The God Jonah Prayed To
A Sermon from Jonah 2:1-10
Preached at Kitwe Church by Pastor Sunday
Good morning, Church. My name is Sunday, and I’m grateful to God and to the elders and leadership of Kitwe Church, and the church at large, for granting me this opportunity to stand before you and share God’s Word with you. I’m grateful for this opportunity.
Our text this morning is from Jonah chapter 2, verses 1 to 10. But for the sake of context, we will read from chapter 1, verse 17, up to chapter 2, verse 10.
Scripture Reading: Jonah 1:17-2:10
“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 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.”
May the Lord bless the reading of His word.
Introduction
Jonah chapter 2 is essentially a prayer—Jonah praying to the Lord. Jonah is giving thanks to the Lord for how the Lord delivered him from the deep waters, for how the Lord saved him from the depth of the sea. So he’s giving thanks; he’s praising the Lord.
In chapter 1 we see that Jonah is running from the Lord. Instead of going to Nineveh, Jonah went to Tarshish and took a boat going to Tarshish. When the Lord brought storms and it was discovered that the storm came because Jonah was running from the Lord, Jonah said, “Throw me into the seas.” So in chapter 2, Jonah is thrown into the deep waters. Now he’s in the belly of the fish.
We’ll examine the God Jonah prayed to, and we’ll see three characteristics of this God.
Point 1: Jonah Prays to the God Who Is Faithful (verses 1-2)
“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.'”
Before we explain God’s faithfulness, there is something of importance in verse 1: “Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God.” He prayed inside the belly of the fish. I don’t know what it looks like to be inside the belly of a fish, but Jonah found time to pray in the belly of the fish. He gave a prayer inside the belly of the fish.
The Call to Prayer
The question for us this morning is: What keeps us from praying? How is our prayer life? Do we pray? What is it that keeps us from praying? The Bible says Jonah prayed from inside the belly of the fish. How is our prayer life? Do we find time to pray to our God, or are we full of excuses always—”I’m busy, I do not have time”? Or like what was mentioned earlier, the only time we pray is when we’re waking up, or when we’re about to eat, or when we’re about to sleep. Do we find meaningful time and quality time to pray to our God?
Jonah, inside the belly of the fish—I believe it was a tight place—but he found time and prayed to his God.
Friends, a prayerless life is sin before God. Sin is not just gossiping or being selfish. Living a prayerless life is sin before God. Samuel tells us in 1 Samuel 12:23, “I will not sin against God by failing to pray for you,” regarding failing to pray as sin. If we are living a prayerless life, we are sinning against our God, and we need to repent. God is faithful to forgive us.
Let us find time in our busy schedules to give our prayers to God, because He commands us to do that in Scripture—that we should pray. And when we are not praying, we are actually disobeying Him. We are sinning.
Scripture-Saturated Prayer
The Bible states that Jonah prayed, and when we consider the prayer of Jonah, it is not just a dead prayer. It is not a barren prayer or an empty prayer or a mere prayer. It is a prayer that is filled with Scripture. It is a prayer that is saturated with Scripture. It is a prayer that is soaked in Scripture.
Verse 2 is basically Jonah quoting Psalm 120. Verse 3 is quoting Psalm 42. Verse 4 is quoting Psalm 31. Verse 5 is quoting Psalm 69 and Lamentations 3:54. The prayer Jonah prayed was filled with Scripture. It wasn’t just “God save me.” Actually, that’s what gave Jonah confidence—because he based his prayers on the Scriptures.
How are our prayers, Christians? Do our prayers reflect the Scriptures, or are our prayers dead? Jonah prayed the Scriptures. Like I said, him praying the Scriptures gave him light in time of darkness. He found confidence in God’s Scriptures.
When we are praying, we should pray Scripture, because only Scripture gives us hope. We should align our prayers with the Scriptures of God, with the truth of God, with the promises of God, with the purposes of God. We cannot pray according to the will of God or the promises of God without Scripture.
This is a call to know our Bibles. Do we read our Bibles? Do we study our Bibles? Because we cannot pray a prayer that is in line with the purpose of God, that is in line with the promises of God, if we do not know our Bibles, if we don’t read our Bibles.
God expects us to pray prayers that are reflecting His purposes, that are reflecting His will, that are reflecting His desires for us. If we are praying prayers that do not contain the Scriptures of God, we are praying amiss. Only prayers that reflect the Word of God glorify God, give us confidence, and give us assurance that God is with us. Amen, church.
