Jonah, chapter number 1, verse 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 all 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. Father, we come to You now in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And we plead with You, Heavenly Father, that You would send your Holy Spirit to strengthen, to enable both myself and your people to hear the word of God. I pray that You would cause us to rejoice in your great salvation this morning. Do it for the name of your son, the glory of your own name, and do it to display the majesty and power of the Holy Spirit who alone can give us life and cause us to see the things that are written in your word. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen. Last week we considered Jonah's repentance, and how his repentance was marked by confession and an embracing of the consequences that his sin had caused. The consequences for his sin meant that the storm of God was affecting his life and the life of the sailors, which meant that Jonah was to be thrown overboard. And by God's grace, although Jonah was thrown overboard in the receiving of his consequences for his sin, Jonah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And that is true of verse number 17, because the Lord appointed a great fish and it swallowed up Jonah, which means if the great fish did not swallow Jonah, Jonah would have been down in the depths of the sea, dead. Now, Jonah, in the portion that we have read this morning, is in the belly of the great fish. And we must confess that it is not the most pleasant place to be. Imagine as a grown man or a woman living in a womb without an umbilical cord. Little to no oxygen, slime and the digestive fluids surrounding you. Smelly, humid, hot air, and dark as night. The belly of the whale is in one sense or another like a dark prison in which Jonah finds himself. Now what would be your response? You've been thrown overboard, you've confessed, you've been thrown overboard, you're sinking down in the sea, and next thing you know, you wake up finding yourself in the belly of a whale and you can't even see your hand in front of your face. There's probably fish slapping your face, you know, you're just tight, it's claustrophobic, you know, you can't breathe. I struggle when my son goes in one of those tunnels in the play equipment and if I have to go in, it's, you know, he starts sweating in the middle of winter. This is not a comfortable place to be. And this really does serve as a good picture of salvation in many ways, doesn't it? You know, repentance like Jonah's that leads to his salvation, but repentance to salvation does not mean a comfortable life. It doesn't mean that the consequences for your sin are all eradicated at the point of your conversion. We deal with past sins that have plagued our minds and stained our hearts. We carry the consequences of broken relationships. We carry the consequences of mental scars, perhaps financial pressures because of wastefulness, because you lived a life of excess. These things remain with us. Salvation doesn't guarantee our ultimate comfort in this life. And so in the case of Jonah, we see this. But the blessedness of this picture is not found in Jonah's physical condition. The blessedness of this picture is to be found in the fact that Jonah now is once again praying. You see, he's back with his God in the belly of the fish. He's back with his God who called him, whom he ran from, who he didn't want to hear His voice anymore or speak to, whom he fled to Tarshish from the presence of this God. Now he's in the belly of the great fish, but God is with him. And it could be said of Jonah as what was said of Saul of Tarsus, who was also one who ran from the presence of the Lord. When God said to Ananias, "Behold, he is praying." The joy of reconciliation, of restored relationship, the brokenness now, the dependence that leads to Jonah's psalm of praise. And this is what you have in chapter 2. What you have in chapter 2 is Jonah praising God for his great salvation even though he's in the belly of the great fish. This is a poetic prayer of praise. If it was found in the book of Psalms, it might be headed with the title, A Psalm of Jonah. And as the psalms begin, they often elaborate their theme in the introductory verse, and so this one does the same. Look what it says there in verse number two, which is the first verse of the psalm, 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." The theme of this psalm is given to us immediately. It is that when the, when when people or sinners or even the righteous cry out to the Lord, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord, they are saved. That crying out to God, uh, results in this salvation of God, this mercy of God, this loving kindness of God. And the whole psalm develops this idea that God is kind and God saves. And he saves those who call upon his name. Now, he references here in verse number two, out of the belly of Sheol, I cried. Sheol is the place of the dead. The departed dead. The rich man and Lazarus go down into the Hades as it were, or into Sheol, into the grave. It's like an under the grave because that's where the dead go. It's below the earth, it's under the earth. Jonah's saying, "I cried out unto the Lord," past tense, I have cried out to the Lord, "from the belly," or the depths as some translations have it, "of Sheol," of the underworld. Jonah