In this episode of the Book of Jonah, we might title, The Belly of Hell. The Belly of Hell, that's the name of the episode that we are coming into tonight. And we have been making our way through this wonderful piece of divine revelation, and as we have been doing so, we have been emphasizing The astounding grace of God and the glorious sovereignty of the Lord as we go, that's on the one hand. So, grace and sovereignty on the one hand, and then on the other hand, you have a constant theme that keeps recurring there, and that is the theme of sin. how much pain and suffering sin brings. And that is true of unbelievers. We understand that. But it is also true, of course, of believers. Believers can cling to sin. And in doing so, they can invite a lot of suffering for that as well. And that is illustrated very vividly in the life of Jonah. Even the way the book is written. We've mentioned before that that helps us to make those connections. At the opening of the book Jonah gets called by God to a task, go to Nineveh and preach such and such a message. He decides to disobey and the text says that he goes down to Joppa. Then it says that he finds a ship that is going thousands of miles in the opposite direction and he goes down into that ship. course, once he is in that ship, he goes down into the hold of that ship. And we have seen so far that the Lord stirs up a storm and the sailors that Jonah is with, they throw him down into the ocean. And then tonight we're going to see that he sinks down into the sea and he gets swallowed by a fish and he ends up in a place that he calls the belly of hell for three days and three nights. This is a place of suffering that should warn you and I of the I mean, what are the consequences of sin? And it should be a warning that we must go to war against our sin that so easily entangles us. So let's turn to the book of Jonah. And our text tonight is in chapter 2, and we are going to read from verses 1 to 6, chapter 2. I was trying to go through the entire chapter, but I ran out of space. So we're going to do chapters 2 verses 1 and down to the middle of chapter 6. The Word of God says, Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish. He said, I called out of my distress to the Lord, and he answered me. cried for help from the depth of Sheol, you heard my voice. For you had cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me. All your breakers and billows passed over me. So I said, I have been expelled from your sight. Nevertheless, I will look again toward your holy temple. Waters encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth, with its bars, was around me forever." That's our text this morning and I want to go to the Lord in prayer one more time. Great God, we do ask that you would bless our time together and give us clear minds and open hearts to receive your word that we may grow by it. In Christ's name, amen. Now, I think all of us are curious here to find out what kind of fish swallowed Jonah. That's where we left it last time. Unfortunately, the one person who actually asked the question isn't here. So I guess you guys get to find out. He won't. But all that we have to go on with at this point, as far as the text is concerned, are the words in chapter 1 verse 17 that say, that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish, right? Great fish, that is what we have here in the Hebrew text. And the Hebrew word for fish is dog. So my Hebrew professor used to like to say that Jonah was swallowed by a dog. But the Hebrew word dog means very simply fish or sea creature. In other words, the term itself doesn't say anything about the species of animal that swallowed Jonah. All we get, really, is the relative size of the creature. It's great, a great fish. And actually, you get the same thing in the Greek translation of the term in Matthew 1240. given there also is a very generic word for sort of a large sea creature. And that means that we could be speaking of a kind of fish that no one today knows about. I mean, remember, we are still constantly discovering types of new animals in the bottom of the ocean that we had never seen before. And some even like to say that this might have been the Leviathan in Job chapter 40. Now another possibility, and I think that we do need to consider this one very seriously, is that Jonah might have been actually swallowed by a whale. Obviously today we would not classify a whale as a fish. We would distinguish a whale as a mammal because they do fit into all the characteristics of a mammal. are warm-blooded and they give birth as opposed to laying eggs and they actually breathe air. and such things. But remember, that standard did not exist in the ancient world. So, he could have been swallowed by a whale. And actually, I found a very interesting article written by a man named Christopher Eames on this subject. It's a very balanced article, I thought. And it actually came out in February this year. And in that article, it's a website or a publication known as Watch Jerusalem, and the article is titled, What Was the Great Fish That Swallowed Jonah? And there, after exploring a few options, he actually argues, Eames does, that the creature today that would have been the best option for having swallowed Jonah would have been a sperm whale. A sperm whale, you know, the Moby Dick whale. And he picks that species for a number of reasons. The first, reason would be, of course, those whales do make it to the Mediterranean waters, where Jonah would have