This Gospel message is brought to you by the Reformed Witness Hour, a ministry of the Protestant Reformed Churches in America, a Reformed denomination that strives to be faithful to the Word of God and the historic confessions of the Reformed faith, also known as Calvinism. In love for our great God, we proclaim the Christian faith and life that is founded on God's sovereign, particular grace. As God's Word is expounded, we pray that these messages are a blessing to you. He did not believe God's mercy should be shown to the heathen Ninevites, the very people who were his people's enemies. He challenged God's sovereignty, the very right of God to show mercy to whom He will show mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth. We saw that in his disobedience Jonah went down, down, and down. He tried to get away from all that would remind him of God and his obligations to God. But God did not let him go. We saw the sovereign initiative of the gracious God to bring back his child, to use the storm, the roll of dice, and pagan men to begin the process of restoration. of how he awoke Jonah to the awful reality of his sin, of how he indicted Jonah through the means of unbelieving men, and how he brought Jonah to acknowledge his sin and his worthiness of death. We emphasize then that it was God's purpose to restore Jonah to obedience, not to let Jonah drown. Even when Jonah was cast over the board of the ship, Jonah had not yet reached that place of full repentance. For that place of full repentance, God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. There, in the belly of the fish, Jonah learned what hell was like. He learned what it was to be cast out of God's sight. And there, God turned him from his folly to repentance. Today we want to examine ourselves as we look at the prayer of Jonah from the belly of a fish. Perhaps it was the only time in history that prayer has come from that place. Yet we know that any place is a place for prayer. Still, there's no place like a fish's belly three or four hundred feet under the water which sulk demands prayer. In such a place, Jonah prayed to magnify God, and in such a place, God turned Jonah back to himself. It's very comforting, isn't it? There is no place where God's ear does not hear and His eye does not see. When we are brought low, it is always God's purpose, always His purpose, to bring us up again and to show us His grace and His power. So we look at that prayer today and we note as we begin that chapter 2 of Jonah probably is not all that Jonah prayed. He was there for three days after all. and he probably prayed without ceasing. So we have a summary of his prayer. Secondly, we note that the prayer, if you read through it in Jonah chapter 2, is not a well-organized prayer per se. It's not something that we can find divisions and sub-points neatly arranged for us. For when you are in distress, you pour out your heart to God. And everything that's in your heart comes out to God. There are two things that are evident The first is his great distress and his overwhelming fear. He says, I cried from the belly of hell. I am cast out of thy sight. The waters come past my soul. That first, then, his great distress. And secondly, in the prayer, repeatedly, he speaks of God's mercy. He heard me, he says. I will look toward thy holy temple. I will remember the Lord. Salvation, he says, is of the Lord. Those two ideas, his great distress and his faith in God's mercy, those two leapfrog each other, one over the other, until at last Jonah is brought to a place of repentance, in which he says, I will pay my vows to the Lord. I will obey and go to Nineveh. Jonah chapter 2 verse 1 we read, then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly. It was a great fish we are told. A whale or some other large fish perhaps known to man or perhaps not yet known to man. We know that unbelief jeers at this and howls in mockery of unbelief. The story is told of Clarence Darrell who was lawyer and was defending his client and trying to smear the testimony of a man against his client and said why a person could believe this man's testimony as easily as he believed a fish swallowed Jonah. Well, we believe that a fish swallowed Jonah. Miracle you say, yes, but for all of that a fact. Our God who raised up Jesus from the dead can certainly cause a great monster of the deep to come alongside a boat when a prophet is thrown overboard and swallow him. Besides, we have Jesus' word on this. When the unbelieving scribes and Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign to validate his claims as the Messiah, the Lord responded, Matthew 12.39, an evil and an adulterous generation seeketh after a sign. and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Jesus says that the reality of Jonah's being swallowed by a fish and his own resurrection in the bowels of the earth go together. Deny one, you are a denier of the other. scoff at the one, you scoff at the other." Jonah was swallowed by a great fish, and for three days he was in its belly. Try to put yourself in that position. He had been picked up and flung into the waves, which soon passed over him, and in all probability he was not immediately swallowed, but went through all that a man experiences in drowning, even perhaps to the point of unconsciousness. He says in verses 5 and 6 of chapter 2 in his prayer that the weeds of the bottom wrapped themselves over his head and that he felt the ooze of the muddy bottom of the sea. He was at the roots of the mountain. Whatever a man experiences in the last moments of drowning, Jonah experienced. He was sucked up by a fish and he came to awareness within the belly of a fish coughing and choking and it dawned on him where he was. air after a sort was present in the belly of the fish, and the smells of rotting food in the stomach of the fish, and the gastric juices, and the stench, the darkness, and the slimy slop all around him in the belly of a great fish. He's conscious, and he knows that he's been there for a long time, and God has brought him down very low into misery and despair. From the ends of the earth, says the