is intertwining his physical experience of sinking down into the depths of the sea, gasping for breath, losing his life, about to lose his life. He is relating that in terms that are also of true of his spiritual condition. He is sinking physically, but it's describing his also his rebellion from God, sinking spiritually and God's rescue of him. And so what we have in this passage is an account of Jonah thinking about his descent into the depths of Sheol, as it were, coming into the place of the dead, almost taken his own life, his life has almost taken from him in the depths of the sea, but God rescuing and hearing him down from the depths of despair. Right at the bottom of the sea as it were, is the language that he uses. It's a metaphor. And it's describing to us this salvation of God that reaches down to the deepest place. God's mercy extends to those at the bottom of the sea. And the theme is developed in verses number three through to verse number seven in such a way that it kind of unfolds verse two. So if you read verse three and verse four, and if you read verse five through to verse number seven, what you have is verse number two expanded, essentially, and repeated. What he's saying, this is an emphasis that is trying to be made here. What he's happening is that Jonah is trying to emphasize through this psalm, showing us that he's he was descending, descending, descending. He looked to God. He was descending, descending, descending. He cried out to the Lord, and then it just expands at the very end and just opens up into this praise of this great salvation which belongs to God. It's this crisis in Jonah that leads to this call unto God for salvation, and met with the great mercy of God in delivering him. And the language of this passage is really descriptive of that crisis. You see, Jonah is in real despair at this point. He's crying out of distress. The image, as I said, is like one sinking down to the depths of the sea who cannot swim. There's probably nothing more distressing than that. To know that the air is many meters above you, you're out of breath, and you cannot swim, and the only place you're going is down. He's as it were being tossed in the sea. He's like a piece of cloth in the washing machine, being thrown around and around and around, taken up by the currents perhaps, or just sinking straight down to the depths. This is the language of helplessness that covers this entire psalm. There is this man in utter despair, out of distress. His crisis is deep. As I said, it's near death. He uses the language in verse number three, if you want to look at that, "The floods surrounded. Waters passed over me." "Driven from your sight." See, that's the spiritual connection with the physical aspect, "driven from your sight." The idea that there's this despair that's come into his heart. "The waters closed in over me to take my life," verse number five. Verse number six says, "I went down to the roots of the mountains, to the land whose bars closed upon me forever." He was so near death that he felt like he did die, and as if that was the end. My life, he said in verse number seven, was fainting away. This is a man in distress, in deep crisis, who is sinking down to the depths of the sea, and the only thing that he can do is the most feeblest thing that a human can do. It is an amazing thing what what is revealed in this passage concerning what Jonah does. He exercises these most feeble faculties of humanity. He's not saying I swam to the top and I rescued myself. And I just lay held of the life raft and I brought myself in. No. The things that he's saying is like this. I looked. I remembered. I called. Such feeble, helpless, extremely weak revealing the utter dependency of a person that cannot save himself, but all that he can do is cry and look and call and remember because he has no strength to save himself. And such feebleness for this man in deep crisis is met with God's almighty grace. What does God's answering look like? Look at verse number two. It says, "I called out to the Lord out of my distress and He answered me. And You heard my voice." What does that look like? What does that translate into? Well, it translates into what is seen in verse number four and verse number seven. So verse four, he looks again to his holy temple. Verse seven, "My prayer came to you into your holy temple." But it looks like verse number six. When when "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." Such feebleness by looking, calling, crying out is met with God's almighty grace described as this bringing me up out of the pit. Imagine it. If the sea is a pit and he's down at the bottom of it, it's like God's strong and mighty arm just plunges right into the depths of the sea and picks him up out of the depths of the sea and saves his life. And so Jonah, remembering all this from the belly of the great fish, which was to him God's great salvation that had come to him. He concludes this psalm in verse number eight to verse number nine. He says, "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." For Jonah, he sees that God's grace in his crisis deserves Jonah's utmost praise and utmost exaltation of the God of heaven and earth. He sees the fact that I've been rescued from this place, from this deep place of despair, it deserves all that I have, it deserves all that I am, it deserves everything that I've got. Jonah says in verse