been. They also have these massive teeth, but the reality is that their jaws are not designed for chewing, so they tend to swallow their victims whole. In fact, scientists have found sperm whales and when they have opened up their bellies, they have found entire sharks like that just inside of their bellies. So these animals can definitely put a lot of food away. And Eames actually points out that they can consume up to a ton of food every day. So there's no doubt that a human being would have been able to fit inside of the belly of this creature. Now, the question for us at this point would be, okay, Jonah fits there, but can a man be in the belly of a fish for three days and three nights and not die? The answer is no. he would be dead. That would be impossible unless a miracle occurred, right? So that we would and we would say to that, okay, no problem. Right? All things are possible with God. We've already talked about an omnipresent God who is sovereign and controls all things. He can create a supernatural storm. He can turn the lots wherever He pleases. So why in the world would we doubt that this God can also keep a man alive three days and three nights inside of the belly of a fish? Actually, that's not even the biggest miracle in the book. biggest miracle in the book, I would argue, is the fact that the whole city of the Ninevites turns from their sin and unto God. And we're still yet to get there, of course. But no, it would not be a problem for God to sustain this man inside of the belly of the fish. And he does. So verse one says, Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish. This man is alive inside of that animal. Some like to say that Jonah actually died, and then when he was spit back out, he was resurrected. And I don't have that much of a problem with that view, because it does accept the supernatural. It says God raised him up from the dead after that. But I don't prefer that view because it kind of misses the point of what a type should be. You see, the argument here is because Jesus Christ was dead for three days and three nights or three days, he is raised up, right? So therefore Jonah had to be dead in the belly of the fish. I don't think that that's a great argument, because for there to be a type, you don't have to have a one-to-one correspondence. The two things don't have to be exactly the same. Actually, you would expect some difference between the symbol and then the thing symbolized. And also, you know, the reality is that the text just says, Jonah prayed to God from the stomach of the fish. I don't see how you could pray if you're dead. But either way, notice the change here. Before, when he was in the fish, or when he was in the ship, he's refusing to pray. The sailors are telling him, call to your God. And he's instead going off to sleep. Here, however, he is finally praying. And notice, he's not just calling out to some unknown God like the Athenians in Acts 17. Notice the wording, he is calling to the Lord his God. Right? This is where we begin to see most clearly that God's work has had an effect on Jonah's heart. He has been humbled. He's turning to his God. There's a sense of intimacy here. Now, isn't it interesting that all of these things are taking place immediately after God has just unloaded all His fury on Jonah? I mean, we got to see that the last few weeks that we were here, how aggressive God has been with Jonah. We even said that God has gone to war against the prophet, in the same way that you would hurl a spear at somebody. It says that God hurled a wind that created this massive storm, and then Jonah gets into just pure condemnation. You have the lots condemning him, the sailors condemning him, and then he's forced to admit his own guiltiness. And then we saw last week that Jonas called to produce or pronounce a verdict against himself, right? Because he's the only prophet on board. So he gets to tell the sailors, you need to throw me overboard. That's God's will for me. And sure, the sailors do try, as we saw last week, to not have to throw him over, but even they end up realizing that God wants him out. God wanted this man at the bottom of the sea, and He gets the man at the bottom of the ocean. And yet, when that happens, ironically, that is the point where Jonah starts to pray. You would think that losing the battle against God would actually drive him further away from God, but it doesn't. It actually brings him back to God. There's a reconciliation of prayer here to his God. And that's the point of this discipline, right? So I want you to turn with me real fast to Hebrews 12. This is a very excellent passage for understanding what we're talking about when we talk about discipline, discipline of the Lord. When you encounter someone who is going through difficult trials, right? And that person is a Christian. Hebrews 12 verse 4, you have not resisted to the point of shedding blood and you're striving against sin. And you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons. My son, Do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him. For those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children, and not sons. Furthermore, we had our earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time, as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good. so that we may share in His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. Yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness." So you can see here that it is the people who do not belong to