Welcome to Unveiled Faces, a Redeemer Presbyterian Church podcast. Please enjoy our feature presentation. Last time I had a chance to worship with you all, we looked at the first chapter of Jonah, and so I figured this morning we'll just pick up where we left off and we'll consider Jonah's prayer, which is found in chapter two. If you're not familiar with the story of Jonah, and if perhaps it's been some time since you've read it, it would be helpful to place this prayer in a bit of context, since really it is one story and one narrative that's given to us here in this book. So let's begin, just for the sake of refreshing our memories, hearing God's word, beginning in chapter one. Now, the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, arise. Go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. The mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his God, and they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. So the captain came and said to him, what do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your God. Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not perish. And they said to one another, come, let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us. So they cast lots. And the lot fell on Jonah. And they said to him, tell us, on whose account this evil has come upon us? What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you? And he said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. And the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, what is this that you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. And then they said to him, what shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us? For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. He said to them, pick me up and hurl me into the sea, then the sea will quiet down for you. For I know that it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you. Nevertheless, the men rode hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore they called out to the Lord, O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you. So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish, saying, I called out to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods 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. And 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 in 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. Let's look to the Lord and ask for his help as we have just heard his voice. Father, we look to you this morning as we have been called and invited to come and to worship, as we have heard your law and what you required of us, as we have heard the announcement of the pardon for sin given in your Son upon the cross. As we have considered our lives intertwined with one another and prayed and sought you, as we have sought to give out of what you have provided for us, Lord, our desire now, as we are your people and our great need, is that you would cause your voice not only to be heard in our ears, but that you would cause your word to take effect within our very souls. Lord, your voice is the one that created causes all the earth to spring forth. Your voice commands and creation obeys. And yet, Lord, we see within our own lives that even when we hear your voice, we struggle, we squirm. Lord, even we seek to drown out your voice. And so we ask that you would be merciful to us this morning, that you would cause by your Holy Spirit that we would hear, that we would receive, and that in that hearing and receiving, you would cause much fruit to be born from our lives. Show us Christ this morning and the greatness of his obedience and how that great obedience is a great blessing to us, we pray in his name, amen. When reading through the Book of Jonah, it's quite easy to come away with more questions than answers, really. After all, it does not appear to be this feel-good story of the year where everything ties up nicely with a bow and everything just comes to this great resolution. If you're familiar with the book of Jonah, what you hear in these four chapters can understandably cause you to really scratch your head at what you just heard or what you just read, even from just in the first chapter. How is it that a prophet of God can flee from God? How is it that someone who knows the gracious character of God could be angry when God extends this gracious mercy to others. How is it that a man could offer such a scripture-filled, heartfelt, orthodox prayer in one moment, and then in the next moment behave in such a disjointed and distorted way in the very next? Well, I think if we're brave enough to be honest with ourselves, this sort of thing, unfortunately, happens quite often in our own lives. The sort of head-scratching responses to disjointed living from what we pray and what we practice, what we say and how we respond, it happens more often in our own lives than we probably would like to admit. And I think that's why John Calvin was on to something when he said, a perfect faith is nowhere to be found, therefore it follows that we are all partly unbelievers. There is some portion of our lives in some ways that we are all not believing God for who he is or what he has said. and this sort of disjointing between what we profess and practice, what we pray and do, it always shows up within our lives and reveals to us, I actually don't believe God to the extent that I think I do. It's tempting to read the lives of the prophets and other biblical characters and assume they were fully sanctified and faultless beings. And we've been given this book of noble characters to admire and to see. But I think the book of Jonah would warn us otherwise. Jonah, like every single other believer, is a man in process. I think therefore the prayer in chapter two ought to be read for what it is, but it also needs to be placed within the context of the other three chapters and really the redemptive arc of scripture. Because what we have before us this morning is the prayer of a man who's been brought to the end of himself. It's filled with the language that you might expect to hear when a man runs from God, when he's been thrown overboard, when he's been swallowed up into the deep. But within this count, what I want us to see this morning is that there is a