number nine, I'm going to praise the Lord as it were, by declaring Him to be far greater than all the other gods. He is the God who saves. He is the God with whom is steadfast love. He says these words, if if someone holds on to idols or clings to idols, they forsake steadfast love. What is he saying? He's saying, "Well, salvation belongs to the Lord. You want idolatry? You've got no salvation, because salvation belongs to God. God is far above the other gods. They cannot save. The idols have eyes, but they cannot see. They have ears, but they cannot hear. They have mouths and they cannot speak. Those that make them are like them. Those that worship them are just as dumb and foolish as them," says the scripture in Psalm 115. Strong words. But when you hold up the idols to the greatness of God, fitting words. God deserves all the praise. They are nothing. They are the work of men's hands. But God is the one who made man. God is the one who saves. Salvation belongs to Him. I love how the New International Version, particularly the 1984 version, translates this passage of scripture. Listen to how it translates verse number eight. It says it this way. "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs." Listen to me, let me just read that again. "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs." That's really captures the meaning of what Jonah's trying to get at here in in the same what he's saying. Not as literal, perhaps, as a translation of the one we have, but really captures the idea, doesn't it? Those who cling to worthless idols, they forfeit the grace that could be theirs because salvation belongs to the Lord. They forfeit the grace that could be theirs because God is the one who alone saves. God is the one who is unlike the idols, who can reach down to the depths of the sea and save those that cry upon him and call out to him. And so Jonas says, I'm going to exalt Him by comparing Him to the idols and showing that He is so great. But also, I'm going to exalt Him by being committed to Him in both my life and both my lips. I'm going to praise Him with who I am, and I'm going to praise Him with my mouth. Verse number nine, "But with the voice of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will pay, salvation belongs to the Lord." What Jonah is basically saying here, whatever I have committed to You, which is my life, I give it to You. I will pay my vow. And you know what, these lips of mine that I didn't want to speak in your name, that I didn't want to speak even of you to the sailors as it were, until it was drawn out of me, these lips are going to start declaring your praise because You are worthy. Because You are far greater than the idols, because You are the God who saves. Now, this passage of scripture speaks to us as New Covenant believers this side of the cross of our salvation, as it were. Not the physical salvation from the belly of the great fish, but of the salvation from our sin, whereby we have been saved by the mighty hand of God that reached us in our deep crisis when we called on His name. This psalm consists of crisis, praying, and don't forget what he says twice in this passage, the temple of God. The temple of the Lord, verse four and verse seven in this passage is where Jonah directs his prayer and his sight to the temple of the Lord. And the temple of God is God's house, the place of God's presence, the place where the children of Israel met God in the most intimate space of worship. Not that they couldn't call to Him in other places. But it was their most intimate place, the place where they would see in the sacrifices, see in the incense and all these things, the the way in which they could approach God and experience the worship of God and know God very closely and and nearly. They they experienced His presence there, but also the temple was the place where God's mercy was. You see, God put His name in the temple. All that God was, all that God is, all that God wanted to communicate to his people, when they came to the place of worship in the temple, they could learn of their God, see their God, and trust their God, and know their God. Their God is a God who's merciful and he is gracious. But he's a God that he is present, who is near, who saves. And so the children of Israel would go, uh, week in and day in and day out and sacrifice in and and all the different times where they were called to the temple to sacrifice. And they would go there and they would see even once a year, the day of atonement, the high priest coming into the most holy place where the presence of God dwelt. The shekinah glory of God descended, the ark of the covenant, the place where God was. And the high priest would go in there once a year and he would take the blood of the sacrifice, he would make atonement for his sins, he would sprinkle blood upon the mercy seat which sat right above the ark of the covenant. And through the blood of the mercy seat, in the presence of God, the children of Israel would have their sins as it were propitiated. The wrath of God would pass from them as it were. And they could continue to come and worship the Lord. The temple was the place of God's presence and the place of God's mercy. And there behind the veil was all that taking place. But the New Testament tells us that one greater than the temple is here. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 12 verse six, "I tell you something greater than the temple is here. Something greater than the temple is here." He's talking about himself. John chapter two says, "Jesus answered them, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Then the Jews said, "It has taken 46 years to build this temple, and would You raise it up in three days?" But He was speaking about the temple of His body. Listen to this. "When therefore He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken." Here is God's greatest and final temple, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is born of a virgin, comes into the world, He lives a perfect life, He He, uh, dies, uh, the death of a sinner though He committed no sin, and takes His blood and represents us, His people, before God for mercy. This is Jesus, the one who was tabernacled among us, so that we might have God's presence with us, that we might approach Him and know Him that the veil might be torn asunder, that our sins might be forgiven by His blood, that we might come into the most inner holy sanctum and have the most deepest and intimate worship with the Triune God, only possible through the blood of Jesus Christ. The greater than the temple is here. God's mercy seat is here. And it is the peculiar work of the Holy Spirit to produce what he produced in Jonah in the lives of sinners like you and I. To produce a sense of a deep crisis that leads us to calling upon the name of the Lord, that drives us to look upon this temple, to trust in God our savior. It is a peculiar work of the spirit to convince us and to convict us of our sin, of our guilt, of righteousness and of judgment to come. It is a particular work of the spirit to produce in you a distress. Yes, believe it or not. God wants us to be distressed about our sin. To be distressed about our rebellion. Been reading a book, it's just been riveting about a man that commits a murder. And committing this murder, he it's like the writer gets into his conscience and describes what life is like when a man commits a great sin and a great crime and he's in fear of punishment. And that's what it's like with sin. God by His spirit brings us to this deep distress to know that living without Him will never satisfy. To clinging to worthless idols will never result in peace. To show us that the way of the transgressor is hard. And the Holy Spirit produces this distress and brings in us the helplessness that we see in the passage here described by Jonah, that drives us to cry out from the pits, from the depths of Sheol. We're coming to the place of death. We're about to pass into the underworld. We're about to pass into the place where the where the departed dead have gone that do not know God. To Hades and Hell itself. And the spirit gives us the assurance and says to us, "Look, there is a temple. Jesus Christ, the place of presence and mercy, and if you look to him, you'll live. If you trust in him, you'll be saved." To help us understand what the apostles taught, neither is there salvation in any other, for there's no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. To give us the assurance and the understanding that Jesus is the way, the truth, the life. And no man comes to the Father except through Him. To give us the assurance and to help us understand that there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. To help us see that the only hope of our salvation is not in idol worship, but in the temple of the living God, Jesus Christ, who is our mercy seat, who is the presence of God descended and come to us. To give Jonah and to us the assurance that if I cling to idols, I forfeit the grace that could be mine. To give us the understanding that He must bring up my life from the pit if I am to be saved. Do you have that assurance this morning about your salvation? Where do you look for God's presence? Where do you look for intimacy with God? In mere spirituality formulated by spiritualists throughout the history from all kinds of Eastern mysticism coming into our, into your world and sphere today? Is that where you feel that God is near? Where do you find your confidence in the nearness of God? Do you find it in the fact that everything is going well for you? And that you don't feel like you're in the belly of the great fish? And while everything's going well, God is near. But when I feel like I'm in the belly of the great fish and things feel uncomfortable and I'm a bit constricted and feel a bit tight, then I don't feel that God's there. Where do you have your confidence? Yes, we may feel times and seasons of nearness of God and distance from God. But where does our fundamental assurance lie? It should lie in God's temple. Our eyes should always be going to God's temple, to the Lord Jesus Christ. Even though my sin is great, His mercy is greater. Even though I feel that God is far from me, Jesus lives inside of me. You see, all these things in scripture are pointing us to Christ as that mediator between God and man to bring us near unto God. We've been brought nigh by the blood of the Christ. This is our hope. This is our confidence. This is our assurance. And if I cling to idols, I forfeit the grace that could be mine. But if I cling to Christ and trust in Him, I know His presence and I know His mercy. If you are without hope in Jesus Christ this morning, your hope, your only hope of salvation, being delivered from your crisis, and I'm not talking