God, who are not disciplined. So, if you see discipline in your life, hardships in your life, then be thankful for it. Are things hard for you? Thank God. Thank God that He has not left you in your sin and that He is being a Father to you. That He's coming with that surgeon's scalpel and He's cutting out those cancerous spots. That you're not an orphan. And that's essentially what Jonah is doing here. He's praying a prayer of thanksgiving to God. Now, if you go through the Psalms, one aspect of Hebrew poetry that you'll notice is that oftentimes you have the author. He's going to give you a story. So he begins by giving you one summary of the entire story in one sentence, and then he begins to describe it, right? So you first have a summary and then the particulars, you have a broad statement, and then the specifics. And in verse 2, really, this is what you're looking at here is a broad statement. It's a summary, as it were, of Jonah's belly of hell experience. So look at verse 2. And Jonah said, I called out of my distress to the Lord, and He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol. You heard my voice." Now again, this verse is an overview of the entire situation in chapter 2. Jonah is in distress in the depth of Sheol. He cries to the Lord, and the Lord answers him. The Hebrew word for distress here literally means to bind up or to tie. The picture here is of a man bound for judgment. And usually the Old Testament authors use it to describe the emotional response that people have when they're surrounded by their enemies. I'm in distress when I'm seeing enemies all around. They're choked up or bound up. They're in distress. But interestingly, that word applies very literally to Jonah here because he is inside of the belly or the stomach of a fish. And as you know, his stomachs are made to constrict and tighten up around their content. So in a sense, this man is being choked to death inside of the belly of this fish. That is the distress that pulls the prayer out of Jonah. And the suffering goes much deeper than that. If Jonah was inside of an actual fish, he would have been extremely cold. because fish are cold-blooded and the Mediterranean sea waters can be very cold. However, on the other hand, if it is a whale or a mammal, like we said, that creature would have been warm-blooded and probably too warm for anybody to be comfortable in there. And beyond that, you would have had the stomach acids irritating his skin, and he would not have been able to open up his eyes, and it would have smelled horribly in there. And this went on for three days and three nights. This man is not eating or drinking. So this was physical suffering. But think about it. It's more than just physical. It's also mental or spiritual. I mean, this man has a guilty conscience. And that could have been even worse than the physical torment he's in. Because Jonah has a lot of time there to think about his sin against the Lord. He has disobeyed. And he is experiencing the heavy hand of God pressing on him because of his sin. So no wonder he says, I cried for help from the depths of Sheol. This is a kind of hell. Now, I know that some would say that Sheol in the Old Testament simply means the realm of the dead. That's a popular view today that you'll hear a lot. Sheol just means the realm of the dead, not hell. But I would actually argue against that. I would actually argue that in the vast majority of cases, Sheol actually means hell. I mean, if you think about it, in the Old Testament, Sheol is the proper abode of the wicked. We all sort of know that, generally speaking. Job 21.13, the wicked in a moment go down to Sheol. Proverbs 15.24, the path of life. Notice the contrast. The path of life leads upward for the prudent that he may turn away from Sheol beneath. So Sheol is always described as the place where the righteous do not go and the wicked end up. Now, sure, there are times in the Old Testament where Sheol is spoken of as the grave in general. Jacob, for example, says, I will go down to Sheol to my son mourning, right? But even that should tell you that the most literal sense of the term is that this is a place of darkness and pain. It's a place where the dead belong, not the living. And in other places, Sheol is clearly the place where the wicked are sent down to be punished, even in the Old Testament. Psalm 49 verse 14, the upright shall rule over the wicked in the morning, their form shall be consumed in Sheol. with no place to dwell. And then you have also Psalm 55, 15. Let them go down to Sheol alive, for evil is in their dwelling place and in their heart. The idea here is that the concept of hell exists already in the Old Testament. Jesus is the one who really gives it full picture and brings it out for us. But in the Old Testament, there was such a thing as hell. The difference is that the Old Testament is a lot more preoccupied with earthly things or earthly concepts than the realm of the spiritual. But nonetheless, it's all there. So Jonah is really applying the same term, Sheol, that had been used by the Old Testament writers as hell to describe a kind of figurative hell that he had been going through. After all, this is a place, again, of both physical and spiritual torment. And it is extreme. The difference, of course, is that the people in hell have no chance of ever leaving that place. But a believer who might be on a hell, or inside of a hell on earth, He can cry out to God for salvation. Jonah says in verse two again, I called