tremendous message of hope. The sort of announcement that can transform even the most dire of circumstances is given to us here in Jonah chapter two. And so what I wanna do is spend the majority of our time just looking at the substance of this prayer. What is it that Jonah's praying? But then we also need to recognize and deal with the real surprise in what Jonah's praying, and then we'll look finally at the significance of why this is here. So the substance of the prayer, the really ironic surprise in his prayer, and the substance. or excuse me, the significance. Let's consider just the prayer itself and what is given here. And as it was just read and as you just heard it, I wonder if parts of it sounded familiar to you. I wonder as you heard Jonah's prayer, if there were some sort of allusions or even specific phrases that maybe sounded like an echo of something that, I didn't know that was in Jonah, I thought I've read that somewhere else, I thought I've heard that somewhere else. And you would be right. because much of Jonah's prayer is really just lifted from the language of the Psalms. He's not quoting any one particular Psalm, but he's filling his prayer with allusions and references to many Psalms. There may be more, but I count Psalm 3, 5, 16, 18, 31, Psalm 42, 50, 65, 88, and 120. And just a few verses. Literally, the themes of life and death and despair and hope and judgment, they all flow through Jonah's mouth as they've come to him in God's words. And it's for good reason then, isn't it? that the Psalms have been called the anatomy of the soul. Because as you read through the Psalms, you find the very displaying of the, excuse me, the various portions of our soul and the very anatomy of what we experience as image bearers of God. And so this is put on full display in Jonah's prayer. Consider, first of all, in verse two, as he calls out to God. It lays out really the simple theme of this prayer. If you wondered where this prayer is going, it's found there in verse two with this best summarized by, I called and Yahweh answered. The parallel lines of thought here testify of the same experience. I was in distress and the Lord answered. I was in the belly of Sheol and he heard my voice. I called and Yahweh answered. What this call is, it's a testimony of a man who's in distress, but he's ultimately delivered. He's saying, I want to tell you what happened, but ultimately what happened here. God was not silent. It's a man who was saying, I was at the lowest point in the midst of the most dire circumstances, really at the very depths of the grave, and yet God listened to my prayer. Okay Jonah, what just sort of distress were you in? Well, he unfolds the crisis in verses three through six. After calling out to God, he says, this is really the crisis of my experience. And he makes it clear this was a very dire situation. Did you notice some of the images, some of the descriptive language he uses? He speaks of being cast into the deep. He speaks of the floods. He says the waters were closing in, the deep surrounded him, he's entangled in seaweed, he's sinking down to the gates of death. He didn't just say I was having a hard day. He's very descriptive, filled with all the images of scripture to describe just exactly what this crisis was. As good as that is, be that as it may, let's ask a really important question. How did Jonah get here? How did he end up in such a crisis? Remember, this is not the prayer of a persecuted man who stood up for righteousness and then was brought low through the scorn of others. This was brought on by disobedience. This crisis was brought on because of rebellion. And really, I think this is one of the most painful sorts of distress because Jonah knew he got what he wanted. If you remember back to chapter one, it says in verse three that Jonah rose to flee from the presence of the Lord. And then what does he say in verse four of his prayer? He laments because he fears he's been driven away from the sight of God. He got exactly what he wanted. I want to escape where God would be known, where he would be worshiped. I don't want to see any synagogue. I don't want to hear any prayers. I don't want to hear any reading of the law. I am going to flee to Tarshish. And here in the belly of the fish, his great crisis is that I think I've actually got what I wanted. I've been cast out. I'm the furthest from the presence of God that I could ever imagine. And don't just think this has come upon him by supposed chance. All this has come upon him by the Lord's hand. Look at verse three, he says, you cast me into the deep. And then the next verse, these aren't just waves, he says, these are your waves. Here's the crisis. Sin has consequences. Our rebellion is costly. It's not just some random thing that shows up here in Jonah. Is this not the repeated refrain of scripture? Sin has consequences. Rebellion is costly. Sin equals death. Sin breaks fellowship. Sin brings this curse of thorns and striving and this gnawing sense of futility of everything that we put our hands to. The rejection of God and of his ways, it is a life of distress. It is being driven from God's sight and feeling the waves and the billows crashing upon you that I am cut off. That I can't see God and I don't think he can see me. I think I'm done for. That is the experience and the result of sin. Our catechism asks us, what is the misery of that estate wherein to man fell? All mankind by their fall lost communication with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever. The whole crisis of humanity is that God has spoken, but we have rejected his words, just like Jonah. We are those who suppress the truth about God, that we seek to harden our hearts against him. We flee, and like Jonah, we're attempting to escape the very presence of God. That's what sin does to the human heart. And whether we realize it or not, Jonah's plight is our own. What Jonah describes here is not just an isolated incident of some Hebrew man in the belly of a fish. What is the cost of all rebellion? What is the wages of our sin? We are cast into the deep. We are driven from God's presence. We are plunged down into the depths of the grave. That is what sin does. But Jonah doesn't end here. His prayer doesn't end in crisis