I want the text to introduce itself to us, so I'll read the text, pray, and then we'll talk about what we read in this second chapter. So brothers and sisters, this is the Word of God. Jonah chapter 2, starting in the first verse. 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. Oh 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." Well, let's pray. Our Father in Heaven, we approach this text not as it is an ancient text, though it is. We don't come to Your Word with the expectation merely to gain information. that we come to Your Word that it might be what it already is, that it might pierce bone and marrow, that it might show itself in us to be a living Word. Father, we long that You would speak to us tonight. If You refuse to do so, Father, it would be better. It would be better that we did not come up at all. So speak to us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, when we looked at Jonah last, we looked at the first chapter, and you remember just how far the prophet fell. I mean, Jonah is not a picture of a faithful believer in that first chapter. He's running away. And you remember our comments in the first chapter, the very beginning when he's talking about fleeing the presence of God. He's fleeing the ordinances of the Gospel. He's trying to get away from God entirely. And we talked about how high-handed sin is historically dealt with in Scripture. You remember, you know, the man of God in 1 Kings. The prophet deliberately disobeyed God and the lion found him on the road and devoured him. Just as the old prophet had promised. But you remember Achan as well. High-handed sinner, caught in his sin, stoned to death with his family. You remember in our first chapter we talked about how that's the expectation that we should have of Jonah. But in verse 17 of chapter 1, all of that changes. The fish is the most unprecedented part of the story. Verse 17 should read, thus ended the life of Jonah. But it doesn't. Here we see the mercy of God. And with that in mind, as we think about verse 17 and how it's an emblem of divine grace to Jonah. We might expect then that chapter 2 is going to read something like Miriam's song. Remember when she comes out with her all of Israel out of the Red Sea, they have a great, great song. And all throughout the Psalter you have songs of deliverance, praising God for His mercy. And when you come to Jonah 2 and you read the words, you know, Jonah prayed to the Lord from his God, from the belly of the fish. We anticipate, don't we, that what's going to follow is just this long praise to God for His mercy. But as we read, you and I both saw that that's not what we find. that might be peculiar, that might leave a question mark, and I think it should pique our curiosity. And so tonight we're going to be examining Jonah's prayer from the belly of the fish. And we'll be asking that question, why this? Why this prayer at this moment? In order to answer that, I want us to look at verse 2, just briefly. Verse 2 holds out a parallel to us. And the parallel is going to somewhat summarize what's to follow. You see in the beginning, he says here, I called out to the Lord out of my distress. That's the context. Jonah is in the midst of distress. But that's not all that verse 2 contains. Look at the next few words. He says, and He answered me. We find that repeated in the next clause. He says, out of the belly of Sheol I cried, that's the context, then this, and you heard my voice. When we approach Jonah chapter 2, this pattern is going to recur over and over again. And we need to keep that in mind. That the Prophet is in the middle of a wrestling match, so to speak. There was a storm on the sea above, but now there's a storm within the soul of the prophet, and he's wrestling through it. In other words, what we find here is not a prophet that's running away from God, but a prophet who is wrestling with Him. And what emerges is not just, from verse 2, what emerges is not just the fact that He's wrestling, but did you catch those two final clauses? He answered me. He heard my voice. It's not that just Jonah is wrestling. There's more to it than that. This is an instance of genuine faith. Why do I say that? Well, I say that because genuine faith persists even when God seems to withdraw. Genuine faith persists even when God seems to withdraw. So part of me wants to close up the Bible and go home at this point, because that's basically all that you find in chapter 2. Just instance after instance of this simple fact. Jonah's faith remains. But it's a fight. It's a genuine fight. From verses 3 to 7, we have three particular ways in which Jonah's faith is put to the test. And we're going to look at each of those ways very briefly. But as we look at them, I want you to think not just about the prophet as he's wrestling. I want us to have the question, why does his faith remain? Why does the prophet's faith remain in light of all of these trials and all of these tests? So let's begin in verse 3. First of all, verses 3 and 4 hold out a picture of someone wrestling when the ordinary means of comfort are removed from him. It can go something like this. If you're looking at verse 3, you see the prophet describing a situation. And it's just description heaped upon description, all to the same effect. Jonah is in the sea. And that's a problem. He doesn't like being among the fishes. But, but it's not just because he's in the sea that this is a problem. Verse 4 tells us why the Prophet finds this to be a test. Do you see that? Look with me at verse 4. I am driven away from your sight. As we said in chapter 1, the Prophet knows that his God is omniscient and omnipresent. So what the prophet here is talking about is He has been taken away, driven away is the word. He's been driven away from the sight of God in the sense that He's been driven away from all of those things that the Lord had instituted to be comforts to Him. To remind Him of His covenant mercy. To remind Him of the redemption that He has in Christ. The prophet's away from all of that. All of it. The temptation to despair could run something like this, you know, Jonah, Jonah, why should you hope in God when He has removed you from those things which He instituted to bring comfort to His people? He's done it, Jonah. So why on earth do you think you can't have hope in this God? Yet I shall again look upon your holy temple." That's faith's reply. I shall again look