out of my distress to the Lord, and He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol. You heard my voice. So really, this is a psalm of thanksgiving. He is praising the Lord for this. And what is interesting about it is the amount of Scripture that Jonah is going to use here. There are echoes here from Psalms 120, Psalm 42, Psalm 31, Psalm 69, Psalm 142, Psalm 31, Psalm 3, at least seven Psalms that Jonah is collating together and putting into his own prayer. Now, that is something that we all have to take notice of. Because it would do good to you to learn how to pray through the Psalms. You're using actually God's own language to pray for him. This is what he gives us those poems for. And of course, you could even use this song right here for your prayer life. And it would be a psalm of thanksgiving and deliverance for the Lord's grace. Jonah goes through a crisis. and he is delivered by God. And that crisis, he's going to start to describe in more detail. Again, we saw that in verse 2. He gives you the summary statement in more detail. Now he starts to explain that crisis in verses 3 to 6. And I think you're going to be surprised at how specific this information really is. I mean, here's a specific description of Jonah's crisis. Look at the opening of verse 3. For you had cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas." Now, did you catch who it is, according to Jonah, that threw him into the water? Right? It was God. He's saying, you God, you did it. Now, interestingly, you know, Jonah and Job had a similar reaction, right? Sure, Satan is the immediate influence, the one that influences the Sabians and the Chaldeans to kill Job's servants. But even Satan's theology is better than to say, I did it. He goes to God and says, does Job fear God for no reason? Stretch out your hand. against them, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you." In other words, Satan only does what God allows him to do. Martin Luther used to say, he is God's devil. Now again, how does Job respond? He says, the Lord has given, the Lord has taken away. The Lord has brought my suffering about." That's exactly how Jonah is thinking. You cast me into the deep. Now, notice, he's not starting here at the point at which the fish has already swallowed him. He starts even before that, because he suffers some things before the fish will swallow him alive. Here you have him being sort of thrown off the boat, and then the current engulfs him. Verse 3 again, For you had cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me. That engulfing seems to be an allusion to the tide pulling him in. In other words, he's fighting for his life here, against the ocean. Notice even that the phrase says, all your breakers and your billows passed over me. A breaker would be the line of foam that the wave makes after it hits a reef or the seashore. And the billow is just another word for a wave. What we have here is the tide pulling Jonah in, and then the waves are also assaulting him. And he's trying to catch whatever bits of air he can. I mean, you know that the sea is very unmerciful, right? And Jonah's feeling that here. But actually, the reality is that even while Jonah's still floating out at sea, struggling for breath, what's in his mind? It's not, I'm about to drown. It's His strife with God. Verse 4. So I said, I have been expelled from your sight. The pain here is over having displeased the Lord. However, in the midst of that pain, Jonah has enough sense to remember the Lord's character. That's the second half of verse 4. Nevertheless, I will look again toward your holy temple. I mean, that's amazing. Here's a man in the middle of the Mediterranean alone, grasping for air with no land inside. And he's saying, I'm going to make it through this one. That's some faith, right? I know that God is going to save me. Now, do you remember that we said when we were over in chapter one, what Jonah was fleeing from? I mean, we all know, yes, from the Lord, right? But the presence from the Lord, or the presence of the Lord. And we said, He's specifically speaking of the temple. Now, ironically here, He is saying, I'm going to see that temple again. How does He know that? Because He knew God. And He knows that God has decided that Jonah is preaching at Nineveh. So it may have seemed impossible. There is no way I can make it out of this one. But I know I'm going to be in Nineveh soon because that is what God has decided. And in saying, I know I'm going to be brought back to that place. I mean, he is saying, I know that God has something for me to do. Right. So perhaps Jonah is thinking, even if I die, he is going to resurrect me. Now, here's something for us to remember. You and I will be in the body for as long as God has a work for us to do. He has prepared us for our work before the foundations of the ages. And I think it was George Whitefield who said, you brothers are immortal until you have accomplished what the Lord has for you. Our lives are always in His hand. And Jonah knew that. However, this would have been a real test of faith for him. We're not talking about a man made out of stone, right? He does have faith in this, but that faith is going to be severely tested now, starting in verse 5. Look at verse 5. The water encompassed me to the point of death. The Hebrew, when you read it, actually says very literally, the water surrounded me up to my neck. What you have here is that this is the point at which this man is struggling and he's starting to give