because his experience, it's set off by one small three-letter word, so small that you might overlook it. It's in verse six, yet. It's a word of contrast, isn't it? It's our clue as readers and hearers that, okay, everything that has come before and what Jonah has just said is gonna stand in contrast to what he's going to say right now. All this is true, yet, you brought my life up from the pit. Yahweh, my God. Do you see the progression of Jonah's thinking here? He knew he was separated from God by his rebellion. He knew that the Lord had driven him away and brought these waves upon him. But he also knew something about the same God that here, it gave him reason to hope. Yeah, Jonah had deserted God, but given the fact that he had not drowned, it proved that God had not ultimately deserted him. In that moment, he recognized, I should be dead, but here I am, somehow, in the belly of a great fish. The fact that I am not dead, the fact that I am still alive, to me, is evidence that God is merciful, because here I am. What a gracious reminder for us this morning. Are you running from God? perhaps even drowning in the consequences of your own sin that maybe nobody knows about but in the wrestling of your own heart and mind. The fact that you're not dead, the fact that there's breath in your lungs this morning, that you are hearing the message of the scripture is evidence that there is yet hope in God because he is merciful. because you are hearing the very testimony of this man Jonah and God's desire to save. Now how can a man make such a claim as that? Well, because within Jonah's prayer in the last few verses in seven to nine, there is this strong sense of confidence. He's not only called out to his God, he's not only proclaimed his Christ, he ends in this bedrock of confidence. Verses seven through nine. And what is it that could cause a man to have such confidence? What is it, honestly, that could cause someone to be in the belly of a fish with seaweed wrapped around their head and say, I have hope? What is it that causes a man to say, I'm confident in these two things. Well, the basis of Jonah's hope is really founded on two principles that are found in verse seven through nine. His confidence is in the despair of idolatry. This much I know is true, idolatry is absolute despair. And at the same time, he says, and the joy of salvation. In his prayer and in his confidence, he says, idolatry and joy of salvation. Because of these two things, I am confident. What do I mean? Well, verse eight, he talks about the despair of idolatry. The constant danger of idolatry among God's people is a theme that runs throughout the scriptures. It's not just here in Jonah. In fact, it's not even just in the Old Testament. If you read the Apostle John, he has some concerns about idolatry as well. And so you read this and you may scratch your head going, what's the concern with idolatry? We must be clear that it's not simply the temptation to pay homage to wooden structures that plague us, but the posture of our heart. The real danger is the object of our affections. The very first commandment is I am your God, have no other gods before me. There's no third option between those two statements. I am your God, have no other gods before me. Paul would write in Romans 1.25 that we all worship and serve either God or some other created thing. What he's saying is it's impossible to worship nothing. We are either worshiping God or some other created thing. So simply put, idolatry is seeking to replace God. Idolatry is looking to someone or something else to deliver only what God can ultimately provide. And we're tempted to do this daily. It's the mistaken belief that this, right here, this person, this circumstance, this opportunity, this situation, This experience, this right here, will secure my fears. This will be the thing that will bring comfort to my affliction. This will be the thing that provide what I lack and satisfy me as a human. This will do it. And that this is not the triune God. Think of all the ways that you and I tend and keep our idols just like a vegetable garden. Think of all the ways in our lives that we trust in created things to rescue us from all of our various nightmare scenarios as we seek comfort or approval or control or power. And we tend those certain things that will bring to us some fruit or some hope of those deliverances. And what was Jonah's great confidence in regards to all of this? Those who pay regard to useless idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. Meaning, When we pay regard, when we tend and keep to the idols that we've replaced God with in some way, we are forsaking the very thing that we need. What we ultimately need is God's mercy. But when we forsake Him and look to these various idols, we're actually turning our back on the very thing that we need, which is the mercy of God for us in Christ. Now, don't misunderstand, the concerns for safety, the longings for comfort, the need to be satisfied, those are legitimate concerns. They're the very need of every created being. But the offense and the folly of idolatry is believing that something other than God will be able to deliver those needs. Jonah was confident. He knew of the foolishness of idolatry. And the flip side of that His confidence was built upon the joy in salvation. I'm so confident that idolatry is just absolutely forsaking what we need, and the flip side of the coin is I am absolutely confident that salvation belongs to the Lord, and there's great joy in that. That's what he says in verse nine. Now the narrative of the story is inescapably clear. Jonah is saved in spite of his sinful rebellion. not because of his faithful obedience. Salvation is of the Lord because only the Lord can overcome the evils of hard hearts, the stubbornness of our will, the corruption of our nature. God appointed a fish to rescue Jonah from death and drowning, and then God appointed the same fish to deliver Jonah to dry ground. The entire experience was the Lord's doing. And so in reality, this provokes Jonah to say, salvation is of the Lord. I thought I was drowning, going down to the depths of the sea. And yet the Lord preserved me, he brings me to dry land. Salvation is of the Lord. Now, this has been the