This morning, open your Bibles, please, to the book of Jonah. We'll be talking a little bit today about something a little different from 1 Timothy. The book of Jonah is one of these books that just catches you off guard. It's got the miraculous with Jonah, of course, being in the great fish, but it's got a massive, massive premise underlying it. And that premise is that salvation is of the Lord. As the ESV says, salvation belongs to the Lord. And I think this is one of the hallmarks of the Reformation. We've been singing and talking today about the grace of God, about His faithfulness to us. And it's very important today that we get to the main point of the Reformation. And I think the main point of the Reformation is this big view of who God is. of the salvation that he provides. That is what Martin Luther, John Calvin, and all of the magisterial reformers, as well as all of those who were involved in the Reformation in the 16th century and following. In fact, the Reformation really continues today. Semper Reformanda, continuing always to reform. Well, this is the week of Reformation Day. October 31st is not just Halloween, as most of you know. It's the day that Martin Luther, as John so ably presented to us, nailed those 95 theses to the chapel door of Wittenberg. And Luther, who is an Augustinian monk, was using this as an opportunity to make an appeal against this matter of indulgences. John Tetzel was the major emissary of the Pope in Germany to sell these indulgences. He was a Dominican friar. He was the Grand Commissioner for Indulgences in Germany. And as John well put, He offered a decrease in the amount of time a deceased person would spend in purgatory. The German phrase that he used is, I'm not very good in German. I love that, klingt and springt. The Germans have a way of saying things that really sound like what they mean. As soon as a coin in the coffer clings, rings, the soul from purgatory springs. And this is the way he would raise money. And this selling of indulgences, Edward has a Bible, he showed me one time that talked about the number of years you could get lopped off of purgatory if you did certain things. These indulgences were very powerful in raising money for building the Basilica of St. Peter there in Rome. Two of Luther's 95 theses went directly after this matter of indulgences. Number 27, they preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory. And number 28, it is certain that when money clinks in the money chest, greed and avarice can be increased. But when the church intercedes, the result is in the hands of God alone. And what Luther does is he drives our attention back to the supremacy of God. He causes us to understand how great He is. This Protestant Reformation was far more than just justification by faith. Yes, it was that. That's probably the most important doctrine that came out, Sola Scriptura, that all that we have, all we need for life and faith is found in Scripture alone. But I would maintain that the overarching hallmark of the Protestant Reformation was the massiveness of God. The centrality of God in all things. This had been lost in the history of the church. He is sovereign. God is in absolute control. Luther and Calvin both understood this and they did their utmost to proclaim His glory in all things. We're missing this today in our culture. We're missing this in our churches. These are not just nice platitudes to recite on Reformation Sunday, they constitute a worldview. And I hope this morning that you have a worldview that involves God as being central, as being sovereign, as being in control. Because this is what the Reformation was all about. Our country does not have this worldview. A God who is not only alive and interested in the affairs of men, but that he's in absolute control over them. Don't despair, saints of God, what's going on in the world today. Our God is sovereign. The reformers were right. He is in control. To my own shame, I admit that I do not always have this view of God's sovereignty. When I get sick, or when someone cuts me off in traffic, or when my favorite candidate does not get elected, I tend to react and not believe in the sovereignty of God. I think this is common for all of us. Examples in scripture certainly of men who lack this view at times. The Bible's wonderful, isn't it? Reviewing the faults of its heroes. This is one of the reasons I have such great confidence in the Bible. It's very honest about how its heroes act. Abraham took his wife's servant as a wife to ensure that he got the son that God had promised him. You see, there's a problem here. He was a man of faith, but his faith was insufficient. He didn't recognize the total sovereignty of God to provide the son in the way that God wanted to provide him. Of course, God did later on, provided Isaac, despite Abraham's efforts to satisfy the problem with Ishmael. And then there's Peter, who thought that God was not big enough to go to the cross, send Jesus to the cross to accomplish what he needed to do. And he tried to stand in his way, and Jesus had to say, get thee behind me, Satan. Because Peter did not have this picture that God was sovereign and that through the death of Jesus, the most horrific event in all of human history, he could accomplish the greatest good in all of human history. and that is the salvation of a sinful people. Well, our main character today is just such a person. He's one of the most famous prophets in the Bible, although most of what we have about him is pretty negative in the four short chapters of the book of Jonah. He has no compassion for the people that