The preacher and the author John Bunyan once said these words. He said, either prayer will make a man cease from sin or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer. Either prayer will make a man cease from sin or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer. In other words, we'll either be so regular and attentive in our prayer life so that we're being renewed in God's grace and therefore we are submitting to His will and generally being equipped to avoid sin, or we'll be consistent in pursuing a sinful course so that we end up resisting close communion with God through prayer. seems like a fairly straightforward and simple equation. I don't think many people would argue with that, but I mention that to you this morning because what we have here in this passage of Jonah chapter two is one of the great prayers of the whole Bible. But just before we get to the actual content of the prayer, I think it's important for us to remind ourselves that this prayer represents a dramatic change in the life of this man Jonah. And what we might say is that up until this point in the story, Jonah has really been a perfect example of those words of John Bunyan. Because in all that happens in the fast-paced narrative of chapter one of this book of the Old Testament, from God's call to Jonah, his running away from God, the storm on the boat, Jonah's interrogation, by the sailors. In all of these things, not once do we read of Jonah stilling himself before God and interceding with his God. We read of his confession of faith to the sailors, we read of his admission that he was on the run from God, we read later of the sailors' intercession with Yahweh, but we do not read of Jonah, the man chosen by God, falling to his knees and communing with Yahweh. It's interesting, isn't it, just as a wee aside before we get into the content of this scripture itself, just to ask ourselves the question, I wonder how many calamities and troubles and problems that God's people have known throughout their lives that could have been avoided if only we had stopped and dedicated a significant time to prayer, to asking God for His heavenly wisdom to be bestowed upon us, interceding with the Lord that we might be renewed in our understanding of his perfect purposes and his will for our lives. Well, Jonah did not do that. And yet, because of the work of God's sovereign grace in this man's life, through the sailors that he guides, the wind and the waves that he governed, the calamity that he allowed, this same man who, let's face it, he's been saying a resounding no to God up until this point, he's been shutting God completely out of his life. Suddenly, he is brought to a point where his faith is reignited and it is expressed, not in some sort of shallow folk religion, pagan, superstitious prayer, but through a deep and profound and personal intercession with the living God. And so what I want to do this morning is I want to work through with you several aspects of this prayer in the hope that it brings us to see the way that God's sovereign grace works in the lives of His people in order to cultivate particular dimensions of a renewed faith in Him, because that is what is taking place here. This is the outworking of the sovereign grace of God in the life of one of His servants. First of all, we see in Jonah's example how God-ordained desperation brings a solemn reminder of our utter dependence. God-ordained desperation brings a solemn reminder of dependence. Now, clearly the context in which Jonah prays this prayer is he's in the belly of this giant fish. And so, at first glance, we might say that the big factor that brings him to pray in the first place is that he's been rescued by God's grace, albeit to a place that wouldn't be anyone's first choice. I don't know many people who'd like to be in the belly of a giant fish, But nevertheless, he is in what we might describe as God's lifeboat in comparison to the dark, desperate, murky waters that he's just been experiencing. But what I think is very important for us to notice here is that although the entirety of this prayer is spoken from inside the fish, it is very clear from the content of the prayer that part of what he says here was first expressed in Jonah's heart when he was drowning in the sea. You know, most of us, when we probably look back on the story of Jonah, when we're reflecting on this story, we probably have it in our minds that Jonah was rescued by this giant fish the minute that his body hit the water. But that's just not the case here, is it? It could have been the case. It could have so easily been the case. God in his great sovereignty could have so easily speeded up the whole process so that his servant was barely even wet. So that God just reached in the minute he hit the water and rescued him immediately. But that's just not what happened. It says in verse two, in my distress, I called out to the Lord from the depths of the grave I called for help. Verse three. The currents swirled about me. All your waves and breakers swept over me. Verse five. The engulfing waters threatened me. The deep surrounded me. Seaweed was wrapped around my head. Verse six. To the roots of the mountains I sank down. The earth barred me in forever. Verse seven. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you. So at verse two, in my distress, I called to the Lord. Verse seven, when my life was ebbing away, I remembered you. So what is the point? The point is, although it was God's grace and his great faithfulness that caused him to rescue Jonah in the belly of the fish, The first outworking or expression of that grace, the thing that brought Jonah back into prayerful communion with God, was actually sovereign disaster. God allowed this servant of good news to sink to the very bottom of the sea, where he was entangled in the seaweed, where he was on the point of drowning. where he was literally seconds or minutes from death. Why? To bring him to his senses. To bring him to a point where instead of running from God, he was absolutely pleading for him. Instead of resisting God in his life, he was absolutely crying out for his intervention. And so it's here we're reminded that when great trouble and when disaster even comes into the