psalmist, Psalm 61, will I cry unto thee? Jonah cried to God from the belly of a fish. A real miracle took place in that belly, the belly of a fish. As I pointed out, back and forth Jonah is praying of his misery and of his childlike confidence in God's mercy. He sees now what has happened to him as affliction. He says, the heavy hand of God is chastening me and he struggles with the fear that he's being cast out of God's sight, that God is abandoning him. And yet he runs into the very presence of the God that he tried to flee from. and he cries out to God. He says, When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord. I will look toward Thy holy temple. Thou hast brought up my life from corruption, O Lord. I remembered the Lord, and I, prayer, came in unto Him into Thy holy temple. In the belly of a fish, wretched, fear-shocked, prolonged day after day after day, inwardly struggling against the demons of fear, he cries out in faith to God. Does that describe you? No, you haven't been in a fish's belly. Nothing so dramatic. But has God, in restoring you from sin, brought you to such a place? Have you been brought to a place where you struggle with fear that you believe that God is abandoning you? You believe that now you've done it, and you're going to be cast off, and you experience only grief and gall and misery and fear. And out of faith, the gift of God in your soul, you cry out to God. You see, what we have here is a great truth illumined, a great truth of prayer. And that is this, you gain an accurate picture of the spiritual life of a child of God when they are under affliction and trial. Affliction is the index of the soul. An index of a book tells you what's in the book. Well, affliction and chastisement tells you what God has put down in your heart. Here is Jonah. Up to this point, very little do we see of the work of God in him. Yes, he's a prophet of God. He's God's child, but he's one disobedient child for sure. We don't see much in him of Christ. But affliction shows the true Jonah. Jonah is taken down into the depths of the sea, into the fish's belly, and there God shows what He, in grace, had done in Jonah. Does affliction do that to you? And some children of God, even the heaviest chastisement, seem to produce no spiritual good. God comes to correct. God comes to try. God cuts back and removes. and they respond in bitterness and resentment and anger with no sanctified spirit. But here we see God's chastisement having the desired effect. The spell of sin is broken off the head of Jonah. The disillusionment of his sin is shattered and with a broken and humble seeking soul he cries out to God in his prayer. The primary concern of Jonah's prayer was that he be restored to the presence of God. In his rebellion, Jonah rose up to flee from the presence of the Lord God. And he told the sailors on the ship that he had fled from God's presence. We saw that that meant that he wanted to put away from him everything that would remind him of God. When the child of God walks in a way of disobedience, when we have set our own will above God's will, then we don't want to be reminded of any of God's obligations upon us and we don't want to be reminded by even seeing the church building or God's people or perhaps your wife or your husband or your parents you don't want to see them because you don't want to be reminded of your disobedience but when God brought Jonah and when he brings us to repentance when he breaks us Then the first sign of a true repentance is that we desire again to be restored to his presence. We need the assurance of his presence. Jonah says in his prayer, I said I'm cast out of thy sight, yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. In his disobedience, he didn't want to look toward the temple. That's the last place he wanted to look at. But now he says, here I am. And in a sense, I got what I wanted. but I can't stand it. I must have God." When I despised and foolishly turned from Him and squandered the blessings of His fellowship, when I did that, then I lost what God gave in my heart to be the treasure of His own presence. And so he prays, when my soul faints within me, I remembered the Lord and my prayer came in unto Thee into Thy holy temple Now let's apply that too. The great sin of the backslidden Christian is forfeited communion with God. That's the cost of disobedience. Repentance is the desire for restored fellowship with God. The prodigal son said, remember the prodigal son, Luke 15, I will arise and go to my father. What did he say? I miss the well-spread table? Father, I miss my own room? I miss my things? No, no, no, no. I will arise and go to my Father. I missed the fellowship of my Father. Do you? When you walk in a way of sin, can you have peace? Can you? There's the evidence of being a repentant child of God. True repentance brings us one desire, that we might be restored to the presence of God. Now you might think that a Christian is simply one whose sins are forgiven, and now he's off on his own way. And now he may center his life on greed, lust, success, name, business, but he's got these insurance papers in his back pocket. He's going to go to heaven. That's a Christian. That's not a Christian. That's a figment of imagination. No, the Christian is one who longs for God and the bitterness of his sin. What is so bitter about sin is that it takes away from us the experience of God's closeness and fellowship. And when God chastens the Christian, and when God sends adversity into our life, then the child of God doesn't just whimper and say, Why? Why is everything against me? Poor me! No, then the child of God gets the point and cries out again for God to have mercy and to restore him to his presence and faiths. There's faith working in Jonah and it's very beautiful. That faith is seen in the fact that he acknowledged now that all that happened to him in his chastisements was from the hand of God. He says, I cried by reason of my affliction unto the Lord and he heard me. Out of the belly of hell I cried, and thou heardest my voice, for thou hast cast me into the deep, into the midst of the seas. Thou hast