Running to God

A great fish swallows Jonah, 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 floods surrounded me. All Your waves and Your billows passed over me. Then I said, I am driven away from Your sight, yet I shall look upon Your holy temple.

The water closed in over me to take my life. A deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped around about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever, yet I 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 regards to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.

But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to You that which 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. I want to start by asking you a couple of questions. What do you do when you've messed up?

What do you do when you've gotten yourself into a bad situation because of some sinful choices that you've made and you're not sure how to get out of it? Now, there are many different situations where we could be talking about. It might be something relatively minor, where you said something insensitive to someone, and later you thought, boy, that was the wrong thing to say. What do I do about it? How do I get out of this?

But maybe it's something more significant. You've created a real mess in something—a friendship, a relationship, a relationship with your spouse, a relationship with your children. And you look around one day and you ask, is there a way out of this? Is there a way out of this vicious cycle of pain and confusion that we've created together? What do you do when you've messed up?

And I ask that because it's the net effect of running away from God. This is what Jonah has been doing. We've been looking at Jonah, and that's exactly what he'd done. Last time when I was here with you, we looked at the first chapter of Jonah. But in the book of Jonah, we don't just meet Jonah who's running from God, we meet a gracious God.

A gracious God who is trying to save His rebellious, stubborn prophet. Jonah, if you remember the first chapter—I think we all know the story quite well from our children's Bible days. Jonah is told to get up and go to Nineveh and to preach judgment to it. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. This was an empire that was hostile to Israel, so Jonah really didn't want anything to do with that.

So Jonah says, no. The Lord had an assignment for him. He didn't feel like doing it. God had him wanting to speak on His behalf. Jonah says, no.

He's determined to quit as God's prophet. So instead of going where God tells Jonah to go, to Nineveh and to preach to them, instead, he does the complete opposite. Instead of doing what God tells him to do, instead of being who God calls him to be, he goes the other way. He rebels. He disobeys.

And we know from last time, if you remember, that the same thing can happen to us as well. Because there are times we don't like what God is telling us to do in His word. There are times when we don't like what God calls us to be. We don't like everything that we read in the Bible. There are times we don't feel like we want to do it.

We don't want to do it. Instead, we find some way to run, to hide from God. In rebellion, Jonah goes down to Joppa. He pays the fare. He goes to sleep on a ship.

God sends a storm to spiritually awaken His wayward prophet. But Jonah ignores the message of the storm. He ignores the solution to the storm. His solution isn't to repent and confess his sin and pray towards God. Rather, he submits himself to the judgment of God.

He'd rather die by drowning in the sea than return to the Lord. So the sailors do that. They throw Jonah into the sea, and that's where we ended up last time. But we know the end of the story. At this point in time when Jonah's thrown into the sea, he has no idea.

He just thinks he's going to drown. He's going to die, and that really comes out in this prayer that he prays, this confession that he has there. Relentless grace. Jonah is ready to drown in the sea, but the Lord appoints a great fish to swallow Jonah. God doesn't give up on Jonah.

That's God's relentless grace. But I think as we get into the story, we need to address the elephant in the room, or maybe I should say the big fish in the room, because there are a lot of people who can't believe that Jonah is swallowed by a great fish and that he survives that. And other people have gone to great lengths to try and prove that it's possible, that it's possible for a human to be swallowed by a large fish and survive. So the question we have to wrestle with is: Is this fishy story true? Is it even possible?

And, of course, one of the answers is no, but it's no without God's intervention. The whole thing is a miracle. It's a miracle that there's a fish there at that moment when Jonah is thrown overboard into the sea. It's a miracle that Jonah stays alive for three days. It's a miracle that he's vomited up onto dry land.

But think about this. If you can believe there is a God who created the world by His word, as I do, if you believe that Jesus was able to go around and heal the sick, to calm the storms, to raise the dead, if you believe in the virgin birth, if you believe in the resurrection of the dead, then the idea of God doing something special at a special time on earth should not be a problem for us. If you need to try and explain how Jonah survived by natural means, you'll struggle to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. But if you believe that Jesus rose from the dead, which we do, which we've proclaimed here in song, then you have no problem believing that God can use a big fish to swallow a prophet. What God did to save Jonah is not normal, but it shouldn't surprise us that God can step out of what we consider normal, to do His will and His work.

So I believe the story is true. It's a real man, a real fish. I believe it's a real miracle from God that's been recorded in scripture for us today. And I believe that God is sovereign, so He can use a big fish to rescue Jonah and to do that as a display of His grace and His mercy. And when we pick this story up, it's not God paying Jonah back for his sin, but it's actually God bringing Jonah back from his sin.

It's God caring enough about His disobedient servant to provide a rescue for him, to provide the fish. And we read there that Jonah's in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. It's a pit for him, and it's a pit with a physical nature. He's in the pit physically. And to say the least, you can imagine that would have been an awful experience, you know, gastric juices continually washing over him, probably bleaching his skin.

And I'm sure it smelled really bad. He'd probably smell like a portaloo at a music festival. Like, it would have been bad. He's in the pit because of his sin and disobedience, and he's honest about the physical nature, the location of it. It's not a metaphor.

He's in the heart of the sea. He's saying that physically, he's at the bottom of the ocean, physically close to death. It's a physical experience for Jonah. You know, we have experiences in life that can put us in a pit. Maybe you're currently in one.

We've heard about it too. It's someone taking their life, depression, loneliness, regret, remorse, grief, financial pits, and it affects us physically. Sleepless nights, stress, social withdrawal, no appetite, too much appetite. When we're under stress, when we're in a pit, it affects us physically. We're reminded in scripture that unrepentant sin can have a physical impact on us.

We read that in Psalm 32. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, Your hand was heavy on me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to You.

I did not cover up my iniquity. I said, I'll confess my transgressions to the Lord, and You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Psalm 32. David experiencing physical suffering because he's hiding his sin. And he feels that physical suffering until he confesses and his guilt is lifted.

When we confess our sin, our guilt is lifted, and the physical can be restored. But it's also emotional and spiritual. It's not just the emotion that comes out in these verses is distress, which is understandable. Perhaps you have seen or heard of people in distress, whether it's fires or floods or earthquakes or emergencies or some sort. It's just it's been on the news with the fires in California just in this past week.

You hear it in people's voices, the anguish as they speak about the ferocity of the fires and the impact on their homes and their lives, that feeling of distress. In his distress, Jonah cries out to God. In verse two, I called out to the Lord. Out of my distress, He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol, I cried, and You heard my voice.

There's no boasting here. He knows that if God doesn't save him, he'll never get out of this situation alive. He also confesses that God put him there. God put him there. For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas.

Verse three. Jonah doesn't blame the sailors for throwing him into the deep. He sees that behind everything, everything that happened, is the sovereign Lord of the universe. And so Jonah knows that he must answer to the Lord and the Lord alone. It's like David in Psalm 51.

Against You, You only have I sinned. It impacts people around, but he's confessing before God. He feels like he's going to die in this great fish. But more so, he's already nearly drowned. Some of the descriptions of distress were his experiences before the fish even swallowed him. You know, the waters closed over him to take his life.

The deep surrounded him. Weeds were wrapped around his head. There was no way out unless the Lord brought him out of that. And he struggled spiritually. In verse four, then he said, I am driven away from Your sight.

Because of his sin, he feels separated from God, banished from God. The word they're using is driven away, which is the same word that's used of Adam and Eve when they're rejected from the Garden of Eden because they had sinned. They're banished. They're driven away from the presence of God. They're driven away, separated from God.

Did Jonah feel like he'd been forgotten by God? Well, that would be yes. But had he? No. Some of you may feel like that too, that you've been forgotten by God.

You feel like you're in the heart of the sea, that God doesn't care about you, that God doesn't know you're there. But maybe God's trying to get your attention. And when we're in that space, in that place, what do we do? Well, what we don't do is deny our sin. Pretend it didn't happen, cover our sin, downplay the seriousness.

If we do, it says there in one John one, we deceive ourselves. If we pretend we haven't sinned, we call God a liar. But we do what Jonah did. In verse one, he called to the Lord. He cried out to Him.

In verse four, he looked again to God's holy temple. In verse seven, he remembered the Lord, picturing his prayers rising up to God's holy place, and he repents. Repentance always begins with a note of despair. Sometimes we get a glimpse of death. We're going to die.