Christian life if we are truly His. These things are expressions not of God's hostility against us, but of His grace towards us. Hebrews chapter two, verse five. My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline and do not lose heart when he rebukes you because the Lord disciplines the one he loves and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son. And that is precisely what is happening here, is it not? In the life of this man, Jonah. Here he is, he is being allowed by God to literally sink to a point in life where he had absolutely no option but to come face to face with his desperate need, his desperate dependence on God. The great wake-up call in Jonah's life. He sends wake-up calls into the lives of his people. Not that we would think that we are, he's gonna cast us off, but that we would see our great need for him. makes me think of the story of the preacher Tom Swanson, who I think I've mentioned here before. Tom was a Church of Scotland minister up in Inverness for I think 30 years, maybe more than that, I'm not sure exactly. He died at the age I think of 59 and I remember hearing the story of his conversion He, a man, a friend of his, who I think was a minister, was trying to reach into his life for quite a significant period of time and Tom was a bit of a hell-raiser at the time and just wanted none of it, had nothing to do with the Christian faith, he was a staunch atheist. Eventually, Tom's friend managed to get him to go to a Billy Graham rally. And so he went to the Billy Graham rally and you know what happens, Billy Graham preaches the gospel and then there's this invitation to come forward if they are responding by God's grace to the message of the gospel. Well, Tom had none of that either. He said, this is not for me. Then he got in his car, was driving home, and he was involved in a terrible car crash. And as his car was veering off the motorway and down the side of an embankment, And as it's somersaulted in the air, Tom Swanson's testimony is that he was converted in that moment. God-ordained disaster brings about dependence and an understanding of that dependence. Second thing we see is that God-ordained calamity brings about contrition, contrition of heart. First of all, in verse three, he says, you, meaning God, you hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas. All your waves and breakers swept over me. Verse four, I said, I have been banished from your sight. The ESV has it as, I am driven away from your sight. Now just think about this. Jonah could have easily responded to this situation by saying, Lord, please help me. These cruel, unbelieving, pagan sailors, you know what they've done? They've tossed me into the sea. Lord, help me. I'm an Israelite servant. I'm one of the good guys. I'm one of your people, and now my life is being threatened by this cruel chain of coincidence and circumstance and chance. But ask yourself the question, what is the demeanor of this man's prayer? He's acknowledging here in a very simple way that the only reason he was in this predicament in the first place was because God had put him there. God had thrown him overboard into the sea. The sailors were simply instruments in God's hand. The God who controls and who owns the waves was the one who'd allowed him to sink into the depths of the ocean. God was the one who had driven him from his sight, not in the sense of cutting him off completely, of course, but allowing him to experience the heartache of a fractured communion with God. And it is Jonah's acknowledgement of that truth that he's very simply admitting, in a sense here, his own guilt before God. He's basically saying, none of this trouble would have befallen me if I'd simply obeyed the word of the Lord. And the only reason that this is happening to me is that you, O Lord, are disciplining me for my waywardness. And so here is a man who's not only been brought to see his desperate dependence on God, but he's also acknowledging the guilt of his failure before God. the reality that he is in this situation because of God's sovereign hand working to bring him to his senses. He's seen in this desperate calamity of the seas the folly of ever thinking that he could run from the God who made the seas. He's seen firsthand the reality that God does not leave the guilty unpunished. And yet, what is amazing here is that with that contrition of heart, with that acknowledgement of his guilt before God, of the folly of his running from God, also comes a wonderful hope in God. Look at verse four. Verse four. I said, I have been banished from your sight, yet. I will look again toward your holy temple. Now remember folks, this is Jonah, this is him reflecting on what he said before. He said, I said I have been banished from your sight. This is him reflecting on what he said when he was still in the water. This isn't him what he said for the first time in the lifeboat of the fish. This is what he said to himself when he was drowning in the depths of the sea. And so the question is, how was he able to say such a thing? I will look again towards your holy temple. Let's not forget this is a man who's been guilty of a monumental rebellion against God. And here he is at the bottom of the ocean. He's surrounded by nothing but the dark, murky waters and all kinds of slime and his lungs are filling up with salt water. He is desperate for oxygen and yet he is able to say, yet I will look again towards your holy temple. You see, the true hope of a true faith is never ultimately determined by our circumstances, the circumstances of our experience. Instead it is informed and it is steadied by a clear understanding of the character of God. Jonah could have so easily said, that's it for me. Not only is my life ebbing away, it's about to be completely over here. I've rebelled against my God, my time on this earth is coming to an end. But instead of that, as he acknowledges in his mind the fact that it is God who has put him in that place, by his words we see that, he's not only able to see that God can therefore take him out of that place, but he's trusting in the fact that with his God, With this God, there is forgiveness. That with this God, there is a way back. There is a way of restoration. I find