So we are encouraged to have a health check-up, aren't we? There are constantly advertisements encouraging us to lift the phone, don't be ashamed for the 40 plus people. You need to get your health checked out, you need to get your kidneys analysed, you need to have your weight looked at, you need to have your heart and your lungs tested, your cholesterol has to be assessed, your glucose levels have to be investigated. We are encouraged to go down to our local medical centre and have a physical health check-up and it is important for us to do this. We are embodied people and it is important for us to look after our physical aspect of ourselves. We're coming today to think of that other dimension to our being, to our spiritual dimension, and thinking today of a spiritual health check as we study together this second chapter of the book of Jonah. The second chapter is fascinating and commentators have poured over the analysis of this song, this poem by Jonah, this prayer which he uttered from the belly of the big fish. Douglas Stewart has argued convincingly that the five elements of a thanksgiving song are found in this prayer of Jonah. There's the situation, there's then the suffering described, there is the prayer for deliverance, there is the deliverance, and then there is his testimony of thankfulness for what has happened. Here is a thanksgiving song, full of gratitude to God, a description of his dealings with his servant, but a wonderful rescue that ensues. This concept of drowning, which we find in this song and prayer of Jonah, is one which was real for him, literal for him, but perhaps resonates with you. You at times in your life have felt you were drowning. That life and its problems were rising and overwhelming you and that you were sinking underneath them. And that this picture of drowning connects with your life and experience. And in the book of Psalms, it is often used to describe the sinking nature, the hopelessness that can fill our hearts. The inability to handle life's changing, problematic circumstances. Here's Jonah, and he's going under, and maybe you've felt you're going under, and here he prays to God in that circumstance that's overwhelming him. So this poem brought out very clearly in the ESV, this song, this prayer, different from the narrative style, different from the prose style. It's a change, isn't it? From the prose to the poetry. And that in itself buttresses the whole concept that's going on in Jonah's experience. Just as the style changes, so Jonah changes. There's a change in him reflected in the change of the style of the book. And it's that change that we want to study today. What did he change into? What is this metamorphosis in his life and character? What is he doing now in this chapter that he wasn't doing before? What's exemplary in Jonah's life that we are to latch onto and to follow? And he provides for us a checklist of a healthy Christian. We utilize prayer. The healthy Christian utilizes prayer. Verse one, then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. What a statement that is. And the first word is significant. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. He is a prophet, but he hadn't been living like a prophet. He hadn't been praying. There were many times in his experience over the past number of days that he should have prayed, that he was exhorted to pray. You remember when the captain of the ship came to him and woke him from his slumbers and told him, you need to get up and pray. Jonah couldn't pray. Jonah didn't pray. You remember when he saw his fellow sailors throwing stuff all over the side of the ship, precious cargo that they wanted rid of so that the ship would remain afloat? He saw them pleading with their false gods and Jonah knew that they were wrong and that he was in contact with the true and living God, but still he didn't pray. What a moment this is. What a change, what a shift in his life. Then Jonah prayed. The healthy Christian uses prayer. He prays, verse number one says, from the belly of the fish. But it's not the first prayer that he offered, is it? He tells us in verse two, he says, Previously, I called to the Lord in my distress. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried and you heard my voice. This is a prayer of thankfulness, a prayer of gratitude for a previous prayer that had been answered. As he sunk down, as the darkness seemed to cloud in around his mind and his eyes and unconsciousness seemed to be gripping into his inner being, then he prayed. He called out to the Lord the belly of the place of the departed Sheol. He was drawing near. He didn't die, but he felt as if he was going to die by drowning. He was so close to the edge of his life. He prayed then. Now he prays again. He comes to God. Verse number seven, when my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. Perhaps he recalled in that moment the words of Solomon when Solomon dedicated the temple to God, that Solomon desired that in that place where God would dwell in a special way, the temple, that he would hear the prayers of his people. And Jonah, deep down in the ocean, prays, and his prayer is heard. Here is one mark of a healthy Christian, isn't it? That we use prayer. And what was it that made him pray the second time? What was it that encouraged him to go on praying to