The God Who Reaches To The Depths

Jonah Series | 2:1-10 | Pastor Duane Smets

This an exegetical sermon of Jonah 2:1-10 looking at what it’s like to hit rock bottom, God’s purposes in it and how hearing the hope of salvation turns us into worshippers. This sermon was originally preached on March 20th, 2011 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.

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The Resolved Church
Pastor Duane Smets
March 20th, 2010

The Book of Jonah | The God Who Reaches To The Depths | 2:1-10
I. Sinking Into Death
II. Crying Out For Help
III. Hearing The Hope Of God
IV. Exclaiming The Wonders of Salvation

Introduction

Well, this morning we hit the half way point in our sermon series going through the book of Jonah. Week four and we’re doing eight. So far it has super fun. In thirteen years of preaching now I honestly don’t think I’ve had so much good feedback. Either I’m finally figuring out how to preach or Jesus is simply just doing something among us as we are dedicating ourselves to the Bible and the gospel it so brilliantly boasts. And I’ll be really honest with you, I don’t think it has anything to do with my preaching.

The stuff I’m hearing…the stories from the community groups…the things I’m hearing in meetings with several of you during the week…the responses of heartfelt praise and prayer we are witnessing here in our Sunday morning gathering. Truly I believe God is doing something in our midst and it has nothing do with us…nothing to do with how great we are or how good our church is. It’s him getting his glory.

The thing I’m probably most excited about is many of you getting the gospel for the first time. The book of Jonah surprisingly has this unique and powerful way of putting the gospel on display. Pastor, author Tullian Tchividjian who I’ve mentioned before…he wrote a great book on the story of Jonah I recommend to all of you titled, “Surprised By Grace.” It just so happens he was interviewed on the Gospel Coalition website about a week ago. The first question was this, “Why do you say Jonah is one of the best books for helping us get a better grip on the gospel?”

Here was part of his answer: “Most people inside the church, including ours, assume that the gospel is something non-Christians must believe in order to be saved, but after we believe it, we advance to deeper theological waters. The truth is, however, that once God rescues sinners, his plan isn’t to steer them beyond the gospel, but to move them more deeply into it. After all, the only antidote to sin is the gospel—and since Christians remain sinners even after they’re converted, the gospel must be the medicine a Christian takes every day. For our church, it was through probing the story of Jonah that we came face-to-face with the fact that the gospel is not just for non-Christians but also for Christians.”

It really is true that in working through the book of Jonah we consistently and increasingly see pictures of everyone one of us, pictures of ourselves and then we learn what it looks like to continually turn to God, depend on God and have God work in us through his mighty power, truth and grace. Really this is my prayer for each of you…that as we work through this book that you would not just come and hear a nice sermon here each week but that you would come and have your heart probed and pressed and that you would learn more about yourself and chiefly learn and come to see the beauty and wonder of the gospel of Jesus Christ, where we have a God who pursues us and dies for us.

May God by his Spirit help us in that goal today as we do some work in his word together. This week the title of my sermon is “The God Who Reaches To The Depths.” It’s a different week in that the text is different. What we’ve been working with so far is prose or narrative…this week’s text is poetry, it’s a psalm, a prayer that Jonah remembers praying when he was in the belly of the fish and he records it’s words for all time which have been preserved for us today.

So here’s where we’re at. There was a dude named Jonah. God asked him to do something. He didn’t want to and ran away on a boat. So God sent a mighty storm after him. In order to keep the boat crew from a seemingly almost certain death, they throw Jonah overboard. Once Jonah is in the water and sinking God sends a big fish to swallow him whole and while in the fish Jonah finally talks to God. The chapter we are looking at today, documents that conversation. Let’s read it, pray over it and work through it. (Read Text & Pray)

Alright. So Biblical poetry like this passage can be kind of tricky to work through. There’s a lot of parallelisms with alliterations, metaphors, statement and retort, emotion, resolution, there’s a chiasm here and all kinds of stuff. It really is a literary masterpiece. But somehow I think we’d miss it if I just took us through all the technical structure and aspects of this chapter. There’s probably like two of you who are like me and would actually enjoy it. So if you didn’t already know it and you’re one of those people…you’re weird and most people are not like us. We can hang out later and nerd out together.

