Sermon: Book of Jonah, Part VI:  Salvation Belongs to the Lord

Here is the audio mp3 version

Sermon by Matt Kennedy
Text: Jonah 2
Sunday December 18th, 2011

Let’s start with the last sentence of verse 9.

“Salvation belongs to the Lord”.

Everything in Jonah builds toward this confession from the belly of the fish. The sailors, tossed by the storm, sought their gods. They did not answer. But when they turned to YHWH, he saved them. Jonah has his gods too…pride, racial superiority, contempt for others. These gods rescue Jonah from truth. Israel is as rebellious as Nineveh, Jonah is no better than a Gentile. But his gods are failing him. They will not withstand God’s pursuit. Jonah cherishes them—that’s why he runs—but God knocks them down, one by one. Salvation belongs to the Lord.

We are religious creatures—we worship whatever we think will save us. The alcoholic believes whiskey will rescue him from boredom or pain. The glutton, thinks food will rescue from heartache. The young woman sometimes believes a relationship will rescue her from loneliness and self-hatred. If I can just get this person to love me, I’ll be okay. The young man sometimes believes his career will deliver him from insignificance. Parents sometimes believe their children give life meaning. You have little saviors in your life and so do I. And we serve them. We make sacrifices to them. We viciously protect them lest anyone, even God, wrest them out of our hands.

I once spoke with a woman abused by her father. Over time his offenses became “the reason” for everything bad in her life. If she wanted to heal, she’d have to let go of that. She couldn’t. His sin rescued her from bearing responsibility for her life—it was her savior, her god, how could she let that go?

God begins his work in you by stalking you and striking you down, breaking you open and laying you bear. I surrendered to Christ willingly, but only after he’d cornered me and there was nothing else I could do. Everything I’d trusted to save me was gone. I’d even failed myself. I sought God—but only because his waves and billows passed over me.

“No one can come to me” Jesus says in John 6:44, “unless the Father…draws him.” The word Jesus uses for “draw” is the same word used for hooking a fish and pulling out of the water. It’s not a non-violent act. God takes you down to the depths to save you—because left alone we’d cling to our false saviors. Salvation belongs to the Lord.

But the belly of the fish is not a painless place. Even as he has you in his arms, God with unwavering love, takes down your idols one by one.

Being or becoming a Christian sometimes means pain. But note the word “salvation.” God doesn’t act this way because he’s cruel, he does so because he’s good and he loves you and wants to rescue you from a worse fate. God loves Jonah as the waves close over his head and he sinks to the bottom of the sea—and has made a way for him—but he has to get him to the place where Jonah wants the way God provides.

The other way leads to death—and beyond death, torment. Our gods lead us to hell if we follow them. We look to them for life but they prepare our bodies for death and our souls for damnation. We don’t see that until we’re rescued from them and, looking back with Jonah, thank God for not giving us what we wanted.

Let’s turn now to the verses leading to v.9. Skeptics scoff at this section. “Jonah prayed this psalm from inside the fish…right.” That response comes from people who don’t know how prayer and scripture work together. Every line can be found somewhere in the Psalms.

The Psalms were completed 300 years before Jonah and had been used in Israel ever since. They were the foundation of personal and public prayer. Jonah prayed the psalms all his life—they were engraved on his heart—they pour out, naturally, under duress. One great benefit of worshiping with a liturgy constructed from the words of scripture, is that, over time, God’s word is infused into your prayer. His words become yours. They flow naturally from your heart—as they do from Jonah’s. 

His prayer is divided into three sections. The first, in v2, summarizes what follows: I cried out and you answered me. In, vv3-7a, Jonah recounts the threat from which God rescued him. V.7b through v.9 recap God’s rescue and Jonah’s response. The refrain “yet” in vv.4 and 6—signals hope in the depths.

Let’s look at the first section:

“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.”

There’s awe here and wonder. Jonah believed himself beyond help—none could reach him—in the belly of Sheol.

Sheol is the state of death. Hades in Greek. In Sheol, you ascend to Abraham’s side—heaven—or descend to the place of torment—hell, but Sheol just means death. So Jonah says: I was in the belly of death…despairing, beyond hope.

I’m a pessimist. When things even hint at going wrong, I assume the worst. Two weeks after we started dating, Anne and I planned to meet for lunch. I was on time. Anne was not. I waited for an hour, during which my mind spun out scenario after scenario. She’s decided to dump me. She’s found someone else. She wants out and hasn’t known how to tell me. She was stuck in traffic.

I do it with church too. After low Sundays, I start spinning. Maybe they’re not coming back. Maybe this is the beginning of the long decline and death of Good Shepherd. And it’s all my fault.

I despair. I construct scenarios of hopelessness and believe them. I decide things are hopeless—usually because I’ve fouled them up. And since God is in control of all things and has therefore allowed this to happen…it must be his will—so, no use praying. I’m doomed.

That’s how despair works. That’s how we know it’s from Hell. Satan wants you to despair and die. He wants you to believe that your situation is hopeless—that you’re getting your just deserts and so you’d just better bear it. God’s not going to help you.

That’s a lie. Jonah’s drowning in a sea of his own sin, and yet God hears him.

Despair, regardless of circumstance, is always a lie. God has already appointed a great fish. He’s already made a place of comfort and salvation.  But when we despair rather than trust and pray, we spend the time between crisis and comfort in abject misery.

v3-4:

“3 For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. 4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’”

You might do a double take at verse 3. The sailors cast Jonah overboard, not God. That’s true. But it’s also true that God is sovereign not only over the waves and billows…notice they are here God’s waves and billows…but also over the human heart.

Peter applies this truth in his Pentecost sermon in Acts 2: “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”

The Jews and the Romans together willingly killed Jesus. They did exactly what they wanted to do. They also did precisely what God planned for them to do.

The sailors threw Jonah overboard but they did so “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge” of God. And so Jonah says to God—you cast me into the sea.

This is a comfortable truth. 1. It means that God is able to change the hearts of those who hate you. 2. It means that even the cruelest words and most painful blows are also somehow part and parcel of God’s definite plan and foreknowledge for you—and therefore, though the one who hurts you may mean it for evil, God means it for good.

The sailors cast Jonah into the sea…so that Jonah would cry out to God and be rescued. The same may be said for all the hurts you endure. God uses wounds others inflict to draw you to himself.

“5The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head 6at 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. 7When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.”

V.5-6 all build a sense of impending doom—Jonah’s surrounded by water, tangled in the seaweed at the bottom of the Med, at the roots of the mountains—he’s going to death, the “land whose bars” close over him—and yet—beyond hope, at just the right time, God acts.

When God delivers he often waits until what is, or at least what seems to us like, the last possible moment. He’s never late but he’s never early. He comes just as our patience has broken and our faith almost at an end. If you’re praying for someone to turn to Christ or to be healed or you’ve some other need and you’re growing discouraged…don’t give up. God’s beyond time but knowing that we’re not, he uses time to train us to endure and to trust him.

It was always God’s purpose to bring Jonah up from the pit. And that’s his purpose with you too, one way or another. Whether the sickness ends in death or healing, one way or the other, in the arms of Christ, you’re coming out of the pit. There are, however, many things he wants you to see before he lifts you out.

The final section is a burst of praise:

“8 Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.” Both Jew and Gentile, sailor and prophet, have been laid bare before God; their idols torn down—because God is a relentlessly loving and merciful God who rescues not simply from a storm…but from an everlasting kind of death. Idols cannot deliver what they promise…and those who seek them forsake the One who can.

“But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

This is the gospel. It sets false religion on its head. Religion is the idea that you make vows and sacrifices and then your gods will save. Because you’ve been a good prophet, God will give you his love and your reward.

But God gives Jonah love and salvation in exchange for his disobedience and rebellion. So Jonah’s vows and sacrifices come in response to God’s salvation—they do not merit it. Salvation belongs to the Lord.