his God? It was that he was heard the first time, verse two. He answered me. You heard my voice. Prayer, he realized, works. Prayer, he recognized as effective. This is not a vain or empty thing to do. God in heaven sent this fish and swallowed me up. He has answered and heard my prayer. And so he prays again in chapter two and verse one. Answered prayer. encourages him to pray again. So do you pray? Well, you might say, well, isn't that an offensive question you're asking in the congregation today? There are members here who are 60 or 70 years Christians and you're asking us, do you use prayer in your life? Well, just think of who we're studying here. Here's Jonah, a prophet of God. But up until this point, in the last few months and weeks of his life, he was prayerless. So do you pray? Are you using prayer in your life? Let this passage encourage us that prayer works. Prayer is effective. We need your prayers. We want your prayers. We muse in scripture. This prayer of Jonah is remarkable for its references to different parts of the Old Testament, especially the book of Psalms. Here is this man and he comes near the end of his life, he's drawing into the belly of Sheol, the text is, the place of the departed, and in that moment his mind is concentrating and grasping on to what is lasting and significant as any of us would do. What is it that he holds on to in these moments when he feels his mortality? It's the promises of God's word. The verses he'd learned as a whippersnapper at his mother's knee running around the synagogue of his vicinity. Here he was and his mind in these moments of fragility latches on to the words of God. Now, Dick Wilson, the former professor in Westminster Seminary, he claims that there's only two references to the Old Testament in Jonah's prayer here, and there are two clear ones. Verse 8, the phrase, vain idols, is only found here, and in Psalm 31, verse 6, from which Jonah seemed to lift it. The four Hebrew words in verse number three, all your waves and your billows go over me, are only found here and in Psalm 42, verse seven. Those are the clear references to the Old Testament that Jonah makes here. But throughout this prayer, there are allusions, there are echoes of phrases that we find right throughout the Old Testament. Here's a man. seeked in the Bible, then this moment of need, this moment of weakness, where does his mind go to as he pleads before God? It muses on Scripture. We remember Christ at the cross, don't we? That supreme example of this. Calling out again and again in those seven sayings that we hear from the cross, citing Old Testament scripture there in this moment of redemption and love and weakness, Jesus' mind is resting in the word of God. The prayer of Hannah, the prayer of Mary, saturated in Old Testament concepts and phraseology. And a key factor in our spiritual growth and development is meditating on God's Word. Not just reading God's Word, but lifting a phrase, a verse, a concept from our reading and thinking about that during the day. The cows teach us this, don't they? They chew the cud eight to 10 hours a day. They don't just eat the grass, but they chew the cud to extract all the nutrients from that grass into their skin, into their milk. A healthy Christian is a man, is a woman who meditates on God's word. and the nutrients of God's word seep into our life, into what we think about, into how we speak, into how we act, we are transformed by musing on scripture. We recognize providence. Another trait of the godly, of the mature Christian is recognizing providence in all our circumstances, in every aspect of our life. And this is one of the dominant themes of Jonah's prayer here. It's fascinating, isn't it? Look at verse number three. You cast me into the deep. No, you didn't, we would say. You know, in 1 verse 15, we know the story. They picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea. But Jonah says in verse 3 to God, you cast me into the deep, beyond the bulging biceps of the sailors and their big tattoos. It was the arm of God, his providence, his plan for Jonah's life. You cast me. into the deep. And he continues this as he goes through this song and this is brought out especially in his use of the pronouns in verses 5 to 7 and verses 3 to 4. In verses 5 to 7 he's focusing on himself and he speaks about my life, my head, my God, my prayer, He's focusing on himself in verses five to seven and what's going on in his experience. But before he focuses on himself in verses three and four, his focus is on God. You through me, your waves, your billows, your sight, your temple. What a change in Jonah. Once more, God is big in his life. God is present in his life. God's everywhere around him in every atom, in every circumstance, in all that's going on. You're all around me, he's saying. You're all over me. You're involved in all my experience. You, you, you, you're all here. See that sea, that salty all around me and powerful. It's your waves. It's your billows. You're controlling it. You're guiding it. You're managing it. You have a purpose in my life for it. He says this in verse number four, doesn't he? I am driven away from your side. Jonah walked away. Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord, we read in chapter one and verse three. It was him that moved away from the blessed country and tried to head off to Spain. But behind all of this, I am driven by God away from your side. We recognize God's providence in our life. We really like the division that Sproul makes of all circumstances, don't we? The good good that the Christian has, the good things from God that come into our life is good good. The bad bad is the bad things that happen in the life of unbelievers, judgments from God, it's the bad bad. The good bad is the good things that happen in the life of unbelievers. It's good bad because, sorry, it's bad good, sorry, it's bad good because though it's good in their life, yet if they don't respond to it, it will harden them instead of bringing them to God. But what Jonah's talking about here is the good bad. The bad in his life. The hardship in his life. And yet it's good. Because God has a reason and a purpose and a plan that's been effective in his experience. The good, bad. And so we're to ditch the language of fortune and luck. We're to believe that everything is in the plan and purpose of God. That he's near to us. He's with us, the good and the bad, the promotion and the demotion, the illness and the recovery, the failure and the success, the good neighbor and the bad neighbor, the saved daughter and the unconverted son. Let us recognize providence. Let us evangelize unbelievers. In verse number eight, it's difficult to translate from the Hebrew, and so there's a range of translations. But here, throughout this whole phrase, in verse number eight, those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. Throughout this there is this concern for unbelievers that Jonah expresses here, something that didn't really affect him before. He's been changed now, he's been transformed. The Spirit is filling him and directing him into ways that are exemplary and to be embraced for us. He's thinking of those who worship false gods and he pities them and he observes their trouble and difficulty. They forsake. their hope of steadfast love. Perhaps his mind's on the sailors whom he's just left and he wonders about them. Perhaps his mind's on the Ninevites to whom he was sent. He's starting to pity them. Those who regard, pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. Two different approaches or understandings of this verse are latent in it. One is that people pursuing false gods will be disappointed. They will come to discover that these gods are vain and false. They cannot love them. They cannot bless them. They cannot change their life. So those who regard vain idols, they're forsaking their hope of steadfast love. They want communication with their God. They want their God to act, to prosper their harvest, to bring them out of difficulty. They want that love. They hope for that love, but it's all in vain. They're forsaking their hope. steadfast love. Or the other way to understand it is, by them pursuing false gods, they're missing out on the experience of the redemptive love of God. The word used here, of course, is the big Old Testament Hebrew word hesed, which means redemptive love, covenant love. And here Jonah perhaps has this pity, this care for unbelievers, that those who are pursuing the false gods, they're missing out on God's salvation, on God's mercy, on God's forgiveness. They forsake the hope of steadfast love. It's the duty of all of us, isn't it, to witness, to shed a tear for unbelievers, to care for those outside of Christ. Whether that's a husband witnessing to his unbelieving wife or a wife to her unbelieving husband or parents to their children or to our neighbors to whom we speak and among whom we live. Driven by the reality that unbelievers are going to hell. Driven by the reality that Jesus Christ offers salvation to all. Driven by this reality of Jonah that they're missing out. On this hope of steadfast love. What deep down they crave for. What deep down they long for. What deep down they really want. They really want steadfast love. It's found in Jesus Christ in abundance, without money, without price. We promise obedience. Verse nine. What I have vowed, I will pay. What I have vowed, I will pay. Here's a mark of a healthy Christian. We promise obedience. We want to keep all God's laws. As a Christian, we promise to be a faithful follower of Jesus. That's what we vow. That's what we intend. That's what we desire. And we want to fulfill that vow. We want to keep that promise. We want to follow or Savior closely. What I have vowed, I will pay." Perhaps for Jonah, at his ordination into the office of prophet, as Elisha was anointed with oil and ordained into that office, perhaps as ministers today are ordained, they take vows, they make promises, and perhaps in this near-death experience, Jonah thinks of those vows again. and makes this fresh commitment and dedication, what I have vowed at my ordination, I will pay. Get me out of here, Lord, save my life, and I will fulfill my prophetic ordination vows. Or perhaps it's more defined. It's this promise that Jonah made that if he was delivered from the sea and from the belly of the big fish, he would go to Nineveh. If he was given another opportunity, he would not run away from God as he did before, but he would fulfill his calling. That single command that was hanging over him, unfulfilled and haunting him, even in the depths of the ship and in the depths of the