up. His muscles are going into shock so he can't move them anymore. So he's starting to sink into this great unknown. The next clause says, the great deep engulfed me. Now that word for a great deep in the Hebrew doesn't refer just to water in general or the sea in general. It actually refers to the deep black ocean the part that all of us would be most afraid of the deep but interestingly between this line and the next something happens because Jonah really surrenders himself finally into the deep and the next thing you read is not that Jonah died no Instead what you get is weeps or sorry weeds were wrapped around my head. Could it be that he suddenly is found finding himself inside of the belly of a great fish? I mentioned at the beginning that Jonah could have been swallowed up by a sperm well and interestingly there have been sperm wells that have been washed up recently and when they're opened they have found hundreds of pounds of garbage inside of their stomachs. So it is entirely possible that Jonah is into the belly of this fish that has a lot of weeds inside and he's wrapped into all of these weeds. And another interesting fact about the sperm whales that Christopher Eames points out is that They are actually the whales that can dive the deepest into the ocean. They can go as far as 10,000 feet below water. And look at what he says in verse 6, I descended to the roots of the mountains. In other words, I went down as far into the sea as I could possibly go. Now, what Jonah really wants to emphasize here, It's not so much that he went down into the sea, but rather that he went down into his anguish. There's a sense of sorrow here. Physical descent was just an expression of really what is going on in this man's life. He's going down. And he got as far away from God down as a believer can get. And that took all the hope out of him. He says in the next phrase, the earth with its bars was around me forever. Now the word earth there, you can translate as land, land. And I do think that it would be more accurate to say that we're talking about a land here rather than the earth, because remember, Jonah has been speaking about hell here. going down to Sheol or to hell. And then he says that he is sort of in this land, this hellish city of destruction, right? And he says that the bars were around him forever. The bars would have been those pieces of wood. I don't know if you've ever seen those movies where they have pieces, these pieces of wood that you put across a big gate in the city so that it will not open up. And He's saying, I've been locked into this prison, and the key has been thrown out. Because He says, I'll be here forever. The earth with its bars is around me forever. So obviously, this is rock bottom for this man. And this man has gone as far down as he could possibly go. And he thinks he's staying there. Now, of course, I said that this would be a contradiction from what he said when he was up above in the water, right? He believed, I'm going to make it out of this one, right? And now, he is saying, I have no hope. I'm staying here forever. I'm lost. But you know, sometimes at the beginning of a trial, you'll say, God, I want you to deliver me. And I know that you will do it. And then when you go into it, and you're deep into it, you can reach that place where you say, He's not going to do it. And that's Jonah here. He's seriously stumbling. But thank God, that our salvation does not depend upon our faith. Does not. Properly speaking, I would go as far as saying that faith does not save you. How's that? Why do I say that? Because Christ saves through faith. So sure, Faith is the instrument, but the Savior is Jesus Christ and His atoning work on the cross for sinners. The atoning work who, like Jonah, Jesus was buried in the heart of the earth for three days. And then He rose up so that you and I might never have to taste the kind of hellish place that Jonah had to endure. And we have to believe that. But of course, what I'm saying here is our faith is going to be imperfect for as long as we are in the flesh. And you can see that in Jonah's faith here, that it has wavered seriously. Now the question is, is Jonah going to be able to come back? Is he going to be able to snap back into reality? You'll have to come back. All right, well, any questions? Does anybody, I think I tackled the fish thing very thoroughly. Does anybody have a question? Yes, no, yes, yes, yes. All right, either you guys are very smart, or nobody understood me. I had a question. I was listening to John McArthur today and he was talking about how I would assume that some Jews don't and that some Jews do. Yeah, so I would say that was probably an act of ignorance on their part. They didn't know that Jonah had come out of Galilee or had, you know. Because it wasn't named Galilee, right? So you can see clearly why are they confused about that. But yeah, they're being ignorant there. I don't know that I've heard the thing on whether they did recognize Jonah as a prophet. Yeah. Okay. If John ever disagrees with me, you go from him. I found that fascinating that I was just, like I said, just curious as to whether that was... Yeah. He might have... A little more background on that, because he just introduced it as though they rejected Jonah because, you know, they said their hatred for the Gentiles was so great. Okay. Because he went to the Gentiles and preached to them. Oh. They would say... I can see that. They just didn't even talk about it. Okay. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, I didn't know that. So, yeah, but it makes sense. I mean, he was a prophet to the Gentiles. So, uh-huh. Well, in Romans it says, therefore now there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. So, why did you say that Jonah was being condemned because he did have faith? Yeah, yeah, good catch. When I, when I, if I use the word condemnation, I think you're right that I use that word. I don't mean condemnation as in he went to hell. I mean, I mean condemnation as in discipline. So there's a distinction right between condemnation as in you're banished from God's side forever or the Lord is, is there. Okay. So believers are never punished. They're only disciplined. Okay. So I know that I used a lot of language last time of condemnation. Maybe that's because I got carried away with the courtroom thing. But I didn't mean to say that as in Jonah is lost forever. But he does represent the picture, because as you've seen, God is almost like judging him, but not really, right? Because he's a believer, but he is disciplining him harshly, right? So it's almost a picture of the whole you know, the whole process of sin leading down to destruction, except that because Jonah is an actual believer, he doesn't get lost forever. He just goes into sort of an experience that is very infernal. Does that help? Yeah, I should have been more careful with my language on that, because I don't mean condemnation as in Romans condemnation. Thank you. I have a question here. It's probably not the easiest one. I don't know if you would... Well, I mean, in terms of discerning what is the Lord's discipline versus, and I may not have to say everything is under His hands and under His control, bad circumstances, you know, whatever it may be. I mean, you know, sometimes I think it's easy to jump to that conclusion of you're being disciplined to this, and I struggle with that so many times, the why question, you know, in terms of, so I don't know if you have any thoughts on that in terms of, you know, right, because, and obviously, I guess there would be some sense of maybe guilt or remorse or something that's going on, but, you know, And a lot of times in those times, you can almost feel like, you know, it's almost a difference between like, you know, sanctification versus discipline. And so these things will happen in your mind. You're sort of questioning, maybe you're going, is there something that I need, you know, discipline for versus just, um, you know, the process of being just sanctified. Yeah, I mean, discipline is sanctification. And you, I mean, for example, you think of David, you know, he commits this great sin, right? And God is going to, there's going to be consequences to that, and God completely forgives him of it. But he has to deal with the consequences for the rest of his life, right? Now, was God using those consequences to make him more like God? He was, so here you have a perfect combination of discipline and sanctification. It's almost like you cannot separate them, right? One is the other. Now, what helps in a situation where you're wondering, you know, have I sinned and am I undergoing discipline and I still need to repent but I don't know, right? I mean, At that point, there's a sense in which you have to trust in God's goodness and grace, right? That God is going to show you what it is that you need to be repenting of, and that you need to be praying and asking Him, and He will do it. And of course, at the same time, you're studying more and getting better at Scripture, so that you can determine and discern, okay, because, you know, the more you learn, and the more you grow in your sanctification, the better you get at pinpointing what a sin is and what a sin is not, right? So the better you get at that, the better you get at saying, you know what? I believe these are hard circumstances in my life that I'm going through. I know they're not for sin. And at the end of the day, whether they're for sin or not, again, all of it is used for holy growth and holiness. I hope that helps. I think this word Job could say, you know, or his friends would say it's because you've done something wrong, but he did well enough to discern it's not what it is, but. Yeah, and he does say, I'm a sinner, I've done this, this, and that, but I know this is not because I've sinned. Yeah, that's a good point. This is my bad student. I was thinking, because, Jonah disobeyed God. That's why his discipline came, where his discipline came from. And that might be what he's struggling with, too, maybe. Maybe it is a certain sin or something. I don't know what it is. But maybe, let's see. But Jonah, so in Jonah's case. Right, yeah. And he knew, I mean, he knew why these things were happening to him in that case. Well, nobody else? No other questions? Okay. Let's pray one more time. Father we do pray and thank you for the time that you've given us together in your Word. Thank you for your kindness. Thank you for the book of Jonah and how this man who was just like us learned about your loving kindness and your grace and he is a figure for us to emulate even in his imperfection, we can see his faith that we can emulate and follow. And we thank you for the fact that you've given us these sorts of books and you've been so kind to us to not leave us in the dark. We pray that you would bring us comfort and grace and that we would continue to grow and love one another in truth. In Christ's name, amen. All right, thank you, everyone.