Salvation Belongs to the Lord – Jonah 1:17-2:10 (Part 2)

This post is adapted from a sermon I recently preached. You can watch the sermon here (forgive the audio and video quality).

An Overview of Jonah

Introduction to Jonah

In part one, we saw that our disobedience leads to despair and death.

In today’s post, which covers verses 6b-10, we will see that God’s deliverance leads to thanksgiving.

Jonah’s disobedience had led him to despair and it was leading to his death. But when Jonah was drowning and the waters were closing in, God’s mercy finds him.

Look at v. 6b:

yet you brought up my life from the pit,
O Lord my God.

Just as Jonah recognized that God was responsible for him being thrown overboard, he now recognizes that God brought him up from the pit. When God disciplines and afflicts His children, it is always for our ultimate good – to conform us to the image of Christ (Rom 8:28-29). God does not waste any of our suffering.

Just as Jonah had sunken down to a pit and hit rock bottom, we were destined for the pit of hell until God intervened (Rom 5:6-8).

Jonah said, “You brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God” (v. 6b).

That is something we need to remember every day. There was nothing we did to earn our salvation (Eph 2:8-9). God brought us out of the pit of hell through His Son Jesus Christ.

Even as believers, we go through dark times – we could call it a metaphorical pit. Even in those times when God’s people are in their deepest anguish, He is there.

Jonah’s rebellion has brought him low, but God’s mercy will raise him up. In vv. 7-8, Jonah humbles himself before the Lord.

7-8

When Jonah’s life was fainting away, he remembered the Lord. In chapter one, we saw the word of the Lord came to Jonah, but Jonah ran away. Instead of going up to Nineveh, he went down to Joppa. He went down into the ship. He laid down and went to sleep. Now, Jonah has gone down into the sea.

In chapters 1-2, the trajectory of Jonah’s life is down, down, down. The sailors urged Jonah to cry out to his God, but He would not. Jonah finally cried out to the Lord when he began to feel the life going out of him.

God heard Jonah’s prayer, and He sent the fish that He had already appointed (1:17).

When your life feels out of control or when you feel your life fainting away, cry out the Lord. He will hear your prayers.

When your life feels out of control or when you feel your life fainting away, cry out the Lord. He will hear your prayers.

In contrast, Jonah says in v. 8, “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.” We saw this with the sailors. When the storm was raging, they each cried out to their gods, but of course nothing happened. There was no salvation with the false gods/idols they were praying to. Anyone that worships idols will not be delivered.

This message was also for the Israelites who would later read Jonah’s story. As you know, the Israelites had a bad habit of forsaking their love for God and intermarrying with pagans and worshiping false gods. Jonah knows that if his people do that, they forsake their hope of God’s steadfast love. The word translated “steadfast” is a word that is often used when describing God’s covenantal love with Israel. The message for Jonah’s first readers was this – do not trust in idols, or you will forfeit God’s steadfast love.

Do not trust in idols, or you will forfeit God’s steadfast love.

Likewise, we cannot live for ourselves and put our hope in idols such as money, sex, power, or status and expect to experience God’s steadfast love. When you come to Christ, you are to die to yourself and live for Him. Any other way of living will prove worthless and vain in eternity (Luke 9:23-25).

When you’ve hit rock bottom, put your hope and trust in God. The false gods that you are living for for will not save you. Only God can save you from the pit.

9

And that’s why we see tone of thanksgiving in v. 9:

But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

Jonah offers thanks to the Lord for His great salvation. He vows (or commits) to make a sacrifice to the Lord. If you recall from Leviticus, animal sacrifices were to be made with animals without blemish. Jonah is very thankful to God for His deliverance and will offer a costly sacrifice.

Today, we no longer offer animal sacrifices because Jesus fulfilled the sacrificial laws. He died as the once and for all sacrifice (Heb 9-10). In response to our salvation, we read in Rom 12:1-2 that we are to offer ourselves as living sacrifices. We are to live our lives as holy and pleasing to God. That is how we best thank Him today – by living completely for Him.

In the last part of v. 9, Jonah says, “Salvation belongs to the Lord.” This is the message of the book of Jonah. In his prayer, Jonah acknowledges that there was nothing he could do to save himself. His deliverance was not a result of his efforts, but the result of God’s mercy and grace.

This is the message of the book of Jonah – “Salvation belongs to the Lord.”

The clear teaching of Scripture is that no one is good enough to be justified before God (Rom 3:10-11, 23). In our natural state, we are dead in our sins and destined for hell. We can only be justified, or made right with God because of the work of Jesus Christ (Rom 5:1). Salvation is not of man. Salvation belongs to the Lord.

This is the message that we should proclaim: Sinners drown in their sin and devotion to idols and false gods, but God saves through His Son. Salvation belongs to the Lord. There is salvation in no other name except Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12).

10

Finally, “the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.”

Again, the fish was not sent to punish Jonah, but to deliver him.

Conclusion

Jonah 2 offers us hope. While our disobedience leads to despair and death, God’s deliverance leads to thanksgiving.

We see this in three ways^[1]https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/mercy-at-the-bottom:

1. God still listens. Despite Jonah’s rebellion, he cried out to God. God heard Jonah’s prayers, and he is always ready to receive our most desperate cries. No matter what you are going through, God still listens.

2. God still reigns. Jonah knew that God was in complete control. We saw that in verses 3-4. When you are going through a difficult time, know that God is not asleep. Jonah’s situation reminds us that we can trust God even in the most dire of circumstances. God is sovereign even when we feel like we are drowning.

3. God still delivers. Jonah experiences God’s salvation and concludes that God saved him for a purpose. Jonah has been spared to once again worship God in his holy temple and to go warn the Ninevites of God’s coming wrath. God saves us for a purpose – namely so that we worship him and minister to others.

God’s deliverance of Jonah reminds us of how He has delivered us through Christ

Jonah was entombed in the belly of a fish for 3 days. Jesus was entombed in the heart of the earth for 3 days.

Jonah felt grief when He was in the water. Jesus felt grief when He was forsaken by God on the cross.

Jonah experienced God’s wrath because of his sin. Jesus, in contrast, took God’s wrath upon himself for the sins of others and to atone for them

Jonah entered a watery grave, but he didn’t stay there. Jesus was laid in a tomb, but he didn’t stay there.

Jesus was raised from the dead, and appeared to many witnesses, ascended into heaven 40 days later and sat down at the Father’s hand where he now reigns in glory.

Have you been running from God?

Are you on your way to hitting rock bottom? Is your marriage on the rocks? Are your kids destroying their lives? Are you living in unrepentant sin?

There is hope in God. The same God that saved Jonah from death is the same God that offers us spiritual life through the life, death, burial and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. If you are not a Christian, trust in Jesus today. If you are a Christian, hold fast to the promises of God. He will never leave you nor forsake you.