God sends him to. He's unmoved by the fact that the Ninevites finally do respond. He should have been rejoicing. One of the greatest revivals in all of human history. Apparently 120,000 people become followers of our Lord as a result. There's a tremendous move, a tremendous turning toward God Himself through the prophet Jonah. And yet he does not see it as a good thing. You see, he's been sent to this hated foreign country, the country of Assyria. Nineveh was a great city. It wasn't the big capital city that it was later on at the time that Jonah went, but it was a massive city nonetheless. And when God tells him to go there, he trusts God so much that he runs the opposite direction. He knows what the Assyrians do to people who don't agree with him. I mean, in his defense, he knows how brutal, how vicious. I won't go into details. The Assyrians were a vicious people to those whom they captured, and he does not want to go there. The Bible doesn't talk about that here. All it talks about is that Jonah has no compassion for them, and he goes the opposite direction. He tries to go to Tarshish. You know the story. We're not going to go through the whole story this morning. But I'm glad that Jonah is in the Bible, because there's a little bit of Jonah in me, and I would suspect there's a little bit of Jonah in every one of us. that does not accept the massiveness of God, the centrality of God that we learn in the Reformation that says that God is sovereign even over my enemies. And when He sends me to do something, He intends to have it accomplished because He will do it. Salvation is, after all, of the Lord. And this is what Jonah's going to learn today in chapter 2. We're going to go through the chapter very quickly today. And I hope that you go away today with an understanding of how great our God is. When you understand that salvation is entirely of Him, it will transform your life. You will begin to understand there is not an event, there is not an election, there is not an accident, there is not a relationship broken that can cause anything to change the salvation that He has provided us because salvation is of the Lord. And I hope that we will get that picture as we go through. I'm going to read chapter 1, verses 17 through chapter 2, verse 10, so that we get the story and we'll go from there. Verse 17, this is... Well, let me just say a few things first by way of introduction because I think you all know this, but it's important to have this little background. Jonah is a Jewish prophet from the Northern Kingdom in the 8th century BC, gets a call from God to go to Nineveh, the hated enemies. He doesn't want to go. So rather comically, this prophet of God tries to run away. The prophet of the sovereign God thinks that he can hide from God by taking a ship going the opposite direction. So God in his sovereignty hurls a great wind upon the sea, causes the boat to have problems. They're not going to make it because the waves are rough. The sailors who are pagan understand that they're not going to make it. And not only they understand that, they understand that there's somebody on board that's causing the problem. It's amazing the insight that God gives even unbelievers. So the sailors cast lots. That's a good thing to do. Guess who the lot falls upon? It falls upon Jonah. And so Jonah fesses up. He says, yes, it's me. My Lord told me to do this and I did something else. These pagan sailors understand the sovereignty of God in a way that Jonah doesn't. They realize that they are in trouble. and that they need to deal with it. Their first instinct is to try to row hard to get back to land. That's going to fail. And so he proposes in his own guilt, it's amazing what conscience will do by the way, he proposes in his own sense of guilt that they throw him overboard. And so they do. And they call on the Lord, plead for forgiveness for doing this, and then they throw him overboard, and immediately the waves are calmed. Okay? These pagan men feared the Lord exceedingly, the scripture says, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord. Jonah wasn't offering sacrifices. And made vows. It appears that they became believers in the living God. God is working through Jonah, this unbelieving prophet, to do something that Jonah was not doing. And the last verse in chapter 1 picks up the story. The seas were calm, but Jonah was not. The sailors are right with God, but Jonah is not. This man of God is on his way down, both physically and spiritually. He's descending down through the waves. Now, this is the picture we've got to have because this is the picture that we have in our lives today. Maybe you've never been to a big crisis in your life where you really were at a juncture between whether you go on in life or not, whether you go on in your business, whether you go on in the military, whether you go on in your marriage, Whether you go on in your relationship with the church. You come upon these decisions in your life and you're going the wrong direction. And you know you're going the wrong direction. And so you go overboard. And you're going down, down, down. That's the picture we're to have going into chapter 2. 117 reads, and I read the Word of God. 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. And now we have a record of Jonah's prayer of thanksgiving as he's in the fish. 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." Quoting Psalm 42, he says, "...and 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 around 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." Then he sums up with these words, 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. You figured it out. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Let us pray. Father, we confess this morning our view of you is way too small. Our God is too small. Lord, we feel many times in life like fleeing is the way to deal with the issues that you give us. And rather than face, Lord, what you are teaching us, we run. We try to get away from the very thing that you are going to use to grow us, to strengthen us, to show us your grace. Oh God, I pray this morning as we briefly look at this prophet's life that you will cause us to understand how horrid this is that your people run from you. And Father, we thank you that you caused Jonah to realize where his salvation lies. And Father, we pray that you would cause us to understand the same thing. For Christians, Lord, to understand that you're at the very center of every event that happens in our lives, that you're in absolute control. There's no need to fret ourselves or to delight in you, is in control, is sovereign over all things. And for those who do not know Jesus this morning, Father, I pray that You'll bring them to the same point of understanding that salvation is in the hand of the Lord. And Lord, that they need to trust You. And they need to trust You today while there is still time. For it's in Jesus' name we pray. It's always interesting in the Bible to see God's justice working alongside of His mercy. You know, this is the way it is throughout the Bible. You realize this, don't you? You see God's justice moving and then you see God's mercy moving. You have the requirements that God has for all people that we be holy before Him. And yet God in His mercy provides us the means to obtain that holiness. We can't obtain it ourselves. He provides the Lord Jesus. And that's what's going on here in Jonah. We've got his justice coming along with his mercy. The message of mercy pervades the book. Who is God compassionate toward at the end of the book? The city of Nineveh. He's compassionate toward all these people. He's compassionate upon them through the entire book. It's Jonah who is not compassionate, and so God has to use some of his justice to get Jonah's attention. And so justice and mercy work side by side. He does that all the time. Jonah's in full-time ministry for God and yet he's running away from God because he has no heart for the sinful Ninevites who need to be rescued. He's telling God, in essence, I'm not doing that. Have you ever told God that? Maybe not in those words. But in your attitudes, in the decisions you've made in life, I'm not doing that. Be careful when you do something like that, because if you're a child of God, He is not going to let you get away with that. He's going to deal with you as He dealt with Jonah. He's going to cause you to understand that salvation is of the Lord. If you're ever to see a resolution to any dilemma in your life, you've got to come back to the one who's the source of life, and that is God Himself. You've got to humble yourself before Him. You've got to be obedient before Him, as Jonah was not. God may be moving in your life today. Like Jonah, you're going down, down, down. And God is calling you today. God comes after Jonah. God is coming after you today. He's coming after you to call you back to Himself. I pray that you will listen to what He's saying. Now, remember that Jonah is doing the narration here. We don't know if he was the author. This was in the 8th century B.C. It could have been that he related this to others later who actually wrote it down. There's a debate about the date it was actually written, but these are clearly his words that he's written and that somebody else has either picked up or he has written himself and it's become Scripture. And what we see is a spiral downward in Jonah's life. I call to the Lord out of my distress. And he answered me, out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice." When you see the word Sheol in the Bible, the first thing that should come to your mind is the idea of death in the Old Testament. He thinks he's done. He thinks he's toast. He's overboard, he's underwater, he's going down, and he thinks it's all finished. But his mind is still working. It's interesting how God gives us the ability to think spiritual things in the time of great physical distress. And that's what's going on here, I think, is that God is giving him the ability to think through what is going on in his heart, in his life. He's praying. He remembers praying. He remembers crying out to the Lord. I mentioned in verse 3, all your waves and billows passed over me. He's quoting a psalm. There are three different psalms quoted in this book, in this chapter. Psalm 31 in verse 8 and Psalm 3 in verse 9. Jonah knew the Bible, okay? He had a working knowledge of the Bible. He was able to recollect when he didn't have the opportunity to open up a scroll as he was descending down through the waves, he could remember what he knew of the Word of God. If you don't know the Bible, and none of us knows the Bible, if you don't know the Bible like you ought, I would suggest today that you engage yourself in some kind of discipline to get yourself through the Bible. that you read books like Jonah, and you understand the importance of being able to recall verses as you go through calamity. That's what's going on. The Holy Spirit is bringing verses to Jonah's mind. I believe he's a disobedient one, but he's a child of God. And as he's going down, he's thinking about the promises of God. All your waves and billows passed over me. The psalmist had written many years before, and