In light of that, what I’ve got here for us today is not so much a linear outline where we go straight down through the words but instead a thematic outline. There’s four main themes or four main motifs that make up the melody of this prayer psalm. The first here is the theme of death.

I. Sinking Into Death

Let’s get the scene in our minds. The story and the text paint it well for us. Chapter 1 ended by saying “The LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” Then chapter 2 starts out with “Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish.” Let’s pick up parts from a few of these lines from Jonah how he describes what he was going through.

In verse 2, he says he was in “distress.” This is dire trouble and anguish. Then verse 3 says, “you cast me into the deep.” For all Jonah knows God wants him dead. He sent the storm after him for disregarding and disobeying God. He tried to evade him multiple times but the sailors investigation found him out and even after the sailors tried to spare his life, it was to no avail…the storm kept raging, thus it seemed only Jonah’s death would suffice God and stop the storm.

Notice the text says, “You (referring to God, you) cast me into the deep.” But wait, wasn’t it the sailors who cast Jonah overboard? Jonah here recognizes God’s sovereign hand that is at work in all things including the decisions and actions of humans. This is an important point. God was at work in the sailor’s hearts and hands when they threw Jonah overboard.

Some have said that before you can truly come to grips with God, before you can truly deal with who you are and where you are at in life…you have to come to terms with recognizing God’s ultimate rule over all things…that you have to be able to look at all events in your life however good or bad as being the working of God to bring you to a place where will look to him.

I think that’s true. Jonah is thrown overboard and begins to sink to his death. He thinks this is the end. Listen to how he describes it. Verse 3, he’s “into the heart of the seas” “flood surrounded” him “waves and billows passed” over him. Verse 5, “waters close(ed) in over (him) to take (his life)”, the “deep surround(s)” him. In verse 6, he hits the bottom of the ocean floor, the “mountain(s)” “land” at the bottom, where as verse 5 says, he falls into “weeds” wrapping around his head.

I mean the way he describes this couldn’t really have been described like this unless a person had actually experienced drowning. I’m a surfer and I’ve surfed some big waves and I’ve been tossed good. A few times where I didn’t know how much longer I can hold my breath. The waves just take you and toss you. You don’t know which way is up and you’re sinking.

Then check this out, verse 7 tells us Jonah starts to black out. “When my life was fainting away.” One translation has “my senses failed me.” It’s a way of saying, consciousness was beginning to slip. Jonah literally hits rock bottom and begins to faint.

Have any of you ever had a near death experience? Or maybe not death but reached a place where you truly hit rock bottom? I know some of you have. Others of you have been graciously spared, at least this far from needing to be brought to such a place.

When you think of or hear the phrase “rock bottom” you think of those who end up in a place where they do so much drugs they are completely strung out, or those who seemingly all of a sudden realize it’s been months and months since a day went by they hadn’t been drunk with alcohol, or the countless stories of girls who gave away sex for the first time and then ended up in a life of prostitution. I think usually when we hear “rock bottom” that’s what comes to mind. And those are definitely rock bottom moments.

However, I don’t think we usually think of the righteous people, the good guys hitting rock bottom. I don’t think we think of ourselves. I want to tell you the story of a pastor friend of mine and what happened to him a few years ago. He’s a godly man, solid theologian, great father, great pastor and loves Jesus. A couple years ago now I got an email from him.