cast me into the deep. Now I thought the pagan sailors did that. Didn't they take up Jonah and cast him into the sea? Well, they did. But you see, Jonah sees beyond men. It was thou, O God. The hand of the sailors, the waves of the sea, O God was behind all of that. He sees that it was God Himself who was chastising him. And then he begins to recognize what has happened. His disobedience has caught up to him. And now he is submitting to the hand of God. What happens to you in your sins? When God begins to have dealings with you, when the wind begins to blow and He begins to shake your life around you, do you say, things are not going very well at work? things aren't going well with my husband, with my wife, or with my children? Do you say, all these people, those things, that church, those elders, they're my problem? O may God stop our stubborn, self-loving hearts, and bring us to the point of repentance to say, Lord, it was Thy hand, and to acknowledge the living God at work the living God at work also in bringing us low that he might bring us to repentance. By faith Jonah recognized that it was God's hand that was dealing with him but he also learned to recognize God's goodness. He prays in verse 6, Yet thou hast brought up my life from corruption. His eye sees the goodness of God in a fish's belly. Now that's something. He knows that he deserves death, and though he is surrounded by the slime and the stench, yet he sees the goodness of God. He sees it written all around him in a fish's belly. Imagine that! How beautiful! Do you understand? You see, those who have nothing, and those who have been brought by God to the point to know their sins, and are emptied before God for their sins, then when they see the mercy of God toward them, God softening their hearts and giving them the tears of repentance. Then they see God's wondrous loving kindness, even in the trials and afflictions God sends to them. And so, he prays to God. Now it's very interesting in Jonah's prayer, as you read it in Jonah chapter 2, that Jonah quoted no less than seven times from the Psalms. Some of them, verbatim quotes from the Psalms. I'll just give you the references, Psalm 130, 1 and 2, Psalm 42, Psalm 31, Psalm 18, Psalm 116. He uses the book of the Psalms in his prayer because there's no book of the Bible that so expresses the life of a child of God as the Psalms. They are written as the spiritual biography of the work of God in the heart. Now, children, let me ask you a question. Did Jonah have a Bible with him in the fish's belly? Did he have, perhaps, a candle and some matches so that he could read his Bible there? Well, you say, no. Of course not. Well, then how did he know? Well, he knew God's Word. He had memorized it. He was able to meditate upon it. And as he meditated on the Psalms, He discovered that he really was not in a unique place. Yes, perhaps nobody else had been in the belly of a fish, but it certainly wasn't unique for a child of God to be in the midst of misery and fear, the place where he had to cry out to God. Do you store up God's Word in your heart today? Do you listen regularly to God's Word? Do you read your Bible as a family, as a couple? Do you read it personally? Are you regular in your attendance of God's house to hear the preaching of the gospel? And then in that house that you go to, that church on Sunday, do you hear the Word of God? Faithful, biblical preaching? Or do you go just to a place where everybody has to be made to feel good Somehow, and a few jokes are told, and everybody smiles and shakes hands and says, well, life is not so bad after all, is it? Is that the type of church you attend? Or is it a church that will teach you the Word of God? You see, it's only the Word of God that's going to be of any help in a fish's belly. There in the fish's belly, Jonah is brought to repentance. He says in verse 8 of his prayer, they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. A lying vanity is an idol. Jonah says, I made an idol. I made an idol of my own will. I decided that I was going to do what I wanted to do. I put my own will over what God told me to do. And when I made my idol, I forsook my own mercy. I forsook the experience of God's mercy. Now there he is confessing his sins. He didn't confess his sins the way he ought to on the boat, but he did in the belly of the fish. He says, I made myself God. I bowed down to my desires. I chose my wants over God. And then he says, now I will pay that that I have vowed. I vowed to be a prophet. I vowed when as a prophet that I would go where he sent me. I would speak what He told me. I will pay that vow. I will do what He told me. I will go back. The Lord being merciful, I will go back and I will go to Nineveh." And then he says, salvation is of the Lord. Now you might quibble about that. You might say, well, salvation is of the Lord, but certainly He's waiting for man to accept Him of His own free will Some work that we bring will sort of enhance our salvation or something along that line. You might like to hear things like that. But I tell you one thing. If you were in the belly of the fish, you'd have it straight. Salvation is of the Lord. The ability to bring your soul to love God and to worship God The ability to bring your soul to the knowledge of Jesus Christ and to unite your soul to Jesus Christ is of the Lord. You remember that. That's what you learn in a fish's belly. You learn it personally. From out the depths, says the psalmist, I cry, O Lord, to Thee, when the waves and billows roll in over my soul and I sink down and I despair that all hope is gone." Then God speaks through His Word and He gives us to know that salvation is of the Lord. That's true prayer that glorifies God. Let us pray. Father, we thank Thee for Thy Word and we pray that Thou wilt apply it by the Holy Spirit to our hearts In Jesus' name, Amen. We hope that you have been edified and encouraged by this message. If you would like more information about the Reformed faith or the Protestant Reformed churches, feel free to visit our website at reformedwitnesshour.org or email us at mail at reformedwitnesshour.org.