he's thinking through, that's exactly what's going on with me. I'm going down through the waves. The beauty of the psalms is you can almost every day find a psalm that is relevant to some issue that you're dealing with today. The psalms are a great place to do a lot of meditation. And you can see some psalmists, whether it's David or any of the other psalmists, Asaph or the other people, Moses writes one psalm, reflect upon their experiences in life and how God is working through their hearts and minds with his word. And this will come to you in time of crisis, in time of calamity, when you're driving down the street and you don't know what to do, you don't have time to stop and open your Bible or even flip open your phone and get the Scripture read to you. You need to be able to think about the Bible right now, the Scripture that God would have for you. In fact, that should be the first thing you do whenever facing a calamity. What Scriptures would God use to teach me right now? Rather than worry about the problem, think about the solution that God has in His Word. The next thing He does is He submits, in verse 3, to what's going on. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me. He's got a recognition that God is sovereign over the waves, okay? God is sovereign over the men who threw Him overboard. Now, this is not the Jonah who didn't believe that God was sovereign enough to take him to Nineveh and accomplish the great mission there and give him a heart of compassion. He's not there yet. There are clearly some deficiencies in Jonah's life still in chapter 2, but he does understand here in chapter 2 that God has brought about this calamity. It's God who created the storm. The verse read in chapter one, the Lord hurled a storm. He threw a storm. You can't get away from God. He's sovereign. And he wants us to submit to that. He is sovereign over the fact that the sailors cast lots that land upon Jonah. And you couldn't make this up. This is what God does for his child. He sets the conditions for his child to repent. to come back, because He desires His children to repent, to come back. Maybe God is doing that in your life today. Maybe He's thrown a log across the road and He's prevented you from going the direction you want to go. And you stop and say, Lord, what are you doing? Why have you put this roadblock here? What is the reason? Is there something in my life that's Jonah-like that you are dealing with? And maybe He'll reveal to you what it is that's going. He sees the sovereignty of God in this situation. In the fourth verse, he comes to grips with the reality of the situation. He said, I am driven away from your sight. He sees that God is driving the storm that is now preventing him from being able to be obedient to God. There's a sense in which God is driving Jonah away. That's where Jonah wanted to be. He wanted to be far away. He's getting far away as the storm comes and drives him. And he understands that God is in charge of that, and that there's a separation developed between him and God. There's a note of hope here at the end of verse 4, "'Yet I shall look again upon your holy temple.'" Now, Jonah was from the northern kingdom. Gath-Heifer is the name of the town. It's right next to the bottom edge of the Sea of Galilee. So he's up in the north. The north has been away from the southern kingdom where the temple was. So I think what's in Jonah's mind here is the sense of the presence of God. He sees that in his running away and that God's dealing with the storm, he's getting further and further away from God. Have you ever felt that way before? Nobody else has felt that way. I have felt that way. Where you feel further and further and further away from God. And yet in the middle of all this, God gives it. He's still going down. He's still going down. In the middle of this, God gives him a sense that he's again going to experience a relationship with Him. Have you had that happen to you? In the middle of a crisis, you're thinking through your crisis, you're thinking through why it's happening, and then God gives you this amazing sense that He's not done with you yet. He's got more that He wants to do with you. And He's going to restore that relationship. Jonah had that sensing here. It gets worse, he goes down in verse 6 to the roots of the mountains. He finds seaweed wrapped around his head. Can you imagine the kelp being wrapped around your head? Not only are you near the bottom of the sea, because that's where the kelp is, it's growing up out of the bottom of the sea, but now you're getting hopelessly entwined where you can't get out. And he knows that the end is near. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever. The idea is probably the idea of bars on a gate lock. He sees that he's going down and he's going to be imprisoned down here. He's not going to get out. Okay? So he's got this mixture of justice and mercy going through his head as he's involved in this situation and yet he's cognizant. There are some people who believe that Jonah died. a little bit later. We'll talk about that in a few moments. I don't think he ever died. I think he's cognitive. He's fainting, clearly, but I think he's aware of his circumstances. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me. He's come to grips with reality and yet he has hope. He believes that he will once again look upon the Lord and there's hope here at the end of verse 6. Yet you brought up my life out of the pit. In the midst of his despair, he has hope. If this sounds confusing to you, it's because it is. When you're away from the Lord, when you're wandering, when you're being disobedient with the Lord, you're not acting rationally, and things are not going to be logical, okay? The answer is very simple. The answer is that Jonah comes to the place where he submits to the Lord. He's not quite there yet. But the hope is still there. And I think it's at this point that the great fish swallowed him. Okay? I think that this is the point at which the great fish swallowed him. We don't know if it was a whale. That's what a lot of people, the term a lot of people use. It could have been. We just don't know. The word is a great fish. So we know that much. As he was fainting away, he remembers the Lord. He prays to the Lord as we've been discussing. My prayer came to you in your holy temple. And we see that there is a connection now between God and Jonah as this event takes place. God works to provide the rescue for Jonah in a very unexpected way. The being in the whale, the great fish, see I even said it, for three days and three nights was a great miracle. There's no question about it. But it was a miracle that was a miracle for good. The great fish was Jonah's transportation to bring him back to where he needs to be, not a punishment. I'm sure it was not pleasant. He may have passed out during that time, for part of that time. Men have been swallowed by whales before. There's one instance recorded back in the 1890s where a man was in the belly of a sperm whale and survived. But a guy named Bartley, and they dissected the whale, and there he was. He was not in perfect shape, but he did survive. So it can happen, but nonetheless, It was not a pleasant experience. And yet God, through His grace, has appointed the fish. He's appointed the great fish to accomplish. Do you see what's going on here? God is in charge. Jonah's God is great. He is great enough to have the men throw the the prophet overboard at just the right place to bring the fish at just the right place at just the right time before Jonah drowns and swallows him. Now this story has suffered incredible criticism over the years of the history of the church. It does seem rather incredible that you'd have a great fish swallowing a man. Who's ever heard of that? Most people have never heard of this happening. There are some remote stories. One possibility that a lot of people have taken is that this is literary fiction. That is, a way to explain all this is just a kind of a parable, a story with a moral, if you will. Well, the problem with that is that to the writer of the book here, who is using Jonah's words, this was a historical event. It really happened. There's nothing in the text to indicate this is a fable or that this is a tale or a parable. And what's more, when Jesus refers to it from the New Testament, He refers back to it as historical fact. Let me read you a couple of verses. Matthew 12. Turn there, if you will, please. Matthew 12 and verse 39. Jesus is engaging with the Jewish leaders, and He says this, "...and an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it..." This is Matthew 12, 39. "...except the sign of the prophet Jonah." 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. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And behold, something greater than Jonah is here." There's no doubt that Jesus accepted this story as historical. In my mind, it's just incredible that we not consider this story as having happened in actuality. He quotes it again in Matthew chapter 16. He says to the Jewish leaders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign. They were looking for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. So he left them and departed. So what is the sign of Jonah? It could have been the message that he preached, it doesn't really explain the text what it is. I think overall it's the overall story of what happened. That Jonah went down, he was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, and then he was delivered. And what Jesus is doing is saying, this is the sign that you have. I will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And I will rise again, just as Jonah came out of that fish. The story is very credible when you see Jesus wait to it. It really happened, folks. This really happened. And all the evidence in the text would tell us exactly that. This is one of those stories that makes absolutely no sense if it were not true. If there were no real great fish, then there would be no sign of Jonah for Jesus to compare himself with. If there were no swallowing by the great fish, there would be no explanation for Jonah's survival. And the story of Jesus as he goes to the cross to accomplish his death, for people like us, sinners like you and I, would mean nothing. No, these stories are inextricably intertwined. They are both true. And Jesus uses it as a basis upon which to predict what he's going to do. Verses 8 and 9, Jesus, our Jonah, thanks God for his rescue. He says, those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope in steadfast love. The old Hebrew word has said, those who get involved in idolatry forsake the possibility of having God's love, His steadfast love shown to them. God's pursuing love, God's distinguishing love. If you pursue idolatry, I don't know who he was thinking of, whether he was thinking of the pagan sailors whom he'd left on the deck of the ship, or if he's thinking of the people in Nineveh, whoever he's talking about. He understands that idolatry is people forsaking the sovereign God who is pursuing him with his steadfast love. He understood that. God loves me. Because he sent this fish after me and kept me from drowning