Introduction: LOTR Sam sinking into the river until Frodo arm grabs him and pulls him into the boat.

So (1) Jonah is hurled into the ocean (2) the sailors rejoicing…(3) simultaneously Jonah Sinking, down down down, and the question becomes will anyone or anything reach down and save his life.

First time reading 1:17…spoilers…what if you had never read Jonah before? 1:17 and the last verse of 2. Form excellent bookends.

…v. 17 says this anticipates: Christ dying and Rising…]

Recall the Captain in chp 1 saying call out to your God. Pray to your God…. Jonah Never does, until he sinking down down down. [Never too late to pray] We can mock, we can think why did it take so long to repent or turn to God, but at the end of the day. It is Never too late so long as you have breath in your body…or thoughts in your head to turn to the Lord in Prayer

Read Jonah 1:17-2:10

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.

2:1 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish,2 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.

3 For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas,

and the flood surrounded me; all your breakers and your waves passed over me.

4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight;

yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’

5 The waters closed in over me to take my life;

the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head.

6 To 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.

7 When my life was fainting away,

I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you,

into your holy temple.

8 Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.

9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you;

what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the LORD!”

10 And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

Prayer of Illumination

Outline:

The Prayer of Distress

The Reservoir of Prayer

The Prayer of Salvation.

Everything is calm above the waters. We see the sailors make it to shore [expand]. And then the camera sinks down below the water and we see Jonah, sinking down, down, down the fish is coming but Jonah for a little while is drowning.

Sinking, seaweed, then a fish, swallowed, Jim Mccartney says he is in the warmth of the guts of the fish, hearing its heart beat.

Look throughout Chp 2: [Images in the prayer tell the story]

#1 Jonah’s Prayer of Distress (follow along in v. 1-4) Can we cry out to God in our distress?

This section shows reflex of the believer in distress. Jonah Prays, The Problem, the depths of the situation (v.1-4a)

Jonah prays: Prayer is talking to God.

God is not a stranger. He is all caps LORD, YHWH, Jehovah God who is HIS God.

Generally, God is your creator, your maker, he made you and you owe him your allegiance, but God also draws close, makes promises, says, I will be your God and you will be my people.

Jonah has God as HIS God by right of covenant as an Israelite, who was circumcised, worshipped in the temple, and probably knew his Westminster Shorter Catechism….

Of Course this didn’t stop Jonah from attempting to Run from God.

He Prays. He prays to HIS God.

He prays From the belly a Great-Fish, which in this moment is the place of salvation. Life itself.

Because Jonah is Crying from Sheol – land of the dead….He feels as good as dead.

The Lord heard him even in the belly of death. What does God hear? The cry of distress. The cry of distress.

Throughout the bible God’s people find themselves in distress.

Hagar Genesis 21:16–17 (ESV): “And she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy…”

Joseph

Ruth

Israel as a whole in Exodus “groan and cried out for help”

Elijah, Job, The disciples in the STORM. Peter.

Hannah – 1 Samuel 1 – she has no child, cries in distress

David Numerous times

Psalm 3:4: “I cried aloud to the LORD, and he answered me.”

Psalm 18:6:“In my distress I called upon the LORD… from his temple he heard my voice.”

Psalm 34:17: “When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears.”

Hebrews 5:7: “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears…”

Early Church under persecution Acts 4:24: “They lifted their voices together to God…”

REMEMBER: God hears distress immediately; the cry of distress is an act of faith NOT a lack of faith, it is trust.

Jesus himself weeps and cries out for us.

God wants a people who cry “Abba! Father!” even in suffering (Rom. 8:15).

“Only when you have been brought to an end of yourself and made to see your own helplessness will you flee to Christ in the reckless abandon and total dependence of saving faith. Necessity really is the best classroom. That’s why Charles Spurgeon said, ‘I have learned to kiss the wave that casts me upon the Rock of Ages.’ We pray most, and most ardently, when we are convinced of our desperate need for Christ.” – Jim Mccartney, 29.

Two take-aways

First, God uses distress as an alarm bell to pray

Second, If the bible is not afraid to address and show us prayers coming from Great distress.

Be confident the same God who hears the big cries for distress. Will he not also hear you from the greatest to the least of life’s troubles?

So, cry out to God from school stress, exam anxiety, fatigue, when your sin puts you in a mess, cry out for deliverance, even if you feel foolish or weak for feeling distressed.

Look in v. 3; Jonah says you, God, cast me into the deep

Wait – The sailors did or God did???

God is merciful, gracious, and sovereign in the whole of Jonah. He Hurls the wind, he appoints the fish, the plant, a worm, a scorching east wind…

The sailors hurl Jonah into the Sea. Equally, In God’s sovereign providence we can say, God cast Jonah into the sea. Nothing is outside God’s sovereign decree.

This shows, Jim McCartney says “The lens through which Jonah viewed the world and the good, bad, and ugly details of his own life was not the lens of accident but the lens of appointment.”

Jonah describes what he Physically Experiences in verse 3, 5, 6, 7?

Go over the images and metaphors of the whole chapter briefly…

[ Go over being eaten and the fear of that ]

3, 5, 6, 7

[#2 The Reserves of Prayer]

So Distress. The Call to prayer. BUT…. Second what are the Reservoirs of Prayer? (the source, the fountain, the content, the stuff of prayer, where do we get our Prayer Reserves?

What are reserves?

Collection of Bolts, now is the time to break them all out and use them…

“Like a tree storing sap in winter, ready to send life surging when the spring finally breaks. (Hidden reserves released at the right time.)

“Like someone downloading maps before entering a place with no signal.”

What you may miss is that Jonah is drawing from a well of Scriptural Reserves in his distress. I’ll tell you what that is in a second…

Re-read v. 3 [3] For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your breakers and your waves passed over me. (ESV). THAT IS JONAH 2:3. Beautiful Jonah is a poet right? Jonah is original? He just happens to pray pretty prayers because he is a good prayer-er…?

[7] Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. (ESV)

That is David in Ps. 42:7…

Jonah is a plagiarist! Jonah has been hoarding psalms!

Flip to Psalm 42…skim read.

In PS. 42:7 David said he in his distress felt like this. Jonah literally feels this.

I won’t highlight all the places But the images of Ps. 42, 18, 120, 30, 69 have all the images of distress, sheol, the deep ocean, and salvation from drowning. About 15-18 references…

They are Thanksgiving psalms. He doesn’t invent the order, it is like one using the ACTS prayer acronym, Distress, Cry, Deliverance, Vow of Praise….The Belly of a whale is not the time to figure out how to pray.

So Jonah is Quoting the Psalms of David

David uses the metaphor of drowning, and uses the image of the temple to show us our HEARTS and where worship is directed and salvation is found...

God literally drowns Jonah to wake him up to the state of his Heart. And because Jonah knows the psalms his situation snaps into reality for him and he had the words for prayer.

Christian, meditate on the psalms, read the scriptures they will reveal your heart.

They discern the thoughts and intents of your heart.

They give words of Joy and words of sorrow and words of distress and even despair.

The bible has words for you no matter your situation!

Matthew Henry says, “If ever any man’s case was singular, and not to be paralleled, surely Jonah’s was, and yet, to his great satisfaction, he finds even the man after God’s own heart [David] making the same complaint of God’s waves and billows going over him that he has now occasion to make. When God performs the thing that is appointed for us we shall find that many such things are with him, that even our path of trouble is no untrodden path, and that God deals with us no otherwise than as he uses to deal with those that love his name. And therefore for our assistance in our addresses to God, when we are in trouble, it is good to make use of the complaints and prayers which the saints that have been before us made use of in the like case. See how good it is to be ready in the scriptures; Jonah, when he could make no use of his Bible, by the help of his memory furnished himself from the scripture with a very proper representation of his case: All thy billows and thy waves passed over me.”

This is why we have bible reading plans that read the psalms twice a year…This is why we sing the psalms!

To work them into our heads and hearts. This is why our hymns are often richly tethered and tied to the psalms, and further scripture in the gospels and epistles.

ILL: Rosario Butterfield – her Mother’s Hospital conversation, singing the psalms to her both before and after her conversion.

Store up. Read. Pray. Sing.

Now go back

If you don’t save the Collection of Bolts, you won’t have it when you need to fix a fence, hang the picture…

If the tree has no sap. It will die and never send forth life for new leafs

And if you don’t download the map. You won’t have it when you are in that no cell-phone zone.

You must store up the Word in your heart today, for the day of distress

So now. Pray the scriptures! Sing the scriptures!

Jonah has the words to express that he is spiritually Driven from God, Far, Out of his Sight (before his eyes)!

But remember last week, where can I go from your presence?

The psalms, our prayers, our talking with God needs to begin with a clear profession of Who God is and the Cry of the depths of the problem.

And from the depths of your problem, cry out to God!

We begin to preach to our souls. Preach to our hearts. Speak promises of life and salvation that God has given us.

#3 In Prayer: Speak of God’s Salvation and God as the source of your Life

“YET” “Akh” I will again look upon your holy temple

I will continue to look toward the temple of your holiness (your holy Temple)

“Jonah’s defiant ‘yet’ reaches through his circumstances to take hold of eternal truths and everlasting realities. Though he was cut off from Jerusalem’s temple, he knew that his prayers reached God’s ear (Jon. 2:7). Though he was on the brink of death, he knew that everlasting life and steadfast love are gifts God alone can give (Jon. 2:8). It is true to say that heaven got into Jonah long before Jonah got into heaven. That is why he can give thanks in a living hell: ‘But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay (Jon. 2:9)”. – Jim McCarthy, 33.

He will experience once again the holy presence of God. That he had been fleeing from.

Yet I shall again look upon your Holy Temple

V. 6 Yet You brought up my life from the Pit O LORD MY GOD

I REMEMBERED THE LORD! MY prayer did Come into your presence. You do Save!

Idols are VAIN: Idols are Useless, lifeless, and cannot save, the living and true God saves! To turn to an idol is to give up HOPE In this life.

Because to turn to an idol is to turn to pride of some human sin or pride in some creature that cannot save.

In prayer, our hearts are Wrestling with God. Wrestling with Faith and Confusion. Wrestling with Faith and Fear. Wrestling with Faith and Circumstances.

Prayer always has the hallmark of wrestling with our hearts to trust in God’s salvation.

To turn away from sin, idols, and other things that falsely promises life to the one who actually gives LIFE.

Capital L life.

Jonah is saying in the moment I finally believed this despite:

The battering of my soul and body.

Despite, Floods taking my breath, my soul to the depths, the Abyss.

Despite, being Surrounded! Seawead was wrapped about my HEAD.

Despite, bottoming out at The roots of the mountain on the sea floor.

This was like a prison of bars forever closing around me and I was about to perish forever.

Kind of claustrophobic

We could forgive Jonah for not praying in the moment. For his thoughts to be occupied with the wall of flesh and belly around him.

We too can be forgiven for our circumstances overwhelming our awareness of God.

Christians in conversations with the hurting your job is to remind them of the goodness of God, the goodness of the gospel, and the hopelessness of their idols. Draw their eyes to Christ. Draw their eyes to the vanity of sin and idols.

Restore a sense of Holy Glory. For Jonah this is a literal memory of the Glory of the Israelite Temple. For us it is a Knowing of the revelation of God in Christ Jesus.

In the New covenant Jonah might pray, my prayer came to you, Christ Jesus, on your heavenly throne my great high priest who loves me and ever lives to intercede for me.

A son of God by your Holy Spirit united to you In Christ.

V. 7 says Prayer enters God’s Holy Temple.

Can we be confident God hears our cry, our prayer in his presence? Does he see? Does he hear?

Matthew Henry again, “He that has Christ dwelling in his heart by faith, wherever he goes carries the altar along with him, that sanctifies the gift, and is himself a living temple. Jonah was here in confinement; the belly of the fish was his prison, was a close and dark dungeon to him; yet there he had freedom of access to God, and walked at liberty in communion with him. Men may shut us out from communion with one another, but not from communion with God. Jonah was now in the bottom of the sea, yet out of the depths he cries to God; as Paul and Silas prayed in the prison, in the stocks.”

Jonah cries out promising,

I will Sacrifice with the voice of thanksgiving.

I will keep my vows

SALVATION BELONGS TO YHWH

Below the waters Jonah worships.

Above the waters the Sailors worship.

Here and now we Worship:

Much of this chapter is captured in this song Before the Throne of God above by Irish Hymnist, Charitie Lees Smith.

1. Before the throne of God aboveI have a strong and perfect plea:A great High Priest whose name is Love,Who ever lives and pleads for me.My name is graven on his hands,My name is written on his heart.I know that while in Heav’n he standsNo tongue can bid me thence depart, No one can tell you you cannot cry out to God in prayer in your distress!

2. When Satan tempts me to despairAnd tells me of the guilt within,Upward I look and see him there,Who made an end of all my sin.Because the sinless Savior died,My sinful soul is counted free,For God the just is satisfiedTo look on him and pardon me,

3. Behold him there, the risen Lamb,My perfect, spotless righteousness,The great unchangeable I AM,The King of glory and of grace.One with himself I cannot die;My soul is purchased by his blood.My life is hid with Christ on high,With Christ, my Savior and my God,With Christ, my Savior and my God

Jonah has spoken in prayer, the Lord speaks to his creature, And the Fish spat him back out on dry ground. Jonah must pick himself up and begin his journey again across Israel actually up north to Ninevah this time.

Remember 1:17, Christ’s death and resurrection is the sign of what our sin deserves but the fulfillment of the promise of Jonah’s prayer and Jesus’ Trust – “YET YOU BROUGHT MY LIFE FROM THE PIT”

If you do not cry out in prayer you will continue to drown and you will die.

If you are in Christ Jesus your soul is purchased by his blood. Your life is now resurrected, risen, reigning, and HID with Christ on High.

Prayer

Benediction

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