I cried for help
Context: running away from God; under God’s hand of judgment – yet still able to pray to God for help.
In the belly of the fish for three days and three nights – did he start calling out to God right away . . . or did he sulk for some time?
C. Prayer from the Depths of Distress (Impossible Complications)
– from the stomach of the fish
– my distress
– from the depth of Sheol
Lloyd Ogilvie: Before we go on in the psalm of Jonah, we need to identify with the prophet’s despair in the depths of the sea. If we move to the next portion too quickly, we will miss what the psalm has to teach us about the treasures of the depths. God tracks us down and stops us in our runaway path from obedience, then confronts us with what we are doing. He also allows us to go through a time of death of our willfulness. As we pray we are aware of the hopelessness of changing either ourselves or the problem we created. This moment of hopelessness puts us through a death to self and in a good sense we give up. There is nothing we can do. We hit rock-bottom. And when we do, our surrender to God and His mercy is more than words. We cast ourselves into he arms of everlasting Mercy. That is when resurrection to a new beginning can happen. When Jonah gave up hope of surviving and could sink no lower, God intervened and saved him. Ps. 103:4
D. Prayer that Receives Merciful Response – (The Mercy of Answered Prayer)
– He answered me
– Thou didst hear my voice
The Lord wants to train us to be merciful instead of judgmental and prideful.
He wants our heart of compassion to be wide like His.
David Guzik: God can give us a total peace and assurance that our prayers have been answered, even before the actual answer comes
II. (:3-4) HOPE COMES FROM UNDERSTANDING THE HAND OF THE LORD IN ADMINISTERING DISCIPLINE
“For Thou hadst cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the
current engulfed me. All Thy breakers and billows passed over me. So I said, ‘I
have been expelled from Thy sight. Nevertheless I will look again toward Thy holy temple.”
Daniel Timmer: Jonah’s statement that the waves and billows are yhwh’s is technically correct in the abstract, but here it most likely continues his attempt to attribute his current difficulties to yhwh’s will (without any further explanation) rather than recognizing that he was responsible for his near death by drowning.
A. Sovereign Discipline – from the hand of the Lord
“Thou hadst cast me”
“Thy breakers and billows”
Trent Butler: Jonah describes his trouble in very personal terms. It was not an accident. It was a you-and-me confrontation. Jonah remembered the horror of the situation, a horror caused not only by his fear of the sea but even more by his knowledge that God hurled (or cast him out) into the deep. If God had put him there, then only God could deliver him, and Jonah knew he had become a rebel whom God might not want to deliver. Why would God deliver him when the threat came from all your waves and breakers? As Jonah pictured his plight, he was as good as dead. Any deliverance had to come from God.
B. Severe Discipline
“into the deep”
“into the heart of the seas”
C. Surpassing Discipline – beyond measure – looks like I am permanently separated from God
“engulfed me”
“passed over me”
“So I said, ‘I have been expelled from Thy sight.’”
D. Sufficient Discipline – Accomplishes purpose of Restoration and Orientation towards Holiness, Worship and Service
“Nevertheless I will look again toward Thy holy temple.”
III. (:5-6) THE AWESOMENESS OF THE DELIVERANCE CORRESPONDS TO THE MESSINESS AND HOPELESSNESS OF THE PIT
A. The Messiness and Hopelessness of the Pit — 5 Images
“Water encompassed me to the point of death”
“The great deep engulfed me.”
“Weeds were wrapped around my head.”
“I descended to the roots of the mountains.”.
“The earth with its bars was around me forever,”
John Goldingay: Reed or seaweed suggests the growth on the ocean floor in which one could get fatally entangled; it thus also suggests a parallel image to the ropes with which She’ol catches and holds its victims. The feet of the mountains are their extreme bottoms in the subterranean and suboceanic depths. The earth is here the (under)world, where the gates of Hades had been closed and barred behind him (cf. Matt. 16:18).
B. The Awesomeness of the Deliverance
“But Thou has brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.”
Trent Butler: Jonah sank as low as he could go, to the roots (or base or foundation stones) of the mountains. His journey downward that started in chapter 1 is finished. He reached the bars of the earth—the gates to Sheol or the underworld itself. He was in the pit, another term for the residence of the dead (Ezek. 28:8). Humanly speaking, escape was impossible. Jonah was there forever. Even entry into the residence of the dead was not eternal because God maintains control of life even in the realm of the dead. For Jonah this proved more than a theological statement of faith. He confessed to his own experience: you brought my life up.