We're going to stand before the judgment of God. How's that going to be? And in moments like that, even with Jonah in the belly of the fish, in a moment like that, all the accomplishments you've achieved in life, all the praises you've received, where you've lived, how many friends you had, all of that becomes meaningless if you still stand condemned before a holy God. Jonah felt like there was no hope for him, but there was because God was at work. God hasn't put Jonah in the fish, in a sense, in a chamber of death.

But as someone in the commentary writes, He's put him in a temporary hospital for his soul. And maybe that's you. Jonah recognizes the source of his running. You see a heart change in Jonah in verses eight to ten. In verse eight, he says, those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.

Who's Jonah talking about in that verse? Is he talking about other people? He's talking about himself. I think he's talking about himself as much as he is talking about other people. He's applied the sin of idolatry to all people, and he includes himself in that.

He said, well, how is it? How is it that Jonah is an idol worshipper? Well, until this moment, Jonah was not worshipping God in his disobedience. He's running from God. And so in that sense, he sees there's no neutrality when it comes to worship.

Either you're worshipping God and serving God, or you're worshipping and serving something or someone else. It's the fundamental challenge of scripture. Who or what will you worship? Who or what is your god? What do you want?

What do you desire? What do you seek? What do you pursue? Where do you look for security or for meaning, for happiness, for fulfilment? What do you fear?

What do you worry about? And so Jonah sees himself here as functioning as an idolater because he's looking after his own interests in his own way. He takes his eyes off God, off the joy of submitting to God, and the work that God calls him to do. Instead, his focus is on his way, his plan, his agenda, his will. And it takes these days in the belly of a fish for Jonah to acknowledge that, to confess that, to recognise that idolatry was the source of his own sin.

He thought it better to disobey God and to hold on to the things that he loved rather than obey God and hold on to God. And now he realises that that's what's kept him from the one great source of life and fulfilment and joy and peace, Himself. But it leads him to praise God in verse nine, acknowledging that salvation belongs to the Lord. Think about it. He's still in the fish.

He's not even sure that he's going to survive. He doesn't even know how he's going to survive. But he comes to this great conclusion, salvation belongs to the Lord. This is sometimes the hardest lesson for us to learn. Salvation starts with God, and it ends with God.

And some of us struggle a lifetime to learn that. Most of us have to learn it over and over again. Salvation belongs to God. There's no salvation. There's no deliverance until we realise that if God doesn't save us, we'll never be saved.

We can't save ourselves. When we stop running from God, we see He's appointed His Son to save us. And I think that's the advantage for Jonah for being in the belly of a fish for three days. I'm sure it would have cleared his mind to think about and focus on what matters most. I think most of us would probably grow spiritually if we spent a little time, if we were to spend a few days in a great fish, or at least some place without internet and computers and TV and distractions in life.

The terrifying darkness inside the fish, Jonah realised the uselessness of fighting against God. He's been saved from drowning, and he knows he needs to give God thanks for that, though yet he doesn't know the final outcome. He still gives thanks to God. When we're not thankful, we're forgetting our rescue because we've received undeserved mercy after we've run from God. And like Jonah, we're called to recognise our salvation belongs to Him, to praise Him, to thank Him, to worship Him.

Jonah understood that he would not even be praising God if it wasn't for the grace of God that has brought him to that place. The only reason we come together like this worshipping God is because of His grace towards us. As Paul notes in Acts 17, we move and live and breathe, but it's only by the grace of God. What now? What now for Jonah?

Well, God listened to Jonah. That's God's response. In verse two, He heard Jonah's cry for help. In verse six, Jonah says, He lifted my life from the pit. It's the God of the Psalms, the Psalm that was read to us by Tony.

It's God. It's our God. Through Jesus, God redeems our life from the pit. For Jonah, the fish vomits him up onto a beach. For us, we're made alive and new in and through Jesus.

Once Jonah turns to God, God has the fish vomit Jonah onto the land, and he's vomited up in God's grace. Now Jonah's ready to do what God calls him to do. Jonah's ready to do what God wants him to do. We're in the same place. Under God's grace, we're ready to do what God tells us to do.

We're ready to go and where God calls us to go. We're ready to praise Him, to worship Him with our whole life because He saved us from drowning in the sea of our sin. So Jonah's ready to make good on his vow, to make good on the task that God's called him to. He will go to Nineveh. He will tell them that salvation comes from the Lord.