“I have been married to my wife for 15 years. She is a wonderful wife and mother of our two children. Last year she started experiencing depression for the first time since I have known her. It cleared up for awhile…but in the last two weeks her depression has come back really strong. I have exhausted every resource I know of: prayer, having the leaders lay hands on her, natural remedies, reading every book on depression and trying every method, and now we are trying some pharmaceuticals. I have slept about 4-6 hours total in the last 4 days. I am taking care of her on an ongoing basis. I feel like I am in a fight to keep her from losing her mind. Please pray!”

A week later. “I need you to pray. My wife has continued to escalate. She hasn’t slept in weeks now, but simply lays in bed with insomnia. She started to have psychotic breaks in the night and I was becoming increasingly concerned she might hurt me or the children while asleep. This morning she had a complete breakdown in our front yard the neighbors called the police. I had to admit her in a psychiatric hospital or the authorities would take her in. I went to the hospital with her…as they took her through the doors I tried to walk back to my car and collapsed on the front lawn of the facility and wept. I have never done anything so awful in my life. I am completely overwhelmed and crushed. My beautiful and sweet wife seems as though she is gone and dead. I trust the Lord and know he is good. I can say with Job, “though he slay me in him will I trust.” I am slain and I am clinging to him. Please pray.”

After that my friend told me a couple days later he got into his truck and determined to go kill himself by driving his truck into a brick wall. As he was driving with his foot floored on the gas the words of 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 came to his mind “We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” At that point he pulled over and wept as the grace and goodness of God flooded his soul. Looking back on it, he says he never really understood the gospel until that moment. Until he hit rock bottom.

Some of you have never hit rock bottom. Some of you have…a few times. Some of you need to. Some of you may never have to experience something that extreme. But this stands true for all of us…God will do whatever it takes for us to come to the place where we quit relying on ourselves and turn to him who raises the dead.

It doesn’t matter if you’re one of the “good guys” like Jonah or my pastor friend or if you’re one of the “bad guys” who have given into all sorts of destructive things. We’re all the same. Rock bottom may look different for each one of us, but is bring us to the place where we call out to God to raise us from the dead. And that’s what Jonah does. So let’s look at “Crying Out For Help.”

II. Crying Out For Help

First let’s see it in the text. Verse 2, “I called out to the LORD” and “out of the belly of Sheol I cried.” Verse 4, “I said I am driven away from your sight. Yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.” Verse 7, “I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.”

Let’s look at each of these. In verse two he calls out to the LORD. This is big. This is the first time in the book of Jonah where Jonah actually turns to God. He calls out to him by name, the LORD.

It really is what most people end up doing when they realize death is imminent. You call out to God. I mean this is a swift prayer. Jonah is drowning and sinking fast. He doesn’t tell us what words he called out. Most likely it was a prayer he prayed in his head…like God help me!

Verses 4 and 7 gives us a little more idea what he was imagining when he was calling out. First there’s admittance of sin. When he says, “I am driven away” it’s the same wording that used to describe Adam and Eve being driven out of the garden of Eden in Genesis. Adam and Eve were “driven” out because of sin and Jonah has been driven away from God’s gracious sight because of his sin.

So what’s Jonah do? He imagines God, in all his holiness, seated on his holy throne in heaven and calls out to him. He is driven from the sight of God but in his minds eye he imagines God in the temple and as verse 7 says he presents his prayer there to God.

Okay, let’s talk about this. What does it mean to cry out to the LORD for help…what does it mean really? We talked a little about it last week. But I want to try to get deeper if we can. Last week we talked about being honest with yourself…doing a little holy introspection.

You see there is a difference between being introspective and doing holy Introspection. What I mean is this, introspection is good only if it leads you somewhere. Introspection is the examination of one’s own mental and emotional state or processes. Basically getting emo on yourself. You’ve got a whole genre of music built on this idea. It’s people who are constantly thinking about about what their feeling and questioning themselves.

Now usually it’s bad. Usually it’s fueled by immense insecurity and becomes one of the most self-centered, self-focused, self-absorbed mindsets you can ever delve into. It’s almost never good…unless it leads you to repentance. Unless it’s holy introspection where you realize you have been trusting in and relying on yourself and not God and it leads you to crying out to him for help.

I said last week that we need to learn how to exegete or draw out and dissect our own hearts. The purpose of that is we might call out to God for help that he might change our hearts. And I don’t even think you have to understand everything that is going on or has effected your heart…as long as you get to the point when you are calling out to God for help.

Here’s what I mean. I’ll be honest for a second. Don’t tell anyone. But sometimes things unintentionally come out of my mouth which show a state of my heart I did not even realize was there. For example, this last week out of the blue my wife asked me, “Hey Duane, are you okay?” And I automatically said, “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?” I didn’t even realize how sharp I was being. She literally jerked her head back like I had just snapped at her. And then in her loving, tender, gentle way she said all soft like…”Well you just seem like you’re kind of on edge lately, is something bothering you?” At that point I just stopped and realized it was one of those moments when I should listen to my wife and I started thinking and processing…holy introspecting…and I realized there was all kind of junk that was bothering me and I still don’t even get all of why I was so frustrated. We prayed together and there were a number of things I prayed, but the biggest thing and probably the most frequent thing I pray in my own personal prayer life is “God help me…Jesus change my heart, please.”

We’ve got to learn how to call out to God for help and to be okay doing so. We are always one moment away from drowning into the great abyss. We’ve got to get comfortable calling out to God for help, even when we don’t have all the answers.

God is our father. He’s holy and good. He sits on a throne and rules the world with perfect justice and might. And he hears our prayers. Especially prayers which call out to him for help. And that’s our next thing for today, that God is a God who hears our prayers. Jonah discovers this, perhaps for the first time and he’s astounded by it. So let’s look at our third point this morning, “Hearing The Hope Of God.”

III. Hearing The Hope Of God

With this one we begin by recognizing what we sort of passed over in the beginning in that Jonah is praying this whole thing while in the belly of the fish. The psalm here is for the most part almost all written in past tense, except for the last three verses.

So let’s get into the fish for a second. I mean I’ve never been inside a big fish, so I’m not sure what it’s like. I mean apparently he could breath, so there’s air. I’m guess it was pretty dark, wet, cold, slimey. It’s an odd scene really. The feeling of this Psalm is way high, Jonah is delighted. But being in the belly of the fish doesn’t really seem like very delightful thing.

Not for Jonah, for Jonah this fish is a direct response and answer to his prayer. You’ve got to remember, the fish is totally unexpected! He figured he was a goner and so did all of us who were reading the story. I mean he really thought he was about to receive the judgment of God.

Did any of you wonder what “Sheol” is when we read “Out of the belly of Sheol” back in verse 2? Sheol is the Old Testament word for hell. Now there’s a ton we could talk about on the topic of hell, but I really think it would sidetrack us and pull us away from the main meaning and thrust of this prayer here. So I’m going to be super brief.

The Old Testament doesn’t tell us a ton about hell. There is much more in the New Testament, particularly coming from Jesus. He talks about its reality and existence more than any other person in the Bible. But for Jonah, he simply knew there was judgment coming and expected he was in or about to be in Sheol or hell.

The visual picture in Hebrew of Sheol is that it is under the earth, it’s the underworld land of the dead. In verse 6, he calls it “the pit.” Literally the cave or grave below. So Jonah sinks to the bottom of the ocean, figures he’s about to enter hell, then in the last moments verse 7 says, when his “life was fainting away” he “remembered the LORD.” That’s so telling. It tells us what lead Jonah to pray. He remembered the LORD.

What did he remember? I think verse 8 gives us a clue. Look at it with me. “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.” A couple things here.

One, why talk about idols here? We’ll talk more about spiritual and practical idols of our lives in future weeks as we work through the rest of the book of Jonah. But for now, in the very least Jonah is realizing God is the only trustworthy and reliable God and all others gods are really false hopes who never come through.