about your uncomfortability, I'm talking about your crisis of sin and your guilty conscience before God. Your only hope is to look to God's temple this morning and to say, "Jesus, it's only your blood and righteousness that can save and cleanse me." I have no other hope, I have no other assurance. It is him. It is enough that Jesus died and that he died for me. And if he did not die for me, and his blood wasn't shed, I have no hope but idolatry. And with idolatry, I forfeit the grace that could be mine because the grace of God is in the temple of God and Jesus shed his blood for me. This is the only assurance that we have. And it is to you today to cry out to the Lord, as the Israelites did when they were bitten by those serpents in the wilderness, saying, "What must I do to be saved?" as it were. And Moses said, "Look and live, that's how you'll be saved." Oh, but I got to clean my life up first before I come to Christ. Rubbish, He died on the cross to clean you up because you can't clean yourself up. Well, I need to learn how to swim and sort things out. No, no, He wants to save you at the depths of the sea, in your corruption, in your guilt, in your shame. Yes. The mighty hand of God's grace wants to reach down into the depths of your sin this morning and bring you up out of the pit and save you by His merciful grace. This is what He does. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes on Him will have eternal life. That's what you need to do to be saved. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, your most feeblest, weakest, almost at is regarded as an inactivity is what God expects from you this morning if you want to be saved. Don't make excuses for why you can't come. Can you look to his temple? Can you cry on his name? Can you realize and recognize that you are in a crisis too deep that you cannot save yourself? If you look to Jesus even now you'll live. He'll rescue you from the pit of your despair. Fanny Crosby describes the great contrition and brokenness of a person that really desires God's salvation. And in her hymn, "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior," this is how she says what she writes. She says, "Pass me not, O gentle Savior, hear my humble cry. While on others thou art calling, do not pass me by. Savior, Savior, hear my humble cry. While on others thou art calling, do not pass me by. Let me at your throne of mercy find a sweet relief. Kneeling there in deep contrition, help my unbelief. Savior, Savior, hear my humble cry. While on others thou art calling, do not pass me by. Trusting only in your merit would I seek your face. Heal my wounded, broken spirit, save me by thy grace. Savior, Savior, hear my humble cry. While on others thou art calling, do not pass me by." All the idols of this world will pass you by when you call on their name. You can trust in money, but it cannot redeem you. You can trust in the idolatry of your own righteous works, but they can never save you. You can trust in a religious system that was given to you by your parents and you're brought up in or that you're familiar with, but that will not save you and redeem you. Salvation belongs to the Lord. He must save. It is His mercy alone. And brothers and sisters, Christians, we are those who like Jonah have been brought up out of the pit. Our lives have been rescued from the depths of the sea as we were sinking down. And shouldn't Jonah's conclusions be ours also? You're worthy, oh Lord. Why would I cling to worthless idols still and forfeit the grace that could be mine? You alone save, salvation belongs to you. I look upon what you have done and you have rescued me from my sin. Where is the song of praise that should be ours that ascends to God? Where is our voice of thanksgiving that is represented here as a sacrifice that ascends up into the nostrils of God as a sweet smelling sacrifice to Him? Where is our acknowledgment that salvation belongs to the Lord? It's important questions. How well and how often do you remember the watery grave from which you were saved and delivered? It took the storm and the sea and the nearness of death to squeeze the proper praise out of this prophet Jonah. Beware lest it takes the same to squeeze the praise out of us. God is worthy. We should come to Him not because He twists our arm and chastens us so that we praise Him. We should praise Him because of His salvation which He's wrought for us in Christ Jesus. We should thank Him freely and often and heartily and with all of our hearts, we should bless His holy name because of His great salvation. We should think not about the belly of the fish in which you may reside at this present time and the uncomfortable nature of your life. You should be like Jonah who in the belly of the fish is praising God for his great salvation, because he rescued him. And if he didn't rescue him, he'd be dead. Salvation is a great blessedness, and we should restore to God and give to God all his due praise in remembrance of the fact that we have no one else in heaven but Him, and there is nothing on earth that we desire beside Him. And though our hearts and our strength fail us as the psalmist says, God is the strength of our hearts and He is our portion forever. It is good for us to draw near to God. The one who has manifested his presence and mercy in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us praise his name together. Let's pray.