upon your holy temple. What does that mean? In our English translations, this comes out as a definite. In the Hebrew though, it's not so definite. In fact, it should read, and Calvin helpfully points out that we should really see this as somebody saying, yet I hope to see again the temple of thy holiness. I hope to see again the temple of thy holiness. And so what faith is really saying is, you know, why? Why should I cast off hope when yet God will be reconciled to me if I'll come to Him? You see what faith is saying? He's saying, why should I despair when God is still a God of mercy? Though I'm separated from all of these means, though I don't have the benefit of the priestly benediction, though I don't have the benefit of the sacrifices which point me to Christ, yet I have this confidence that my God is a God of mercy, and if I turn to Him in faith, He will be merciful. But Jonah, why should you hope that He will be merciful when your life is in peril at every corner? You see that in verses 5 and 6. Again, you have the description of the context that the Prophet finds himself in, but every single one of these descriptors are only pointing to the fact that the Prophet, at every single moment, is faced with death. Every moment. He can't get away from it. He's not on the brink of death. He's not, you know, just on the edge, looking over. But he's very much in the context. If ever there was somebody in the valley of the shadow of death, certainly the prophet found himself there. Mountain after mountain showed itself to be only there for His demise. So Jonah, you're telling me that you expect that God will still be merciful, and yet this is where you're at? And He's put you here. And you've admitted that. You're the one who says He's driven you away from His sight. Are you really going to continue to hope in the mercy of God? Listen to the words of the prophet here. Yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. You see what Jonah's doing. It's staggering actually, I think. The Prophet is saying, yeah, I'm here. At every moment, I'm confronted with the fact that I'm on the edge of death. But God has been merciful to me. And if He kills me now, He's still been merciful. I'm still a debtor to free mercy. The God who was merciful to me before, in verse 17, He can still be merciful. He can be merciful in ways I can't imagine. But even if He chooses not to spare my life, the mercy of God is not tainted. I'm still a debtor to His free grace. Okay Jonah, that's all well and good. But you're crying out from the fish. And you're expecting to be heard. So you're expecting that this God of mercy who's placed you away from the means of comfort, who's placed you in the midst of death, really. You're expecting that this God is going to hear your prayers when your heart is cold and lifeless. That's what we find number seven. In our translation it says, when my life was fainting away. Probably it could be translated, when my soul was fainting away. The prophet is not possessed of any great soul strength here. And a temptation comes to him and it asks, listen, Jonah, why should he hear your cries when the heart that makes them is so weak? And so think. Why? I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Do you see that? Do you see where the prophet's faith is now fixated? In one sense, you can say that all the preceding verses have been just teasing us out to this single moment. I remember the Lord, but He doesn't just remember the Lord. You remember in Psalm 42, that can sometimes strike terror, and it can sometimes bring the soul down, but no, that's not what happens here with the prophet. In here, he says, I am confident, as I remember the Lord, that He's heard me. That He's heard me. And he uses the language of Temple, and that's very important, I believe. Because he's not talking about the Temple in Jerusalem. He's talking about His gracious presence. He's talking about a place where at this present time, the Son of God sits and intercedes for His people. That's what Jonah is fixated on. Judah's faith finds Christ there, and he fixates on it, and he says, though my heart is cold, though my prayers are weak, yet my Savior is strong. My Savior is strong. We have a broad-shouldered Christ who can take even our coldest prayers and bring them to His Father. Now, if you're like me, as we've gone through this wrestling match between Jonah and temptation to despair, we should see parallels in our own lives pretty easily, I think. The Christian experience is this kind of thing, sometimes frequently, sometimes infrequently. But as we sang from Psalm 42, it is something that was not peculiar to Jonah. It's that kind of thing where God doesn't seem distant only, but He seems angry. And when you go to Him in prayer, all that you can imagine is His frowning countenance. And whenever you go to bed at night, you have this one fearful thing, and there's no comfort from it. And then you have a nightmare about that same thing, and then you wake up early in the morning at 3am, and you bring the thing before God, and there's silence. You just don't seem. To find a way out of that. You're stuck in this one place and you can be there for years. William Kalper, a very famous hymnist, he was in such a position for nine years. Day in and day out. He was a bastion of orthodoxy in his day. And yet, this is how. This is how he lived. And from time to time the Christian will see this. And often when the Christian goes through this, faith just doesn't look as resilient as it does in Jonah. Sometimes it looks more like it's floundering than that it's prevailing. In the heat of the moment, faith just doesn't seem to be strong enough to pierce through the temptations to despair. And for a time, the Christian can imagine that there is to be no help from God. So as I asked you at the beginning, the question remains, how do the Prophet's faith stand? That's not just a question for Jonah, that's a question for us. Was Jonah just some kind of superhero of the faith? You know, somehow endowed from birth with this kind of faith? Or was there something else at work? If we think that Jonah was just some kind of superhero, he'd tap us on the shoulder and probably do a bit more. But he'd point us to verse 8. And he'd say, you've misunderstood me. You've misunderstood the whole section. As I'm in the fish, wrestling with God, it's not because my faith is strong. Listen, look at the one to whom my faith looks. Look at verse 8. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. My faith is not fixated on something that is weak, something that is impersonal, and something that cannot save. My faith is turned to the living God. The Living God who can save. He's not a dumb idol. But His arm is strong and mighty to save. And it's fixated there. Jonah would tell us to look to the object of his faith. And there you will find a partial answer to why it stood. But there's another aspect too. I want you to look at this with me in verse 9. He says, but I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord. He contrasts himself with the idolater, but the last sentence, that last sentence is the apex, the zenith, I believe, of all that has gone before. Not only is the Lord the object of his faith, But the Lord is the author of it as well. We can think about this in two ways. The first way is that God has authored the very redemption, the gospel, which we believe in. And so Jonah turns to the truths of the gospel which he knew. And he takes them as they are. Existentially meaningful truths. And he says, these are mine and I won't let go. Though every single thing around me cries out, God will not be merciful to me, yet I will hold fast to this, that Jesus Christ will come in due time, that He will die for sinners such as myself, that He will be raised again, and I already am receiving the benefits of that resurrection in my regeneration, and even in the faith which I now possess. I look to those truths, those ancient truths of the gospel. And brothers and sisters, when the Christian goes through this kind of thing, those truths that we've memorized in catechism, those truths which are expressed in our confession, those truths do not remain just on the printed page. They become so much a part of us. They touch the bedrock of who we are. And for Jonah, he found that. Salvation is of the Lord gripped him and sustained him. But the other way that salvation is of the Lord may be understood is that the Lord is the one who applies salvation as well. He's the author of Jonah's faith. There's a helpful illustration from the Pilgrim's Progress and Jeff hasn't paid me to bring it up, but as Pilgrim is going through the Interpreter's House, you remember that he's shown various signs. And he comes toward the end of his tour of the Interpreter's House and he's taken to a fireplace. And this fireplace has a fire in it, but there's a man on the other side of the fireplace, and the man has a bucket of water, and he's vigorously pouring water into the fire. And the pilgrim turns around and he says to the interpreter, he said, I don't understand this, what is this? And the interpreter turns around and he says, this is the devil. Pouring out his water to douse the graces of Christians. To dampen their faith. But the fire still burns. The fire still burns. And at this point, you know, as you're reading the Pilgrim's Progress, a smile comes across your face, because you almost know what Bunyan's going to do next. He says, well, let me take you behind the fireplace. And wouldn't you know that there's a man on the other end of the fireplace, and he also has a bucket, and he's pouring vigorously, just as vigorously, into the fire. And as he pours into the fire, the flame grows. And listen to the words of the interpreter. Pilgrim asks, who is this? And he says, this is Christ, who continually with the oil of His grace, maintains the work already begun in the heart, by the means of which, notwithstanding what the devil can do, the souls of His people prove gracious still. And in that thou sawest that the man stood behind the wall to maintain the fire. That is to teach thee that it is hard for the tempted to see how this work of grace is maintained in the soul." Those are really sweet words in the beginning, but when you get to the end, it's sobering. Because you don't always see Christ doing that. When you're in the midst of that kind of temptation, when you're in the midst of that battle, the last thing that you think is that Christ is holding you in the arms of His mercy and upholding you, even when your heart feels cold, even when your life seems imperiled, and even when you're separated from those ordinary means that were supposed to give you comfort. But if Christ isn't seen, how do we know that He's there? Right? If I don't sense that He's there, how do I know that Christ is behind me and upholding me and sustaining me through it all? Listen to these words from Rutherford. Christ is now obliged that He fulfill the covenant and make good both your part and His part." And at that point we all want to say a hearty Amen. This is the kind of thing that we all know and love. This is simple covenant theology. But listen to what he says next. The debt of faith and obedience that we are owing to God now, that is as Christians, is not our debt, but Christ's. And He is cautioner for us. Do you see what He's saying? He's saying, why does your faith need to be sustained by Christ? It's because Christ has covenanted that it would be His debt. The obligation would fall on Him to sustain your faith. You can imagine the Father turning to the Son and saying, Who will strengthen the faith of this one in the midst of these trials? They can't do it. They can't. So who will stand for them? And our broad-shouldered Christ turns around and He says, Let the debt fall on Me, Father. Be pleased to try their faith, and I will maintain it. Send temptation. Send all of those frowns from heaven that you may. But I will cause them to look again. Because the debt is Mine. I will uphold them. I will uphold their faith. So why did Jonah's faith stand? Jonah is going to turn around and tell us it's because of this. Salvation is of the Lord. When he had his trials come upon him that would have told him that God was his enemy. From the belly of the whale, Jonah's faith looked again to Christ, sustained by Christ, and was pleased to continue to look. and was determined to look again. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for Jesus Christ. We thank you for the fact that He is that He has not just accomplished redemption in the past, that He will not just consummate it in the future, but that He is presently sustaining that which He has begun. We thank You that though He is hidden at times, the oil of His grace is of endless supply. Thank You for Him. In Jesus' name, Amen.