I could be wrong here but it sounds here almost like a slender acknowledgment that he had made an idol out of some things. It sounds like he is speaking from experience. If that’s so then perhaps Jonah is recognizing he had come to idolize his own agendas, his own plans, his own desires…he had begun to worship a false god…the god who only cared about letting Jonah do what he wanted to do.

And Jonah receives judgment for it. In the middle of his lowest moment, just when he is about to receive the sentence of death…in the midst of the blurry fog of the dark waters things become clear for Jonah. He realizes only God is God, that he is justly receiving punishment from God…but then he remembers something else about God which gives him hope: his steadfast love!

Jonah remembers that God is a loving and gracious God! I wouldn’t be surprised if Exodus 34:6-7 came to Jonah’s mind, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.”

What did Jonah remember that gave him hope? He remembered that even though he had sinned, God is a loving and forgiving God! He remembered that God is committed to loving his people. It’s hard to get at it in English but where it says “steadfast love” is the one Hebrew word “chesed.” It means “faithful, continual, always, forever, never stopping, lovingkindness.”

Jonah, on the brink of death realizes that though he is a sinner, God is gracious and forgiving who is committed to loving him. And once he realized it, Jonah had hope!

Do you know that God? Do you know this kind of hope? Not just hope that circumstances will get better, but hope in knowing the love of God? Are you in a place where you need to remember and be reminded of what God is really like?

Hear the message of Jonah: there’s hope! There’s no situation, no sin, no problem or difficulty of life that is too dire for God to deliver us from. There’s hope. God is not without judgment but he is also not without mercy. There’s hope.

Now, as we’ve been working through this prayer psalm we recognized earlier that for the most part it’s looking backward. Past tense. It doesn’t tell us anywhere at what point the fish swallowed Jonah. I mean there’s a lot going on here and much of it happens in a few split moments as Jonah’s life flashes before his eyes.

Here’s what I think happened. Jonah is sinking to death. He remembers God’s love. Then he cries out for help. And the fish right at that moment gobbles him up! One moment Jonah thinks he’s about dead and the next he’s inside the fish, breathing and can’t believe he’s alive. And it causes an immediate response of praise in Jonah. This is our last point for today, “Exclaiming The Wonders of Salvation.”

IV. Exclaiming The Wonders of Salvation

There’s an exclamation in the beginning and the end. Verse 2, “I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me!” Then verse 9, “I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; What I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the LORD!”

We won’t spend long here. I don’t even know quite how to explain it. I think it’s almost like this phenomenon of the soul. But it’s like once there’s that moment when you simultaneously realize how sick and sinful you are and yet God loves you and forgives you…the immediate response is praise!

I don’t quite get it but it’s the way the heart works. Being a recipient of grace turns the heart to praise. Our hearts start automatically thanking God, worshipping him, expressing love back to him…we extol his wonders and rejoice in his salvation.

I mean what happens here with Jonah is beautiful and it’s the exact same thing we saw last week with the sailors. After they’re saved from the storm, they worship God and offer sacrifices and vows. Jonah gets saved from the deep, and then he’s offering sacrifices and vows.

Now obviously he’s not building a little fire inside the fish and making an animal sacrifice but as verse 9 says he offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving with his voice. And that’s the purest form of sacrifice there is. As Psalm 51:17 says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart.”

A sacrifice is an offering, where you offer up to God. Here it’s not so much a setting of something aside or a giving of something up…It’s a pouring out of one’s self to God.

And then here the sacrifice is followed by vow. A vow is a commitment, a promise. Here the vow is a commitment and promise to praise God. It’s like saying, “I will worship you, I will follow you all the days of my life.”

Now there’s one last thing here I think is important for us to get. When Jonah exclaims, “Salvation belongs to the LORD!” Do you think he just means, “God saved me from drowning”? No. It’s more than that isn’t it? Have you done that? Determined to live your life for God?