in the depths of this ocean. And he's living to tell about it. This is an amazing, amazing story. And his promise, his commitment to the Lord is, with the voice of thanksgiving, I will sacrifice to you. Now, Jonah is not there yet. And we're going to see, if we ever go to Jonah 3 and 4, we're going to see how the story is not yet complete here at the end of chapter 2. But what we see is that Jonah comes to a recognition that God is sovereign. He is in control. He is compassionate toward Jonah. And that shows him what he needs to know before going to Nineveh. So he says this closing line, the theme of our text today, salvation is of the Lord. Throughout the Bible, when salvation happens, when rescue happens, it's because God is the one who is driving it. God is the one who sent Jesus to die on a cross. And when the the rulers were taking pride, the Pontius Pilate on the Gentile side, and the religious rulers, the Jewish leaders on the other side, were patting themselves on the back for how they'd done away with Jesus. The early apostles in Acts chapter 4, verses 27-28, said that these people only acted to accomplish the predetermined plan of God. We can do nothing against the truth, as the way Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 13, but only for the truth. A recognition of the sovereignty of God is recognizing that everything that happens is for our good and for His glory. That's what's going on. That's what Jonah needs to understand. You all have your circumstances in your lives. I have circumstances in my life. All these things are working to try to rip us away from this confidence in God's sovereignty and cause us to fret over our circumstances. What God is telling us in Jonah is that salvation is of the Lord. We can come back, we can anchor our hope, our trust in Him for what He has done. This is the message of the Bible. Salvation is God's work through and through. It is He who intentionally sent Jesus to die on a cross knowing that it was going to be painful for Jesus, knowing that there was going to be a separation between Son and Father for some period of time there on the cross, as God the Father punishes Jesus for sins that were not Jesus' sins. They were our sins. God is in control, He is sovereign, and He brings down His wrath. This is the justice and the mercy. He brings down His wrath upon His own Son in order to accomplish mercy for His people. That's us. Salvation is of the Lord. It's all by God's design. Do you know that salvation today? Do you know the grace of God in your life today? Have you come to the point of Jonah where you got to the very bottom of the sea with the kelp wrapped around your neck and no hope of survival? And God sends a great fish and he rescues you. He's going to send Jonah to Nineveh, and Nineveh is going to repent. 120,000 people don't know the difference between their right and their left hand. God has compassion on them, and He gets the prophet Jonah to them to preach God's message, and they repent. It's an amazing story, God's compassion, His mercy. And He does it through an uncompassionate prophet. God is in control. Salvation is of the Lord. Maybe you've had a friend tell you about the gospel and you've never responded. A mom or dad has been relentless in presenting the gospel to you. That's God's great fish coming to you to rescue you. He's bringing the ark of salvation to your house. Will you believe in Him? Will you come to the bottom of yourself and say, Lord, that's it. I give myself to you. If you're a believer in Christ today and you're going through a period of time that's tested your faith sorely and you've come to the point of despair, think of Jonah as he hits the bottom and God saves him. May God do that in our midst today to his glory. Father, we thank you so much. We thank you so much for your grace in coming to us. We thank you that salvation belongs to the Lord. It's a work that you do. Father, we thank you that it is not in any way, shape, or form dependent upon us. It's a monergistic act in which you come toward us and you rescue us. We thank you that you did this for Jonah. Father, I pray that you will do it for some soul today. Father, across this world today, on this Reformation Sunday, I pray that as the doctrines of grace go out, that Your Spirit will be at work and that You will send Your great fish to bring many to Yourself. And even by the means of recalcitrant prophets like Jonah and like us, Father, I pray that you will accomplish your purpose of bringing souls to yourself, of faithfully proclaiming your word. Father, you are the one who gives the motivation for prophets to go, the motivation for missionaries to preach your word, the motivation for families to share the truth of the gospel with each other. Father, we pray that you will do that great work and cause faith to happen. Lord, we leave that work to You. But let us be faithful in that proclamation. May we know Your Word, Father, I pray. Where we have not been diligent in knowing Your Word, help us, Lord, to become saturated in it every day, a little bit every day, line upon line, precept upon precept. Lord, help us to learn Your Word and, Lord, to be able to have it at the forward edge of our brains to think about as we go through these spiritual, hard experiences where we need that Word to comfort us, to strengthen us, and to see Your grace and Your glory. Thank you so much, Father, for sending your prophets. We thank you so much for sending your reformers in the history of the church to bring us back to grace. Oh God, I pray that you'll bring hearts to grace today. In Jesus' name we pray.