Adam, I sure am glad we sang
that one and not the one you first mentioned. I think the
title of it was, Have We Done Enough for Jesus? or something
like that. Thank you, brother. I'm just
happy to see that somebody else gets up here and makes mistakes.
Makes me feel better about myself. Let's open our Bibles to the
book of Jonah. Jonah. We began last Wednesday night
looking at this wonderful little prophet and clearly Jonah in
so many ways is a sign that points us to Christ and the Lord made
that clear. When his dissenters ask him to
show them a sign, If you're the Christ, show us a sign. We want
you to prove yourself. And the Lord said, no sign. A
wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, but no
sign will be given to you except for the sign of Jonah, who spent
three days and three nights in the belly of the whale. That's how the King James translates
it in Matthew chapter 12. All it says in the book of Jonah
was a great fish. but our Lord called it a whale.
And so shall the son of man spend three days and three nights in
the heart of the earth. So the Lord Jesus was taking
the story of Jonah and applying it to himself. And what a beautiful
type and picture it is. It reminds us of what he did
in chapter one Jonah, in disobedience to God, who sent him to go to
Nineveh, he sided with his feelings rather
than obeying God. He disobeyed the Lord. He went
down to Joppa, he got on a ship, he ends up out in the middle
of the sea in a storm, and Jonah is identified as the cause
of that storm. And they cast him over the side
of the ship, and the storm ceases. And we see in that the Lord Jesus
bearing our sins, as we just read in Psalm 38, how he felt
the shame and the sorrow and the separation as our sin bearer. Some people like to talk about
Christ just satisfying God's justice and just meeting some
legal requirements as an atoning sacrifice. But surely as mysterious
as it is that the Lord bore our sins, it was much more than that. I believe what David is saying
in Psalm 38, he's speaking prophetically about Christ. If you suffered
justice for someone else's sin or for someone else's crime,
you might feel proud that you did that. You might feel resentful,
but you could never feel shame. You could never feel sorrow because
you know that you didn't do it. And yet everything that our Lord
expresses about his death on Calvary's cross, he speaks of
his shame and his sorrow and the separation that he experienced
from God because of that sin that he bore and satisfied God's
justice. It's a mystery beyond our ability
to even begin to understand. but so thankful that faith is
not understanding or comprehending, faith is believing. Believing on Christ as our substitute,
believing on Christ as our sin bearer, believing on Christ as
our surety, the one who did everything that God required for the salvation
of his people. Believing that Christ was successful
in satisfying God's justice and putting away our sin by the sacrifice
of himself. That's what we believe and we
believe him. Paul said, I know whom I have
believed and I'm persuaded. I'm persuaded that he is able
to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day. We commit everything to Christ
and we trust that whatever it is that God required for putting away sin and satisfying
his divine justice, the Lord Jesus accomplished. He accomplished
it. And so as we read this story
of Jonah, we are being pointed again and again to the Lord Jesus,
but we can't miss the love and mercy of our Heavenly
Father in chastising His children. This isn't a point of rebuke. This is a point of encouragement
to the child of God. Children need to be, they need
to be corrected and they need to be chastised in order to know
that they're loved. And we see that in this story. Jonah's experience that he expresses
in chapter 2 is, yes, it is the Lord Jesus in the grave, no question
about that. It is the ultimate expression
of love and mercy that God has for his people by giving his
son as a sacrifice for our sin and the agony that the Lord Jesus
went through in order to be able to put away our sin. But it's
also a word of encouragement to the child of God as to what
the Lord does for his children when they disobey him. How thankful
we are that he does that. Let's read chapter two together.
And then Jonah prayed. Jonah's been cast off the boat.
By the way, men have discussed and debated
the three days and three nights for a long time, and much have
been written about it. The Lord Jesus, according to
the timeline in the New Testament, was crucified on Friday, spent
Friday night, all day Saturday, Saturday night, and was raised
from the dead on Thursday. And yet, the Lord calls it three
days and three nights. A couple things I would say about
that. Number one, the The Lord has
written his word in such a way as to give unbelievers enough
rope to hang themselves. And this is one of those passages
of scripture where those who want to find fault with the Bible
will point this out and they will say, well, see there, there's
an inconsistency. And then others will try to say,
well, you know, the Lord was really crucified on Thursday
and Brethren, I know that God's word
is true and we're not calling it into question, but the best
explanation that I've read about this is that the Jewish reckoning
of time did not distinguish between day and night, it was a day.
And so any part of a day was considered a whole day. So that's
all the explanation I need. A part of Friday was considered
all day Friday. A part of Saturday, well it was
all day Saturday. And a part of Sunday was considered
all day Sunday. So that from what I understand
was the way in which they reckoned time. They didn't distinguish
night and day. It was a full day. So I think probably Jonah was in
the belly of this whale exactly the same that the Lord Jesus
was in the heart of the earth. So, but the scripture says three
days and three nights, and there will be those that will want
to debate that. We're not gonna waste our time
on that. We're gonna believe God, so. So verse one of chapter two,
Jonah prayed unto the Lord, his God, out of the fish's belly. David said, before I was afflicted,
I'd gone astray, but now I've kept thy word. How merciful the
Lord is to afflict us in order to put us on our knees and cause
us to cry out to him. And how, in times of comfort
and ease and prosperity, we are prone to lose sight of him. This is his mercy. This isn't
punitive. The only punitive wrath of God
was for the child of God was on Christ. This is mercy and
this is God's love toward his children. Verse two, and said, I cried
by reason of mine affliction. Unto the Lord, and he heard me
out of the belly of hell, or the grave, cried I, and thou
heardest my voice. For thou hast cast me into the
deep and the midst of the seas, and the floods can pass me about,
and all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Then I said,
I am cast out of thy sight, yet I will look again toward thy
holy temple. The waters can pass me about,
even to the soul. The depths closed me round about. The weeds were wrapped around
my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains. The earth,
with her bars, was about me forever. Yet hast thou brought up my life
from corruption, O Lord my God. When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the Lord. And my prayer came unto thee,
into thine holy temple now we need to be reminded
that everything about that Old Testament temple was a type of
Christ everything about it we're not going to go into any detail
tonight but you know that that temple the Lord Jesus said destroy
this temple and in three days I'll rise it again another reference
to his death and resurrection and the Jews thought that he
was talking about the physical temple his body he was made flesh
and the scripture says he dwelt among us that word dwelt is tabernacled
he tabernacled among us so he is the temple of God but when
we pray we pray to him we pray through him and we cry out in
his name my prayer came in unto thee into
thine holy temple They that observe lying vanities forsake their
own mercy. Now, I wanna stop there because
next Wednesday night I'd like to try to bring a message from
verse nine. But surely verse eight is a warning
to those who don't believe the gospel. those who observe lying
vanities. And that's what the false gospel
is, a works gospel. A gospel that says, if you do,
fill in the blank, then God will save you. And the only difference
between one man-made works religion and another is what goes in that
blank. Well, if you pray this prayer, if you make this decision,
if you perform this work, If you dress this way or eat this
or go here and there, then that's lying vanities. That's peace,
peace when there is no peace. That's making God dependent upon
us for him to be able to save us. That's man putting himself
on the throne of God. That's a lying vanity. And those
who observe lying vanities, whatever they might be, empty promises,
that's what lying vanities mean. They promise you something that
it doesn't deliver. That's what the false prophet
says. If you do this, then God will do that. It's a false promise,
it's a lying vanity. And in believing that, men forsake
their own mercy. Because the only mercy that there
is, is in Christ. And mercy is God withholding
from us what we deserve. What do we deserve? We deserve
the wrath of God. We deserve eternal separation
from God. The wages of sin is death. That's
what we deserve. And to observe vanities is to
forsake any hope of mercy. Our God delights in showing mercy
but he won't show mercy to those who observe lying vanities. So the truth of that is clearly
seen in holding on to a man-made freewill works gospel. But I
remind you that Jonah is speaking these words and Jonah is in the
belly of this whale, this fish, this great fish as a result of
his disobedience. And the lying vanity that Jonah
observed was that he thought better than God. God told him
to go to Nineveh. Now we talked about that last
Wednesday night. We know the The disdain, the
hatred, the bitterness, that what we see going on in the Middle
East right now, it goes all the way back to here. You know, this
isn't anything new. For the Lord to show mercy towards
Nineveh, the capital of Syria, the bitter enemies of Israel?
Jonah thought, I'm not going to do that. And then after God
corrected him and the Lord chastised him, and put him back, Jonah
said, I knew you were God of mercy. After the Lord showed
mercy on the city of Nineveh, Jonah confesses in chapter four,
he said, that's the reason I wanna go. That's the reason. But here's the bottom line. Jonah
thought that, well, Jonah was following his feelings. his resentment towards the Syrians
rather than believing God. Is that not what sin is? And I would also say that this
word observe in our text is a participle which means it is a continuing
action. We're not talking about that
we're not talking about the thoughts and the words and the things
that every believer is painfully made aware of every day as they
live in this body of flesh. We're talking about an overt
act of disobedience where they are observing a lying vanity
and in doing so they are forsaking their own mercy. Will God allow
one of his children to get deep into disobedience and sin? Yes,
he will. Yes, he will. He did it to David. How long was David in denial
about what he had done with Uriah and Bathsheba? And you've known
in your own experience where a prolonged act of disobedience
and rebellion against God will bring about a forsaking of your
mercy. And this is the Lord's grace
that he would withdraw. What is the forsaking of the
mercy that he shows us? Is it affliction? Is it trouble
that the Lord puts us in? Sometimes, sometimes, but most
often, It's the withdrawal of His presence. Now, you say, someone
said, well, he said, I'll never leave you, I'll forsake you.
No, but He'll withdraw. You can grieve the Holy Spirit
and He'll withdraw His peace and the comfort and rest and
joy that we have in Christ. Sin brings that about, doesn't
it? It brings that about. And so this, Let's be warned. And the Lord's so full of mercy.
Let me show you. Turn with me to Psalm 89. Psalm 89. This is not a word of rebuke
or correction. This is a word of mercy. This
is a word of grace. This is the Lord's love. A child
has to be disciplined. They have to be corrected. I'm
going to show you a verse on that in order to know that they
are loved. And the same thing's true with
God's people. Now, let me show you what David
said in Psalm 89. Look at verse 30. And if his children forsake my
law and walk not in my judgments, they're observing a lying vanity. If they break my statutes and
keep not my commandments, then will I visit their transgressions
with the rod and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless, my
loving kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my
faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break,
nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips." Our Lord's loving correction
is not punitive. It is corrective. And it's always
comes. Let's look at Hebrews chapter
12. Hebrews chapter 12. Verse five. And you have forgotten the exhortation
which speaketh unto you as unto children. My son despise not
the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of
him. For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and scourgeth every
son whom he receiveth. If you endure chastening, God
dealeth with you as sons. For what son is he whom the father
chasteneth not? But if you be without chastisement,
wherefore all are partakers, then are ye bastards and not
sons." Illegitimate children. This is the Lord's reminding
us of his mercy and his love toward us when he convicts us
of our sin. and pains our hearts with the
lack of his presence. Furthermore, we have had fathers
of our flesh which corrected us and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in
subjection unto the father of spirits and live? For they barely
for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure, but he for
our prophet that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now,
no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless, afterward, it yieldeth
the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them that are exercised
by it." It's an exercise. And the Lord has one objective.
to produce the peaceable fruit of righteousness in the hearts
of his children. As they are like Jonah, like
Jonah, brought back again. Let me show you another couple
of verses in Proverbs. Turn with me to Proverbs 13,
Proverbs chapter 13. And as I read these verses, we
need to also be reminded of what the apostle Paul said about fathers,
provoke not your children to anger lest they be discouraged.
And a child is provoked to anger when they're rebuked in anger. So let's be reminded how the
Lord chastises us, and we've all done that, all of us. That's
what we just read in Hebrews chapter 12, that a father, after
his own pleasure, he, but God's not that way. He corrects us
perfectly and we ought to seek to do that with our children.
Look at Proverbs chapter 13 at verse 24. He that spareth
his rod, hateth his son, but he that loveth him, chafeth him
many times, many times. Now we live in a, in a culture
that thinks that corporal punishment is something evil. That's what
God says about it. The Lord hadn't changed his mind
about it. Rod of correction drives foolishness from the heart of
a child. But I wanted you to see here that children need to
be, they need to be corrected in order to know they're loved.
Look at Proverbs 23. verse 13 withhold correction not from
the child for if thou beateth him with the rod he shall not
die thou shalt beat him with the rod and shall deliver his
soul from hell now that's God's Word brother and like I said
we don't what a blessing it is when a child is is chastened
in love and immediately afterwards, a child crawls up into the lap
of its parent and both are crying and the child's hugging the neck
of the father and thanking the father. This is, if children
aren't, why am I saying this? You know how to correct your
children. I'm not trying to teach you how to do that. I'm saying
this to say that this is the way the Lord corrects us. He
chastises us. And might, though it's not pleasant
for the season, the purpose of it is to produce the peaceable
fruit of righteousness. And what Joan, I believe, is
talking about here in our text is he had observed lying vanities. And in doing so, he forsook his
own mercy. And now, now the Lord has corrected
him. He's put him, well, all those
things we just read in chapter two, and Jonah comes out and
he says, salvations of the Lord. And he's been duly chastised. Turn to me, if you will, to Psalm
22. Psalm 22, because this story, though we can learn many
lessons from it about our own walk of faith, it is first and
foremost about Christ. This is the Lord's suffering
and agony that he went through. on calvary's cross that we just
read in jonah chapter two and in psalm twenty-two we know this
is christ he cried this from the cross my god my god why hast
thou forsaken me so the lord jesus himself is experiencing
what you and i experience he's burying our sins in his body
and the father has forsaken him and And here's our experience. When we sin, we feel the absence
of his presence and the power of his mercy and of his love
toward us. And we cry out, my God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping
me and from the words of my roaring? Oh my God, I cry in the daytime,
but thou hear'st me not. And in the night season, am I
not silent? And I love the next four, the
next verses, the next words, but thou art holy. Here's the Lord Jesus in all
the agony that he's experiencing on Calvary's cross. He's concluding
though the Lord has forsaken him. It hasn't changed his father,
his father's holy and his father's right and whatever he does. What a blessing when the Lord
brings us to that place. Be sober and be vigilant, for
your adversary, like a roaring lion, seeketh whom he may devour. Satan. is the great liar. He's the father of lies. He's
a deceiver. He's the tempter. He's the one
that's behind all sin. And the Lord's tell Peter's telling
us Peter knows something about this. And I'm sure that when
Peter's writing this, he's thinking about that night before our Lord
was was crucified and what he did in cursing with denying Christ
with cursing. And so he says, be sober, be
sober, brethren, be vigilant. Your adversary, like a roaring
lion, seeketh whom he may devour, whom resists steadfastly in the
faith, in the faith. Now, the only way to resist Satan
is to cry out, is to cry out to our God and look to Christ
and say, Lord, thou art holy. Lord, answer me speedily. And here, and I love the rest
of what Peter says, knowing that these same afflictions are accomplished
in your brethren in the world. Sometimes we might feel like
Elijah running from Jezebel, calling out to God and saying,
Lord, I'm the only one, nobody else understands. And the Lord
corrects Elijah, and he says to him, no, I've got 7,000 that
haven't bowed their knee to Baal, Elijah, you're not the only one.