it quite interesting to think, you know, Jonah was a man who would have no doubt been familiar with a great deal of the Psalms. Not all of the Psalms would have been written at this point, but he would have known the language of David would have been pretty much entrenched in the life of the Jewish people at this time. And so it's not too much a stretch of the imagination to think that in those few minutes down there in the lonely darkness of the ocean, just maybe, just maybe he called to mind some important truths that he'd learned as a young boy concerning who God is. Just maybe he called to mind the fact that the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love, that he will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever, that he does not treat us as our sins deserve, or repay us according to our iniquities. Or maybe he remembered the words of Psalm 130, if you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, therefore you are feared. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, For with the Lord is unfailing love, and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. We don't know, but what we do know is that whatever went through this man's mind as he choked on the filthy waters of this ocean, he not only recognized that God had put him there as an act of fatherly discipline, but he called to mind the character of God who is rich in mercy and who is in the business of restoring repentant sinners. Friends, in all our determined efforts to grow in godliness and to walk in holiness, let us never lose sight of the fact that when we fall, Whatever we do, whatever we've done, with God there is forgiveness. He cares for his people. He wants to restore his people. He loves to clear away our guilt. He's in the business of forgiving depraved, rebellious, wicked sinners, and it is his delight to do this. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. That is why He sent Jesus into the world, to die for sinners, to finish the work of restoring our souls. He loves to save sinners. We need to remember this. And it is in the light of actually experiencing that grace in our lives, that we see a newfound sense of devotion towards this God, towards His work in our lives. He says in verse eight, those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord. You know, folks, as I read verses eight and nine, I feel like we could paraphrase what he's saying here. Again, my imagination was kind of running away with me a wee bit as I was reading these verses and thinking about the whole sequence of events here and preparing this week, but you can imagine Jonah, you know, a few weeks or maybe months, maybe years later on, just imagine he's back in Jerusalem, say, and he's with a few believing people, a few friends around him, and you just imagine his friends asking him the question, tell us, Jonah, you know, tell us the story again about the ship and those sailors and that time when you were thrown into the sea. Tell us, Jonah, what was going on in your life back then? Be honest with us, share with us, give us some of your testimony. Tell us what was going on in your life to bring you to this point. And you can just imagine Jonah in the light of these words, in verses eight and nine, you can imagine him standing there and saying, well, friends, you know what, it was like this. I was once a man who was known by everyone back home, everyone throughout Israel, I was known as God's servant. I was known as a prophet of Yahweh. But the truth was, I was a man who inside was clinging to worthless idols. I clung to the idol of going my way instead of God's way. I clung to the idol of pleasing myself and serving on my terms. instead of simply obeying the God who made me. And you know, friends, I pushed so hard in these things, in these courses of my own idolatry, that I almost forfeited His grace. And the only reason that I didn't and I couldn't was because of His sovereign kindness and His overruling of the circumstances of my life. And it was when I experienced that grace of His rescue again in my life, that undeserved favor and kindness and love and mercy, a mercy and a forgiveness that, to be honest with you friends, I completely lost sight of in all of my religion. It was then that I realized the folly and the wickedness of ever giving my life to anything other than His glory and His purposes. Do you see that the foundation of this life that again became devoted to God was and it is a life which has first come to know and is delighting in the mercies of God? Sometimes in our Christian lives, God will allow us to run a certain distance from Him, to experience the disaster of what it feels like to be totally out of step with Him, to remind us not only of our dependence on Him, but also of the beauty and the wonder of His gracious restoration when we turn back to Him. And so if you and I are going to join with this prophet Jonah in saying these words, but I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord. If you and I, if this will be the testimony of our lives today. If this will be the thing that we want to discuss over the dinner table or later on with our friends and family, it will only be because we have come to see personally that the one who delivered and rescued Jonah into the belly of the fish was the same one who'd one day spend three days in the belly of the earth so that you and I would be delivered. not into a fish, but into the eternal glory of his kingdom. It is only understanding and embracing the gospel of Jesus Christ, the unmerited favour of his forgiveness in our lives, in our own hearts, and meditating on this gospel day after day after day, minute by minute, throughout all our waking hours, that we will respond with a devotedness to His will, that we will see the absolute folly of worshiping any other idols, whether it be my way of serving Him or my course of life, whatever that thing might be that is attracting me and enticing me. Jesus said, greater love has no one than this, that He lay down His life for His friends. Romans 5, you see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Where the whole realm of nature mine, That were an offering far too small, Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.