Jonah’s salvation from drowning by God’s fish wasn’t so much a physical salvation as it was a spiritual one. God saved his soul in that experience. This whole chapter, this whole prayer is about Jonah’s change of heart. And I think this is important for us to note because otherwise we could take this whole story of Jonah and turn it into a false gospel. Here’s how.

You look at the story and say, “Hmmm…okay, things were bad for Jonah so he called out to God and then things went good for him. So I should just call out to God and then things will go good for me.” When we do that we take this story and turn it into a self-help manual and miss the entire point.

The whole point of the story, the whole purpose to the prayer is to exclaim how God changed and turned Jonah’s heart. God saved Jonah from himself. Jonah really, when he exclaims “Salvation belongs to the LORD” is still in the fish. He probably figured he was still going to die, but God spared him long enough to come to know his love and grace so he wouldn’t spend eternity in hell.

Verse 10 is like this added bonus, that just when Jonah exclaims the salvation of God, the fish vomits Jonah up on dry land. Which is amazing in itself. The whole three days Jonah was in the fish God had the fish traveling back to Joppa. As we’ll see in the upcoming weeks, God wasn’t done with Jonah and wanted him to go spread the message he had announced in the fish’s belly, to go tell others that salvation is found in the LORD.

Conclusion

Well, let’s conclude here and see how this passage of Scripture tells us of Jesus and the gospel. If you’re new with us one of the things you’ll find here is we conclude every sermon every week in the gospel and receive the Lord’s supper, his communion each week.

We do that because Jesus after he died and rose from the dead said that all of the Bible, every story and every word is all about him. So every time we open the Bible, we firmly believe we haven’t fully understood it and its message until we see Jesus in it.

In Matthew 12:40 Jesus himself said, “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.”

Today we’ve worked through in detail the vivid description and experience of Jonah as he went down to the heart of the earth. We’ve heard his last thoughts and words. Jonah went down because he had disobeyed and sinned.

How different with Jesus. Jesus went down because he always obeyed and chose to die for others sin. As he was going into the heart of the earth Jesus had no need to cry out to God for his own salvation. Instead he cried out for others. His last thoughts and words included these cries from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do;” “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit;” And, “It is finished.”

In Jonah, we learn that salvation comes from the LORD. In Jesus, we learn that he is God’s provision for our salvation. He is the one God has sent down out of heaven to go to the depths of the earth to save our souls from sin and corruption.

In Jesus we come to see and know a loving God who has gone to great lengths and reached down to great depths so that we might know his forgiveness and come to praise him. There is nothing God is not willing to do in order for us to see and know his great love. Not even crucifying his own son. Oh what depths God reaches down to in order to save! Where are we at in the story? We are all at the bottom of the ocean in the earth and Jesus has come down to us.

The gospel is that Jesus died for our sins and rose again. And this prayer psalm that we have worked through screams out that message. Apart from Jesus there is death. We must cry out to him for help. Only in Jesus is hope found. And Jesus worthy of all our thanks and praise.

We’re going to respond to God’s word here in a moment by coming forward and receiving the elements of Jesus body and blood in the bread and wine as a sign of our thanks, belief, need and love for our Lord.

As you come respond in whatever way you need to today.

Maybe you’ve hit rock bottom and are sinking into death. Know that Jesus died for you so you don’t have to.

Maybe you’re in a place where you’ve been trying to do everything yourself in your own strength and you need to cry out to God for help and ask him to change your heart.

Maybe you simply need to hear the hope of God. Look to Jesus. There is no clearer demonstration that God truly is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

Lastly, maybe today you need to come and offer thanksgiving and make some vows. Have you been holding back your praise? Don’t hold back any longer. The true sacrifice is one of a broken and contrite heart. Give God your heart. Make some vows. Determine that you will worship, follow, love and serve God.

May God grant us great grace in these moments as we respond to his word and dwell in the gospel.

Let’s pray.