God’s Faithfulness in Answering
Verses 1 and 2 show us this God who is faithful, who saved Jonah from the seas or from the deep waters. Jonah is 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.”
Jonah prayed. Jonah cried to the Lord his God out of distress, and the Lord heard Jonah, and the Lord answered Jonah in the depth of the seas. When he prayed to God, the Lord answered him.
Friends, the God of the Bible is the God who answers. He’s the God who responds to our prayers. Maybe we have been believing God for something. It might be a job. It might be a husband, a wife, or healing. And yet we haven’t seen anything, and maybe we have started even giving up, asking ourselves, “Does the Lord answer? Does the Lord respond to our prayers? Does the Lord listen?”
Jonah is saying, “Yes, the Lord answers. Yes, the Lord responds to our prayers. Yes, the Lord intervenes. Yes, the Lord comes through for us.” The Lord came through for Jonah when he was drowning, when he was sinking into the waters. How did he come through for Jonah? By providing a fish to swallow Jonah. Actually, Jonah being swallowed by the fish was God’s deliverance for him, because he was drowning in the waters. He was sinking, and the Lord provided a fish to swallow him. God delivered him from sinking.
Friends, God answers our prayers. We should not be discouraged. We should not give up. We should not complain. Trust in Him, keep on believing Him, keep on crying to Him, keep on calling upon Him, because He answers our prayers. He responds when we pray. He comes through when we call upon Him.
God’s Grace to the Disobedient
There is another aspect in verses 1 and 2. Like I said, in chapter 1, Jonah is running from the Lord, is disobedient, is disobeying God. And yet, when he prayed to the Lord in his sinfulness, the Lord answered him. The Lord responded to him.
I believe there was something inside Jonah that was telling him, “Jonah, just keep quiet. Which God is going to listen to you? The same God you are running from, the same God you have disobeyed—and you believe when you pray to Him, He’s going to listen to you?” There was something, there was a sinful nature that was telling him, and the voice of the enemy was whispering to him, “Keep quiet, Jonah, you have messed up. The Lord cannot listen to your prayers.”
But yet Jonah cried to the Lord, and the Lord answered him.
Sometimes when we are in a mess, we don’t get courage to go before the Lord and pray because our sinfulness in us always tells us the Lord is not going to listen to you. “See how you have messed up,” and the enemy always whispers to us, “You are done. Just keep quiet. The Lord is not going to listen to you.”
Friends, we should not listen to that voice. The Lord listens to us. Even when we fall, when we cry to Him for mercy, when we cry to Him for forgiveness, He listens. He receives us like the two blind men who cried to Jesus. Those two blind men were silenced: “Keep quiet, you are making noise.” And yet they cried even more, “Lord Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us.”
Don’t listen to that voice. Don’t listen to that sinful voice that is telling you the Lord is not going to forgive you. The Lord is not going to show you mercy. The Lord is the God who is merciful. Actually, Micah says He delights in showing mercy. The Lord enjoys forgiving our sins. When we cry to Him for mercy, He forgives us.
Is there anything—is there a sin in your life that is discouraging you, that is telling you, “Keep quiet, the Lord is not going to listen to you”? Friends, Jonah is telling us the Lord listens to our cry, even when we are in a mess. Come to Him, cry for mercy, and the Lord is going to listen to us because He’s the God who is a forgiving God.
Point 2: Jonah Prays to the God Who Is Sovereign (verses 3-6)
“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. 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.”
Verses 3 to 6 show us that the Lord is sovereign. Jonah is saying the Lord is the one who threw him into the deep waters. He said, “For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas.” The Lord cast Jonah.
When we look at chapter 1, we find that the sailors are the ones who took Jonah and threw him into the deep waters, and yet Jonah, in verse 3, is telling us, “The Lord threw me into the deep waters.”
These verses show us that the Lord is sovereign. The Lord was in charge. The Lord was in control of the situation that Jonah found himself in. The Lord was in control of what Jonah was going through. The Lord is the one who took Jonah and threw him into the deep waters.
God’s Sovereignty Over Our Lives
Friends, the Lord is in charge over our lives. The Lord is sovereign over our lives. Nothing happens by chance in our lives. Nothing happens by coincidence in our lives. Nothing happens by accident. Everything that happens in our lives, every pain we are experiencing right now—God is sovereign. God is in control. God is the one who drives and who moves everything that we go through. He knows. He’s in charge. He’s sovereign. We cannot run away from Him.