IV. (:7-9) REPENTANCE SPARKS RENEWED COMMITMENT AND THANKSGIVING
A. Turning Back to the Lord with his Last Gasp
“While I was fainting away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to
Thee, into Thy holy temple.”
B. Specific Repentance to Return to Faithfulness
“Those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness”
Charles Ryrie: Jonah includes himself among those who forsake God’s faithfulness for lies.
Daniel Timmer: The last few verses of the psalm, its testimonial (2:8) and thanksgiving sections (2:9), bring Jonah’s self-congratulatory and self-centred view of God and himself to bear on the issue of non-Israelites by contrasting those who hold to worthless gods (2:8) with Jonah (2:9). This is highly salient in the light of Jonah’s commission to go to Nineveh and the shocking response of the sailors to the meagre knowledge of yhwh they gained from him in chapter 1. But in contrast to other psalms that praise God for manifesting his glory, power, faithful love, amazing deeds and so on in the author’s deliverance (Pss 30:11; 31:22; 34:7–9; 35:10; 40:5, etc.), the ‘testimonial’ is replaced by a condemnation of those who worship false gods (cf. Ps. 31:6). Jonah most likely has in mind the sailors, perhaps because he is unaware that the sea calmed once he was thrown overboard. But whether they, the Ninevites or non-Israelites in general are in view, the contrast clearly presumes that Jonah, because he has been delivered, is the polar opposite of such people and has himself experienced God’s faithful love (ḥesed). The larger context in which Jonah constructs this flattering contrast invites the reader to draw the opposite conclusion. On the one hand, the sailors’ new-found relationship with yhwh is undoubtedly genuine, and constitutes a revelation of his ḥesed to those who do not worship false gods (note Ps. 31:7, which follows a similar condemnation in 31:6). On the other hand, Jonah’s deliverance is in large part a means to God’s end: bringing a message of condemnation to Nineveh that will reveal his ḥesed to the most unpromising non-Israelites (Jon. 4:2).
C. Renewed Commitment
1. Worship from a Heart of Thanksgiving
“But I will sacrifice to Thee with the voice of thanksgiving.”
Mark Copeland: It is interesting to note that his prayer is more of a
THANKSGIVING, than a petition
Trent Butler: The present context is a praise to God expressed first in the negative statement about worthless nothings and then in the positive vow to praise and worship and sacrifice. Part of that praise is to express the availability of God’s grace, his love, his covenant faithfulness to his people, and to warn them of the danger of abandoning that grace when they abandon God. The Lord personifies grace, and he gives objective blessings because of his grace. Both are tied up in the meaning of “their grace.”
In the midst of the sea, he thanked God for deliverance. In the belly of the fish, he repeated that prayer, and certainly at the public thanksgiving service in the temple later, he repeated the prayer. We cannot say thank you to God too many times.
John Goldingay: It is a textbook example of a thanksgiving psalm, which tells the story of how a suppliant experienced a life-threatening predicament, how that person prayed, how Yahweh listened to the prayer, and how Yahweh acted to deliver the suppliant, who then affirms the nature of Yahweh and makes a commitment for the future. A thanksgiving psalm may tell its story more than once, and Jonah’s psalm does so by summarizing it (v. 2 [3]) and then giving a detailed version (vv. 3–7 [4–8]) before coming to the affirmation and commitment (vv. 8–9 [9–10]).
2. Service in the context of Faithfulness
“That which I have vowed I will pay.”
Trent Butler: Still in the belly of the fish, looking back at his desperation in the sea, Jonah looks forward to the temple experience. He believes he will once more see the temple. Once there he will carry out his obligations to God. He will sing a song of thanksgiving at a special thanksgiving ceremony. He will make the thanksgiving sacrifice and share it with family, friends, and priests. He will recount all that God has done to deliver him and will testify about God’s goodness to him. This is Jonah’s promise to God, and this is exactly what he will do when he sees the temple again.
3. Dependence Upon God’s Grace and Mercy
“Salvation is from the Lord.”
Note: But we can tell from the events of Chapter 4 and Jonah’s attitude there that he had not fully repented or grasped the lessons yet that the Lord had for him.
V. (:10) SOVEREIGN DELIVERANCE BRINGS US TO THE PLACE OF SAFETY AND RENEWED SERVICE
A. The Sovereign Lord Accomplishes His Purposes
“The Lord commanded the fish”
B. The Process of Restoration Can be Painful and Messy
“and it vomited Jonah up”
C. The Place of Safety Brings Opportunity for Renewed Service
“onto the dry land”
Now it is time to obediently answer the call of God and go minister to Nineveh.