sea, he would face up to afresh and he would fulfill what I have vowed I will pay. I'm reading The Emperor by Con Aguldin. It's historical fiction about the life of Julius Caesar, seeking to be as close to his life as possible from all the research that the author is able to fulfill. And he goes back into his childhood and his near-death experiences. And interestingly, the near-death experiences of Julius Caesar, the author is emphasizing, Made him hard. He sought revenge. He sought to stick up for himself. He sought to learn the arts of one-to-one combat. He sought to become a fighter and the great general that he would eventually become. It made him hard. But this experience of Jonah, it made him holy. It made him holy. Sometimes it takes this cataclysmic invasion of God into our life to change us, bring us back into the way. But whether or not that happens, let's all be saying today, what I have vowed, I will pay. We vowed a few weeks ago at communion to live a life consistent with our profession. Let us pay it. Let us fulfill it. I think like Jonah, every one of us has one command. that particularly haunts us and we wrestle with. It hangs over us just like his command to go to Nineveh did. There's perhaps one of the 10 commands that we find particularly difficult to fulfill. For Paul, it was the 10th command, you shall not covet. For Achan, it was the command not to steal. For all children, it's the command to honor their father and mother. But let us say afresh today, What I have vowed as a follower of Jesus, I intend to pay. And lastly, we prize grace. We prize grace. This song and poem of Jonah finishes in a wonderful and climactic way in verse number nine. Salvation belongs to the Lord. And you see how this is climactic in verse number 8 and 9, how he draws it all down to this very point like an inverted triangle. He starts out there broad with they and them in verse number 8, those who regard idols, forsake their hope of steadfast love. There's the many right up there at the top, but then he comes down closer and he says, In verse number nine, I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay. And he's moving away from the many down to the I and to the personal. But then he ends and climaxes the whole prayer. Salvation belongs to the Lord. There's only one podium in Jonah's mind at this time. There's only one person in this climactic sentence in view. All the glory, all the focus, all the honor, all the praise, all the worship, all the faith is in this one person. Salvation belongs to the Lord. He's humble now, filled with joy and contrition and faith. He's looking on to Christ, the one who would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth for our redemption. He's speaking beyond perhaps what he fully understood himself to the Lord Jesus, suffering and dying on the cross for our sins, going down into the grave. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Belongs in two ways, doesn't it? As the source of our salvation, as the originator, as the planner, as the power of God, of heaven. He does it all himself. He is the one who concocts salvation and who secures salvation. It belongs to the Lord in that sense. It also belongs to the Lord in the administration of it. who he saves, how he saves, when he saves. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Like Jonah, we prize this grace. A Persian poet said that a grateful dog is better than an ungrateful human. Well, we might contest this, but we get the sentiment of this Persian poet that gratitude is rare, but important. Here's Jonah, exemplary for us, lingering over this point, making it the focus and the climax beyond his experience. He's consumed in the glory of God. Salvation belongs to the Lord. This is what he wants us to remember. This is what he wants us to leave church with. This is what he wants us to walk away from this chapter with, thinking of this solitary sentence, salvation. belongs to the Lord. We've thought of a healthy Christian today. Their trust will retain these six aspects, utilizing prayer, musing on scripture, recognizing providence in our life, evangelizing on believers, promising obedience, prizing, the grace of Christ. My lawnmower needs fixed, needs serviced. It's a real hassle. The grass is growing at a rapid rate. As you all know, my neighbor likes to borrow my lawnmower. My parents need their grass cut, but my lawnmower needs taken to the expert to be refined and adjusted and sorted. He needs to check the fuel. He needs to replace the spark plugs. He needs to sharpen the blades. The lawnmower isn't working properly. It needs serviced. and refined and we need to bring our life today to the spiritual mechanic to hold up this checklist in his presence and ask him to walk with us and to talk with us and to help us in our praying and in our meditations and in our witnessing. than our obedience, than our delighting in His absolute grace. If you're here and you're not yet a Christian, this key word that Jonah uses in his climactic sentence, salvation, is a word for you because just like Jonah, you need saved. Just like Jonah, you are far from God, but just like Jonah who prayed to God and God in heaven heard him, answered him, and saved him, he will hear your prayer as you call on his mercy through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior.