Salvation is of the Lord

Scripture Reading

Will you please turn in your Bibles with me to Jonah, chapter 1. Jonah, chapter 1. We're going to read, or Jonah 2, if it's on the same page. Page 817 in your pew Bibles. If you remember last time, we stopped at verse 16. We stopped there because, well, in Hebrew, that's where the chapter break is. But we're going to start reading Jonah, chapter 1, beginning at verse 17, and we'll read through Jonah, chapter 2. Here now God's perfect word.

Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow 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 fish's belly. And he said, I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction, 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 billows and your waves passed over me. Then I said, I have been cast out from your sight, yet I will look again toward your holy temple. The water surrounded me even to my soul. The deep closed around me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountains. The earth with its bars closed behind me forever.

Yet, You have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer went up to you into your holy temple. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay what I have vowed to the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord. So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto the dry land. The grass withers and the flower fades, but brothers and sisters, the word of our God endures forever.

Prayer for Illumination

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word this morning. And Father, we pray that as it is preached, that your spirit might even be working in our hearts now. Lord, Though we may have naturally hard hearts, Lord, we pray that you would soften them. Lord, though our ears may be naturally stopped up, Lord, we pray that you would open them. Lord, we pray that your spirit would press the truths of this passage in our hearts so much that we would shout and sing that salvation is yours. Lord, we thank you for your word, and we pray that you would now make it effectual in our lives, even through the preaching of your word. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Sermon

You know, there's times in which people find themselves in imminent danger in situations where it seems like they need to do something, but in reality, they're not the people who should be doing it. Just in the last few years, there was a man who caught himself, or he found himself caught in a thunderstorm. And as he was in this horrible storm, there was live electrical lines that had fallen on the ground and he was in danger. And so his thought for how he was going to deliver himself from this was to grab that live electrical cord. You can imagine how that turned out.

Or there's a woman who found herself a year later. She needed to get out of a flash flood. She was in her car in the middle of a flash flood. The waters were upon her. She didn't know what she was going to do. So she did the only thing that could come to her mind was she started to swim across this water, was swept away and died. It's tragic.

Or a man who caught himself in California in the midst of a wildfire. And as the forest was on fire around him, he didn't know what to do. So he got in his car and he tried to drive through the forest fire. Each one of these people could not deliver themselves. They needed salvation and salvation couldn't come from them. They weren't equipped to handle it. They weren't prepared for what the task was ahead. And at the end of the day, it cost them their lives.

But yeah, I'm going to suggest to you that in our spiritual life, this is often how we deal with things. In our spiritual lives, often we see a problem, we have an issue, and we want to be our own deliverer. We want to be the one who saves ourselves from the problems. We want to be the hero of our own story. But what we find is a golden thread throughout scripture is we're not the hero, and it's not our story.

What the scriptures bring us to in Jonah chapter 2 and throughout the rest of scripture is that we are commanded, we are invited, it is our privilege and our pleasure to sing and to shout that salvation is of the Lord. And I hope that you walk out of here this morning, and on Wednesday night, when you've had a full meal, you can remember, you can take home this truth that you are called by God to shout and to sing that salvation is of the Lord.

I'm gonna say that again, because I need you to know the main point, right? What you're gonna take home. Salvation is of the Lord. This is exactly where Jonah ends his prayer. Notice in verse nine. I will pay what I have vowed salvation is of the Lord." Jonah knew this and he gave thanks to God for his salvation and so also we must do likewise. And so first as we as we just kind of wrap our hands around this story I want us to first consider Jonah's plight and God's sovereignty. Jonah's plight and God's sovereignty, or God's ruling over what's going on here.

When we look at verse 17 of chapter 1, notice who the subject of the sentence is. It's not Jonah. It's not the fish. Once again, it's the Lord. And now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. Right now, if there's anything skeptics of the Bible will love, it's the story of Jonah, because they think, oh, there's no way that this type of fish exists, because people can't live inside the belly of a whale. Well, first, it's not a whale, right?

The Hebrew is just, dog, get a load, right? Just a big old fish. And if you don't think that there's big old fish that exist in the ocean, just go onto Google. This is a dangerous thing, because don't believe everything that's on the internet, right? There's AI generated and Photoshop stuff, right?

But just type in weird things that have washed up on shore, or weird creatures that have washed up on shore. There's good reason why there's ancient stories all over from different customs that talk about sea monsters, because there's some stuff down in the deep that is just straight scary. And it seems like the Lord appointed one of them or created might just be a one-off creation. The Lord creates or appoints this fish who's able to sustain Jonah in its belly.

And well, the reality is, if you're a Christian, we believe in miracles. Right? We believe in a God who's big enough to either create or have the perfect timing that just as Jonah feels like he's about to die, he'll be saved in this miraculous way. So we don't need to be shaken by people who say, well, there's no way possible that could happen. Yeah, and there's no way possible that a million people walked through the Red Sea on dry land either, but they did. Right? We believe it. We believe this is a historical story because we believe in a God who commands creation and creation obeys. We believe in a God who's in charge of Jonah's situation.

And as he's in the belly of this great fish three days and three nights, by the way, that's just a Hebrew idiomatic way for saying anything that touches three parts of the day, right? D.A. Carson notes on this, any part of three consecutive 24 hours of time is a Jewish idiom, right? So it doesn't really matter if it's what time of the day he was swallowed. If it's talking about three days, three nights, somewhere in there, it's a three-day period.

But this is exactly the sign that Jesus is going to point to that we read last week in Matthew chapter 12. When the Pharisees are demanding from Him a sign, He says, you wicked and perverse generation, you always want a sign, but I'm going to tell you that Jonah is the sign you have. And Jesus is pointing to Himself. that just like Jonah was in the belly of the fish for those three days, so also the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth. But that's not going to be the end of the story. Jesus is saying He's going to rise again from the dead.

I want us to kind of, now that we've got our hands around the passage and what's going on here, this is a psalm of thanksgiving that Jonah has. I'd like us to look a little bit at the interior of what's going on in Jonah's heart. Look with me at the despair to hope that happens in this prayer, in this song, again and again. I've given you a little outline I've created for this.

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish. And then the first part of chapter 2, or verse 2, is a petition that he remembers. Jonah is writing this petition years later. He remembers the Lord hearing this. And he cries out to the Lord in his affliction. And God answers him. But then as we get into this passage, we see that where Jonah was in this crisis was a place of absolute despair. Absolute hopelessness. As Jonah cried out to the Lord because of his affliction, God answered him. How did God answer him?

Notice the rest of the prayer isn't about God spitting him out of the fish's mouth. but it's about the fish that swallowed him up. Deliverance was in the form of this fish that had swallowed him up. Again, we think of Jonah, right? And we might even think of veggie tales, right? The sailors throw him off the ship and he's right there on the surface of the water. Maybe he's got his little rubber ducky floaty on him, probably not. But a giant fish comes and on the surface of the water gobbles him down.

But that's not what Jonah says his experience was. Notice what he says in his despair. Verse three, for you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me, and your billows and your waves passed over me. Where is Jonah? He's not on the surface of the water. He's drowning. He's worried his lungs about to give out and if he opens his mouth and takes a breath he's going to inhale his death. And he knows exactly why this is happening. Notice again who's in charge here.

For you cast me into the deep and your billows and your waves passed over me. This was God's doing to Jonah. He knew that he was the one who put himself in this situation, but he knew that it was God ultimately who was doing these things for him because it's God's sea. It's God's water. It's God's creation. So he can't run away from this. And he knows that something greater than himself is in charge here. And in verse five, he goes on with this.

The water surrounded me, even to my soul. The deep closed around me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I mean, I got to tell you, I've been in oceans before and they can be scary. I remember when I was surfing in Southern California one time, my buddy, Brandon and I, we drove to a specific surfing spot because it was supposed to have really good waves. And we thought this is going to be awesome. We're going to go. It's going to be a good time. There's supposed to be 10 foot waves. This is going to be great. Those are like medium sized waves. You know, we can handle this.

And I have never been beaten up by waves so bad in my life. Every time you would go under the water and you'd come back up so you could get a breath and go under the next wave and you would paddle and you would paddle and you'd paddle to try to break through the surf and get to the smooth water on the other side. And every time I came up from under one wave, another wave crashed down upon me and crashed down upon me and crashed down upon me. All I could see in my eyes was a little bit of sky and mostly water. And I wondered for a brief moment, to die.

I don't know how I'm going to make it out of this. I put myself in this ocean, but I can't control this ocean. I can't beat it. Now, I lived, thank the Lord. But the point being, if you're put in that spot where you don't know if your next breath is even going to come, there's a point of fear in your heart that you realize, I can't do this myself. And I remember even as I was in that relatively safe environment, I could just let the waves push me to the shore, thinking, God, you got to get me out of this.

I put myself in a bad spot. But notice what Jonah says. He doesn't have that hope that he could just swim to the shore, that things are going to be OK. He says, the floods are surrounding me. You put me in the heart of the seas. You cast me into the deep. It's like the waves are passing over me and passing over me. The water surrounded me, even to my soul.

He's scared for his life. The word there for soul is nefesh. His inner being, the water seemed to be even encroaching in him. Is he swallowing water? Possibly. And worse than that, it seemed like the sea was even his enemy. The plants that God put at the bottom of the sea, the seaweed, right? The slimy, nasty, coarse stuff.

It seems like it's grabbing onto him and holding him down and pulling him down. And he says in verse six, I went down to the mooring of the mountains, right? It's like he's imagining a tree going down into the earth where the roots of the mountains reach deep to hold on to the depths of the earth. He's all the way down there. The earth with its bars closed behind me, le'olam, forever. He thought he was good as dead. He's in absolute desperation.

But why would God even allow all this to happen? Why didn't God just send a strong, westward wind and push the ship back to shore. Why did God choose this way? So I'm very helped by the Westminster Confession of Faith. I was talking about God's providence. The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 5, Paragraph 5 says, The most wise, righteous, and gracious God doth oftentimes leave for a season his own children to manifold temptations, and to corruptions of their own hearts.

It's as if the Lord said, OK, Jonah, you want to go to Nineveh? You don't want to go to Nineveh? You want to go to Tarshish? Go ahead. I'll let you go down to Joppa. I'll let you get on the boat. I'll let you get in the Med. You'll go a couple hundred yards, a couple hundred feet, maybe a few miles off the coast, so far that you can't swim back.

Because as the Confession says, the Lord uses these to chastise us, his children, for our sins, or to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts, that they may be humbled, and to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon himself. Put that into layman's terms. God, in his governance of all these things, allows Jonah to go follow his own heart, to go into the middle of the ocean, into the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, so he might have him sink down to the depths, so Jonah would realize that he is not his own Lord, but that he needed the God of his salvation. that he needed to draw near to him.

And you'll notice that there's really like two poems put side by side or one on top of another. Notice the second half of verse four. He thinks that I've been cast out of your sight, but there's a beautiful word in the second half. Yet. Yet I will look again toward your holy temple. Jonah knows, even in his despair, that whether he lives or whether he dies, he will see the Lord. And then again in verse six, the second half of that verse, that beautiful yet appears again. There's hope in the midst of the depths.

Yet you have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. As he remembered the Lord delivering him while he was in the belly of the fish, remember verse one, Jonah's praying this while he's in the belly of the fish. He knows that he should be as good as dead, and yet somehow he knows that even in the belly of the fish, he's going to live. You brought my life from the pit, from that watery grave, oh Lord, my God.

Jonah recognizes God's presence, even in this horrible situation. And he recognizes God's deliverance, his miraculous intervention, even while he's in the depths of the sea. And God did this so that Jonah would know, verse nine, salvation is of the Lord. Jonah had to be put into the depths of the sea and miraculously swallowed up by this great fish, so that he could sing and could shout even to the Ninevites, salvation is of the Lord. I wonder in your life, are there times in which the Lord has had to put you in hard situations, in difficult places, where you feel like you've been put into a place where it's not like God's completely, utterly forsaken you, taken his Holy Spirit, you've lost your salvation, not that type of stuff, but where maybe you've been in that pit of depression, despair, or danger, and you look back and you remember, you know, I think the Lord did that because he was teaching me that he was still my God. He was still my Lord, and that salvation came only from Him. And this is what Jonah learns how to proclaim in verses 8 through 10.

This is the proclamation of God's salvation, point number three, the proclamation of God's salvation. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord." Notice he starts off as the two kind of despair to hope poems have gone on. Now he's saying something different in verse 9.

He compares himself with idol worshipers. Why? Why, right? Because they're not actually God. He had just been around a bunch of idol worshippers. They were just the ones on the ship, the sailors, who were praying to their various different gods. And if they had not repented, what would they not have received? Mercy. Salvation. Favor. The word here is the word chesed. This is the steadfast love of God himself. Those who worship idols forfeit, God has said, His mercy, His loving kindness.

Now this is a hard thing for us, right? When I was in India, this was an easy thing for me to see and my heart to break when I saw idols after idols as you walked along the street, as you went into people's homes, as you drove along the road, there was temple and idols everywhere. And you would tell people about Jesus Christ, and to be honest with you, most of them just didn't care. Or they thought, oh, I could just worship Him as one God amongst all my other gods. But no. Oh, right, those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. Those who hear the good news of Jesus Christ know the one true living God and turn their back against Him forfeit. They make the choice to forfeit God's mercy.

But yet, I wonder in our own lives how often we still do this. It's easy to think of people who worship the Shintoism in Japan, or the Buddhism in China, or the Hinduism in India. It's easy to think about those idols there. It's really difficult when God says things like, our own covetousness is idolatry. How serious are we about the factory of idols in our own hearts?

About our own lusts, our own loves, our own covetousness, our own desire to be Lord and to do things our way? To live life how we want it, don't forsake your mercy. Don't forsake the loving kindness of the Lord that is offered to you in Jesus Christ by turning back to the idols that might even reign in your own heart.

Notice Jonah gives thanks and praise to God in verse 9. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy, but I will sacrifice to you. With the voice of thanksgiving, I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. Jonah knows, he doesn't know all the specifics, but he knows somehow he's going to be taken out of the belly of this fish somehow, and he's going to see God's temple. He's going to be able to offer sacrifices. He's going to be able to keep his vows. I wonder if he took vows to be a prophet.

I wonder if he knows that he didn't go where the Lord told him to go. But no matter what, he ends with what Ed Clowney, the former president of Westminster Theological Seminary says, he ends with the golden declaration of all of scripture, salvation is of the Lord. Now, we know this most of all in Jesus Christ, don't we? You know, you can't rescue you from your own sin. You can't offer enough bowls, you can't offer enough sacrifices, you can't offer enough...

Because every time, this is what the high priests were supposed to learn, right? Every single time they went to go make a sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, guess what? They had to make a sacrifice for their own sin, and then for the sin of the people. But what would happen the very next day? There had to be another sacrifice. Every morning, when the sun would rise up, and there would be the morning sacrifice, there had to be a trespass offering. Every evening, as the sun was going down, there was going to be a sacrifice, and there had to be a trespass offering. Every single day, there had to be a trespass offering. It was teaching the people that they would never be done with sin by themselves. They could never be good enough by themselves.

But this is exactly why Jesus came. This is exactly why Jesus died for our sins. But I want to posit to you that this is exactly why Jesus also had to go into the heart of the earth. Because Jesus suffered even unto death. Unlike Jonah, who tried to run away from his calling, Jesus ran toward his calling.

And his calling was the cross and the grave. And he knew that just like God did an amazing miracle in the history of the past, making that great fish vomit up Jonah, he knew that his Father would not let his Holy One see decay. He knew that he would be delivered from death. He knew that he would rise again. He told his disciples this.

Jesus is the fulfillment of the sign of Jonah. So my question for you this morning is, do you believe it? My question for you this morning is, is Jonah just a little fable or fairy tale we pass on to our children because it's a cute story and we put on Jonah on the VeggieTale movie for a couple hours just to keep them quiet? Or do we actually believe that Jonah was swallowed up by this great fish? and that God did a miraculous thing in swallowing up and in making that fish vomit him out of his mouth onto the dry land because God was trying to give a sign, would give a sign that eventually Jesus would come and be the ultimate salvation.

How would the Ninevites repent if they had not heard? How would they have believed unless God had sent Jonah? How would they have believed? and turned from their sins unto life? How would we believe if somebody had not told us the gospel? How would we have turned from our sins unto life if somebody had not told us that salvation is of the Lord?

Do you love him? Do you cling to Jesus Christ? Or are you still trying to be the hero of your own story? Are you still trying to do enough good deeds to get yourself into heaven? Or will you humble yourself like Jonah and realize that it is only of the Lord that you can be saved? And will that humility work in your heart such a gratitude and such a thankfulness that you would sing and you would shout to others that salvation is of the Lord and that salvation is offered today in Jesus Christ.

Closing Prayer

Our only hope in life and death. I don't have a cute conclusion for this sermon. I just have that take home truth for you. has God moved in your heart in such a way that you would sing and you would shout with all your heart that salvation is of the Lord. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you that you work in history, that you, the creator of the heavens and the earth, rule the sea and the dry land. And that you, even while we were yet sinners, sent your Son to die for us, that we might have salvation, that we may have everlasting life. Lord, we thank you that you did not spare your own Son, but you freely offered Him up for us. And how shall you not with Him also freely give us all things? Lord, please let your Spirit work in our hearts. that we would treasure and proclaim that it is your salvation. We pray in Jesus's name.