He threw Jonah into the deep waters. Did He throw Jonah into the deep waters to harm Jonah, to injure Jonah, to ruin Jonah? No. The Lord did not put Jonah into deep waters or into hot waters to ruin Jonah or to punish Jonah. That was not God’s intention. The purpose of God was to rescue Jonah. The plan of God was to glorify Himself in the life of Jonah.
God puts us in difficult situations, in hot waters. God brings storms in our lives not to ruin our lives, not to harm us, not to injure us. He allows circumstances to happen in our lives for His glory and actually to rescue us, to save us. Therefore, we should be hopeful in life.
Most of the time we complain, we cry, “Why me, O Lord? Why am I facing what I’m facing? Why me?” Someone said the question to ask ourselves is not “Why me?” but “Why not me, O God?” God does not waste our pain. He brings situations in our lives for a reason, and we should not be hopeless. We should not despair.
Maintaining Hope in Difficulty
Jonah wasn’t hopeless. When he was drowning, when he was sinking, verse 4 tells us, “Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.'” Jonah was hopeful that the Lord would come through for him because he knew that the Lord is good.
Christians, our God is good. Our God will never harm us. Our God will never injure us. Our God will never ruin our lives. The Lord brings storms in our lives for our good, to rescue us and for His own glory. Therefore, remain hopeful in the Lord. Do not be discouraged. Do not complain. Do not lose hope, because the Lord is doing good in our lives. The Lord is doing His purposes in our lives. He’s not harming us, but He’s doing good for our lives.
Remember again, Jonah is sinning, is in sin, is in disobedience. So sometimes the troubles we find ourselves in are of our own doing. It is because of our sinfulness. It is because of our stubbornness. The Lord threw Jonah into the depth of the waters because Jonah disobeyed God, because Jonah was running away from the Lord.
Like I said, God is sovereign. We cannot run away from Him. Someone said, “The person God contends with—the whole world, the whole creation actually is at war with that person,” because we cannot run from God. It’s like you think you are a boss or you are in charge in a place. Then a person who is above you comes and tells you, “Come down. You are not in charge. You are not in control. I am.” That’s what the Lord did to Jonah. He said, “I am in control, Jonah. You are not.”
Yet the Lord uses all those things, all situations and all circumstances in our lives, like I said, for His glory, for His purposes, to transform our lives, to change our lives, for His glory and for His honor.
The Destructive Nature of Sin
We can see in verses 4-6 that when Jonah was thrown into the deep waters, he kept on sinking down. He kept on drowning. He kept on going down because he disobeyed God. He kept on sinking, going down deep into the waters.
Friends, that’s what sin does. Sin sinks us. Sin drowns us. But because sin makes us stubborn, because sin is deceitful—that’s what Hebrews is saying—sin in us will never tell us we are evil, we are bad. Sin will always tell me, “Sunday, you are doing good. Sunday, you are on the right track.” Yet in the real sense, I am sinking. Yet in the real sense, I am drowning.
Sin sinks us. Sin drowns us. If there’s any sin in our lives we are entertaining, friends, we are not good. We are sinking. We are drowning. By the time we are going to realize, we are going to realize it will be too late. Sin sinks us.
Unless we cry to the Lord for help, for salvation, like Jonah did—he cried to the Lord, “God, save me”—friends, let’s not entertain sin in our lives. Cry to the Lord, because sin always brings us down, and the Lord is going to save us because He’s merciful.
Point 3: Jonah Prays to the God Who Saves (verses 6-10)
“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.”
The first point we saw: the God Jonah prayed to is faithful. The second point: the God Jonah prayed to is sovereign. Our last point is that the God Jonah prayed to is a saving God. He is a God of salvation. He is a God of deliverance.
Actually, deliverance here is in two phases.
Physical Deliverance
Verse 6 is saying, “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.” So verse 6 tells us that the Lord saved Jonah from the physical waters, because he was drowning. He was sinking into the waters, yet the Lord brought him up from the pit, from the deep waters. The Lord saved Jonah from the physical pain, from the physical waters that were inflicting pain on his life. The Lord saved him by providing a fish to swallow him up.
What we can see here is that the Lord saves us even from our physical pain. Even from our physical affliction, the Lord is able to save us. The Lord is able to rescue us. The Lord is able to give us healing. The Lord is able to give us safety. The Lord is able to give us protection.
Sometimes the Lord will not remove pain or storms from our lives, and yet He will provide comfort and peace to cope with the pain we are experiencing. So the Lord is able to do that. When we cry to Him, He’s able to bring healing. He’s able to bring comfort. He’s able to bring peace. He’s able to bring protection and safety from accidents and from harm. Jonah cried and the Lord heard him. The Lord answered him. Let’s keep on praying to Him and cry to Him because He is able to do that. He is faithful.
Spiritual Deliverance
The second phase: we see that the Lord did not just deliver Jonah from the physical waters, but the Lord delivered Jonah actually from his disobedience.
Verse 9: “But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord.” Jonah realized that salvation belongs to the Lord. When in chapter 1, Jonah wanted nothing to do with the Lord—he’s running from the Lord, he’s not paying what is due to the Lord—here he’s realizing, “I will pay what is due to the Lord. Salvation belongs to the Lord.”
So like I said, God uses circumstances to transform our lives. The Lord did not bring storms in the life of Jonah to destroy him. The Lord brought the storm in the life of Jonah to save him from his disobedient heart.
God’s Healing Purpose in Our Trials
It’s like a surgeon who comes with blades and knives. I have cancer. Then I see him, then I start complaining, start crying, “This person is a criminal. He wants to kill me.” Actually, the surgeon coming to me with the blades and with the knives is coming to do a work of kindness to me. His intention is not to kill me. His intention is not to harm me. His intention actually is to save my life, to bring the cancer out of me. That is God’s intention for us.
When we pass through storms, when we pass through pain, the intention of God is not to harm us—it is to remove our sinfulness from us, it is to bless us actually, it is to do us good. That’s what the Lord did to Jonah. In chapter 3, we see that when the Lord spoke to Jonah again, Jonah obeyed. Chapter 1, Jonah disobeyed. Chapter 3, we see Jonah is now obedient. That’s how the Lord works in our lives because He loves us so much and He will never do us any harm. He works the work of deliverance and salvation in our lives. He is the God of salvation. He saved Jonah from his disobedience.
God is able even to save us from our disobedience when we cry to Him for mercy.
God’s Universal Saving Grace
The Lord did not just save Jonah. Remember, He also saved the Ninevites when Jonah went and preached, because He is a God of salvation. Friends, no one is beyond and above God’s saving grace.
I believe maybe Jonah, the reason he did not want to go to Nineveh—because the Bible describes the city of Nineveh as a wicked city, a sinful city—maybe in his mind he concluded, “There is no way these people can be saved. There is no way these people can turn from their sinfulness and serve the living God.” And yet, when Jonah preached to these people, they repented.
Perhaps there are people in our families, in our circles—maybe we have concluded already that person will never change. Friends, there is no one who is beyond and above the saving grace of God. God is able to save even those people we think cannot change or cannot be saved. He is able to do that when we cry to Him because He is a God of salvation. He is able to change our lives.
Maybe we have tried to be good people. We have tried to change ourselves. The truth is we cannot change ourselves. Only God can change us when we give our lives to Him and when we surrender to Him. He is able to change and transform our lives.
A Call to Surrender
So Jonah is saying in verse 8, “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.” Those who cling, who hold on to their worthless idols, forsake their hope of steadfast love. If we cling to our stubbornness, if we cling to our sinfulness, we are forsaking our own mercy. We are forsaking our hope of steadfast love.
Friends, I’m encouraging you this morning: do not be stubborn. Do not cling to your sins. Surrender to God, because He’s a saving God and He’s able to save us and transform our lives. Amen.
Conclusion
May God bless you. Let’s turn to the Lord in prayer.
Our God in heaven, we thank You, we bless You, we love You. You are the Lord who is good. You are the Lord who is gracious. You are the Lord who is kind. You are the Lord who is faithful to answer us, to intervene for us, and to come through for us. And You’re the Lord who is sovereign, even in our lives, so that nothing happens by accident in our lives. We are grateful that You’re the Lord who saves us.
And if there is anyone who does not know You among us, O Lord, I pray that You do save them in Your own mercy and in Your own grace. And help us as Christians, O Lord, not to be hopeless, not to be helpless when we find ourselves in deep waters. Help us, O Lord, to fix our eyes on You, because You are the Lord who will never harm us. You are the Lord who will never destroy our lives, because You are God, for Your glory, for Your praise, and for Your fame.
In Christ’s name we pray all these things. Amen.