He can say that through his own personal testimony. You think, wow. What a testimony he has. What a story it will be. And it's interesting that it's an incredible story that it would mean something to the people of Assyria, to the people of Nineveh, because they worshipped Dagon, and Dagon is a fish god.

It's interesting. So Jonah survives in a fish. He goes to the people and talks about his rescue. How might Jonah's adventure add to the message that he's bringing to the people of Nineveh? And you think, well, how might our personal testimony of God's grace to us add to the message that we bring?

But the story is not just about a big fish but about a big God. If we generally confess our sins, God will forgive us. That's God's great grace to us. So what do you do when you've messed up? What do you do when you've gotten yourself into a bad situation?

Stop running from God. You turn to God. You confess it. You look to God's grace to forgive, and He hears. Jonah's incredible story is a reminder of an even more incredible story.

The greatest story is that the Son of Man came into our pit physically and emotionally. Jesus experienced the deepest pit for us, and He conquered that pit. He went down into the depths of the sea, had the weeds of our sin wrap around Him, the bars of death closing around Him. He cries out, my God, my God, why have You forsaken me? The story of Jonah points us to Jesus.

The story of Jesus tells us how far God will go on behalf of guilty sinners. He sent His Son to the lowest place on earth, to the bloody cross of Calvary for us. And out of that shame, He fashioned our salvation. As Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days, Jesus was in the heart of the earth for three days. As Jonah came out of this, so did Jesus too, because death could not hold Him.

That should move us to repentance. Because the truth is that you and I will never go through what Jonah went through because Jesus went through it for us. It's a display of God's grace. For anyone who struggles in a pit feeling alone and forgotten, God's grace reaches out and says, Jesus has paid the price. The purpose of what happens to Jonah was to bring him to see his need of God, the God who will rescue him and give him new life.

There was a need for him to see the grace and mercy of God. It's the same for us. We need to see the mercy and grace of God. And being stuck in a pit should lead to a couple of responses in our heart: humility and confidence. Now people usually have one or the other, don't they?

I have humility because I know how bad my sin is, how badly I need salvation, but I'm not confident that God will forgive me because it's so bad. Or I'm confident before God because I believe I deserve it. That makes me proud. But the gospel is the only thing that gives us both. I have humility because I know the depth of my sin, but I have confidence because I understand the depth of God's undeserving grace, love, and mercy that comes my way.

God getting us to a place where we can see and understand sometimes can be a painful process for us to get to that point, like it was for Jonah. But now Jonah gets it. He knows the depth of his need. He knows the depth of God's undeserving love.

I think there are times when we possibly exclude ourselves from God's grace. We don't think we deserve it because we're stuck in a pit, a pit of guilt or shame or misery. But God doesn't tell you that you're excluded from that offer. The grace of God is amazing. It welcomes the worst of sinners into the courts of heaven.

We have that greater deliverance from sin. We may be delivered from our circumstances in this life, maybe not, but we're delivered from sin. And it's better to be united with God even if it's in the belly of a fish than to be on dry land without Him. So the real pit is being anywhere apart from God. To the self confident, super religious, to the ones who are feeling alone and forgotten, God's grace reaches out and says, Jesus has paid the price.

All you need to do is come to Him. Let's pray together. God, we praise You for Your salvation. Though we know that each of us have rebelled against You, that we deserve eternal separation from You, we deserve judgment because we have rebelled against Your holy righteous hand, we praise You for Your unrelenting mercy and grace, for Your pursuit of us even when we found ourselves in the wrong place. Some of us may be there right now, finding ourselves at a low point, experiencing the consequences and distress associated with our sin and rebellion.

Lord, may they know that You don't give up on people. You pursue Your people, that we can't outrun Your grace or Your mercy. The call is to turn back to You. Jesus, we praise You for making salvation possible for us, for hearing our cries for mercy, for saving us from sin through Your death on the cross, through Your resurrection from the grave. And, Lord, salvation belongs to You, and we praise You for Your salvation.

We pray for the spread of that word of salvation. May it go through us as Your people here today, and may we share it with those around us. May we share that You, O God, are gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and that You'll save those who put their hope and trust in You. We rejoice in that now, and we thank You for Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.