You've got other brethren in the world that are tempted by
Satan. And they've had the peaceable
fruit of righteousness accomplished in their lives. the same affliction
are accomplished in your brother. It's comforting to know that
this is every believer's experience. Now, the horrors of Jonah's experience as much as Daniel is a picture
of Christ going into the lion's den. We know what a lion is. We know what a walled den would
be. We understand that those lions
were being held off by a miracle of God. But we can sort of relate
to perhaps a little bit of what Daniel went through in that experience. When we think about what Joseph's
brothers did to him in throwing him into the pit, and Joseph
is a type of Christ, and how he was taken out of that pit
and sold into slavery, and all that went on in Joseph's life,
we can relate a little bit to that experience. When we think
about the disciples in the boat on the Sea of Galilee and threatened
with their lives in the midst of a storm, we know a little
bit about those kinds of fears and those kinds of experiences. To think about three days and
three nights in the belly of a whale, I have no clue what that means.
Was he swimming? Was he floating? Was the digestive
juices of the whales beginning to decay his flesh and was it
obviously was pitch dark and the smell? The thought of spending that
much time in the belly of a whale, We can't, we can identify with
some of many of the other stories in the Bible. How can you identify
with this? There's nothing in our experience
that gives us any ability whatsoever to identify what it would be
like spending three days and three nights in the belly of
a whale. So what's your point preacher?
Well, this is the story of Christ. And though we cannot identify
with what Jonah went through, we would much sooner relate to
Jonah's experience than we would be able to relate to the experience
that the Lord Jesus had when he bore our sins and suffered
the forsaking of his father. Here we have the one who's holy,
harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners and higher than
the heavens. Here we have one whose eyes are too pure to look
upon iniquity, one who has never experienced sin. He's perfect
righteousness. And he goes to Gethsemane that
night and he prays, Father, if there be any way this cup can
pass from me, let it be nevertheless not my will, but thy will be
done. We're so accustomed to sin. Sin
doesn't bother us much until it gets real bad and the correcting
hand of God gets real heavy and the sense of his presence
is gone and the spirit is grieved and the fear and the sadness
and we're driven back. But even then, even then, our
experience with sin, we get over it pretty quick. We get over
it pretty quick. And what the Lord Jesus prayed
and what he did in drinking the cup of God's wrath and the cup
of sin down to its bitter dregs, and what he experienced those
three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, we have
no clue. We would much sooner identify
with Jonah's experience As foreign as that is to anything that we
know anything about, then we would be able to relate to what
the Lord Jesus experienced. When he who knew no sin was made
sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
the agony, the shame, the sorrow, the separation, all that he went
through. These words that Jonah's speaking
in Jonah chapter two, that's Christ. And we have a few words
recorded in scripture that the Lord spoke on Calvary's cross. Seven brief sayings that we have
of him recorded in scripture. What was he? What was he doing
the rest of those three hours? Well, I suspect that he was reading,
that he was reciting Psalm 38 and that he was reciting Jonah
chapter two, that he was offering up these words as prayers to
his heavenly father. We cannot begin. to understand
that by God's grace, by God's grace, we can believe that whatever it was that he
suffered is what we should have suffered, what we should have
suffered. And apart from him, apart from
him, it is what all men will suffer for all eternity. They that observe lying vanities
forsake their own mercy. Let's pray. Our heavenly father,
thank you for the story of Jonah. Thank you, Lord, for reminding
us of your loving, correcting compassion toward your children. Thank you for showing us in these
words what the Lord Jesus suffered when he went down into the pit
and had the weeds wrapped around his head and was in the bottom
of the mountains. Lord, what hope we have in knowing
that you were satisfied with what he did, that we never have
to fear that judgment. Lord, help us to remember and
to believe all that you have said. We ask it in Christ's name,
amen. Adam, 216, 216, let's stand together.