testimony of every believer throughout all of history. Circumstances vary from person to person just in how this came about, but the storyline amongst every Christian is essentially the same. Salvation is of the Lord. The means by which how that came to be and the people involved or the circumstances or the point at your particular life may vary amongst brothers and sisters, but the same story as you begin to hear it, it sounds very familiar. The Lord saved you, huh? Yeah, salvation's of the Lord. Does your own testimony bear this out? Can you say amen to what Jonah says right here? How did you come to trust in Christ? Take time this afternoon, I would encourage you, so that your children know how you came to faith. Just to remind them of the story, even the particular details, the irony of what happened, the grace of God to provide this or that, the timing of life. You can around the table say, salvation's of the Lord. and encourage one another with that. Share with a friend over lunch, or listen to the stories that are told, and listen for that plot line. You'll hear the details, and the various character development, and the twists and turns, but it's gonna be the same plot line. Salvation is of the Lord, and Jonah was absolutely confident of that. The substance of his prayer is there for us, but even in reading all of that, we have to acknowledge something. we have to acknowledge that there is an irony to what he prays, something actually very surprising. There is this great surprise to read the Prayer of Jonah within the context of the Book of Jonah. Because if you're familiar with this story, this is the point that you begin to scratch your head. How does a man pray a prayer like this, so full of themes of mercy, then go on to be enraged when mercy is given to those who are in need. Meaning, how can somebody pray like this and act like this? How do we make sense of Jonah chapter two in light of Jonah chapter four? Do you remember what Jonah says in chapter four? Turn over a chapter just to refresh our memory. It's actually at the end of chapter three, verse 10. When God saw what Nineveh did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he said he would do to them, and he did not do it. Verse one, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, oh Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, oh Lord, please take my life for me, for it's better for me to die than to live. This is the surprising irony of Jonah's prayer. It's this example of precise orthodoxy followed by absolute failure of orthopraxy. And it calls to mind Christ's words in Mark 7, where he looked at the Pharisees and he said, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Jonah speaks as a man who's been driven from God's sight, cast down into the deep, but brought up from the pit. And Jonah announces with great bravado, while some may tend to their idols, he will lift up his voice of thanksgiving and praise to his God. This is a man who relishes in the grace of God for his own sin, but we find he is enraged at the thought of sinners getting the same treatment. So here's the question. How could a worshiper of Yahweh be this disjointed in their profession and their practice? How could you? How could I? How often do our own lives reflect the same distortion? In the fact that we are all Jonah because grace is always offensive to self-righteousness. How often do I cling to the mercy of God and rejoice to hear in the mercy of God for sinners and I scowl at the immaturity and the foolishness of other Christians? Do we not, in our smugness, expose our disjointed assumptions? Jesus' parable in Luke 18 hits a little too close to home, more often than we like to admit. In Luke 18, verse nine, he also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves and that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. The surprising irony of Jonah's prayer is that it is filled with these precise, theologically true statements that every single one of us would say amen to. But it's graphically disjointed from his living. Does this not serve as a warning to us in our own lives? That we may have minds and libraries and conversations and prayers filled with precise, theologically true statements, but there is a present danger for the people of God to be content with precision in what we say and absolute dislocation from how we live. And the scriptures continually plead with us, warning us, reminding us that those two things are to be wed, not divorced. there is the staggering irony that is here for us, and as staggering and surprising as this is within Jonah's life, I think we would be negligent if we did not look further to the most important aspect of Jonah's prayer, the significance of what he prays. When we read Jonah chapter two, We're not meant to end here. We're not meant to just be fixated upon his aquatic adventures. We're meant to be propelled forward actually into the New Testament. This story is not complete and it does not make sense and it does not land upon our lives as the covenant people of God unless we read it in light of Christ. Turn over just briefly to Matthew chapter 12. Matthew chapter 12 kind of becomes the flashlight by which we can shine upon the text of Jonah to helpfully understand and read it in a way that would be helpful to us and find its ultimate significance. Matthew chapter 12, verse 38. We read there that some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, being Jesus, saying, Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you But he answered them, an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it 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 real significance of Jonah's prayer is that it shows us the greatness of Christ. But greater in what sense? Because he goes on to say, 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. How is Christ greater than Jonah? Well, in a myriad of ways, but two that are absolute importance that we must be clear on. First, Christ's death is a much greater death than Jonah. The language of Jonah, it reflects the true experience of our Lord. Christ knows, remember Jonah's prayer, Christ knows what it is to be driven away from the sight of the Father. Verse four, Christ was forsaken by his Father. The waters of death took Christ's life because God did not spare his son as Jonah was spared. Why did Christ descend into death? Well, unlike Jonah, it was not for anything that he had done. Jesus was the faithful prophet. He was the holy priest. He was the righteous king, and yet he descends into death for the sake of his people. His death, it was a physical death, but it was so much more than that. It was a judgment. The Son was forsaken, cursed, scorned. He bore the judgment of His people through His own death. This is what Peter connects for us in his epistle in chapter 3. Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God. It's not just a statement of doctrine, it's a statement of purpose, that God might bring his people to himself, the righteous for the unrighteous. When we think about Jonah and his death, we're propelled forward to think about Christ and that God sent his son into the deep, that he might bring his people to be with himself. Christ's death is not only a greater death than Jonah's, but Christ's resurrection is a greater resurrection. I think it'd be fair to say if you were there in Nineveh on the ship and then there on the dry land, you would say Jonah's as good as dead. If you were one of the sailors on the boat and you saw him sink down into the blackness of the water, you would have concluded, I didn't see him breathe his last, but he's as good as dead. And if you would have been one of those sailors then on the shores and saw Jonah just roll out onto the sand, you would have said, Jonah, we thought you were dead. You're alive. His salvation from the deep and the deliverance to dry land was as if a man came back to life. But this is merely the shadow of the true and the greater resurrection. This greater resurrection is the message of first importance, isn't it? What does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 15? For I delivered to you, as of first importance, what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. And he goes on in verse 20. Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, By a man has come also the resurrection of the dead, for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all men be made alive. Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so was the Son of Man in the heart of the earth. Something greater than Jonah has come. For in the resurrection of Christ, we have the assurance of sins forgiven, the absolute removal of our guilt and hope in the face of death. Jonah cannot give us that, but something greater than Jonah has come. So yeah, Jonah could rightfully say salvation is of the Lord because Jesus accomplished the salvation that sinners cry out for. Salvation is of the Lord. So stepping back for just a minute, maybe the irony and the surprise of Jonah's life here, maybe it isn't that foreign at all. Maybe it's actually more familiar than we absolutely recognize. Because we are the rebels who squirm and shift in our seats when the word of God comes to us. We are the ones who, when we hear his voice, we are the ones who often seek to suppress what that truth reveals. But what Jonah proclaims to us in consistency with the entire word of God is that God is greater than unbelief, and God's grace abounds even in the immensity of our sin and hardness of heart. And so when we read this book and when we hear of Jonah's prayer, we're meant to look at ourselves. We are meant to see ourselves, to see the same thoughts, to see the same foolishness, to see the same sin that is splayed out for us on the pages of scripture. And then in seeing that, we're meant to look to Christ. Not just to see ourselves and to whip ourselves and thinking I am such a sinner, we are meant to see ourselves in full display as we are, but then turn and to see Christ in all that he is. That is the purpose of the scriptures. That's the purpose of Jonah. I am the rebel that deserves death. I am the hard-hearted one that deserves to be cast into the deep, but Christ descended into death that I might live. Like Jonah. You may have pulled the world down on your own head through your own sin, through your own foolishness. You may be drowning in the consequences of your own rebellion and feeling just the absolute immensity of the weight of your own sin, but the book of Jonah calls out to you, testifying to you that there is hope even in the midst of that kind of darkness. for something greater than Jonah has come. Christ descended into death and was raised up from the grave in order to fully pay the judgment that sin deserves, the sin of his people. The innocent one died so that the guilty go free. And like Jonah, you may feel that you are driven away from the presence of God. That sense of fellowship being cut off from the joy of gathering with God's people, the joy of his presence. And again, the book of Jonah cries out to us testifying that there is hope even in the midst of those kind of painful circumstances. Christ was forsaken so that his people might never be. That is a great truth and a great promise. Height nor depth, nor anything else will be able to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Because something greater than Jonah has come. And so it's for good reason that when we sing man of sorrows, what a name. For the son of God who came, ruined sinners to proclaim. And we all love that last verse, hallelujah, what a savior. Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah, what a savior. As we read the book of Jonah, we're meant to hear the testimony of a man who sought to run from God. We're meant to see that testimony sound strangely familiar to our own, and ultimately we are meant to hear the testimony of the gospel that says Christ comes to pursue his own, to bring them to himself by his own death. And when we read the scriptures in those light, we come to the same place saying, hallelujah, what a savior we've been given. Let's look to him. This has been a presentation of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. For more resources and information, please stop by our website at visitredeemer.org. All material herewithin, unless otherwise noted. Copyright Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Elk Grove, California. Music furnished by Nathan Clark George. Available at nathanclarkgeorge.com.