All right, brethren, we're going
to be looking at Jonah chapter 2 this morning, but if you will,
let's open by looking in Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5. We begin in verse 8. Romans 5.8. But God commendeth His love towards
us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,
much more than. Now, being now justified by His
blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if When
we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son,
much more being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. And not only so, but we also
joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received
the atonement. Because Christ died for those
given to Him by the Father, He bore the wrath that we deserved. We have been reconciled to God
because of that. We've been reunited with God. And we have received atonement. That word means at-one-ment.
Reconciled. Brought back together with Christ.
Now let's turn to Jonah. Book of Jonah. Amos, Obadiah, Jonah. The prayer
of Christ in chapter 2 is a fulfillment of the scriptures here in Jonah.
Jonah chapter 2. I'm going to read you a lot of
scriptures this morning, and I hope to show you that this
is our Lord speaking. As we work through John, remember
in chapter 1, that's a picture of a child of disobedience. The
Lord spoke to Jonah and he said, you go to Nineveh, preach to
them people, I want them saved, they're mine. And Jonah went
and got the first ticket to Tarshish. He was supposed to go west, he
went east, fast as he could. That's a picture of us running
the damn nation. And we pay the price, we pay
the ticket to go there. There's a cost to it. And the
Lord sent the tempest. The Lord sent it. He sent a storm
on that boat because those mariners on that boat were his. Jonah
was his, and those seamen that's on that boat, they were his people.
And the waves were rough. The Lord sent that storm to save
those people, to show them something. Jonah really happened. This really
happened. As Donnie Bell said, I told you
that last week, Donnie said that I believe that Jonah was swallowed
by a whale and if the scripture said Jonah swallowed a whale,
I believe that too. That's what the Lord recorded.
This happened just as real as Christ came. Just as real as
Christ calmed the tempest. Just as real as He bore the wrath.
That's how real this is. So many times we've heard and
we say that the Lord Jesus Christ bore the wrath of the sins of
His people. And we say that without consideration. How little do
we consider what that means? It's not... He didn't pay for
our sins. It's not paying for a candy bar.
It's not a nominal transaction. He bore the wrath of God for
His people. God turned His back on Christ. God forsook God for me. For you that believe Him. You,
He's quickened. And what little I think on it,
and what little bit I can understand of it, it just pales into comparison
to what really took place. what actually happened, what
he actually suffered for my sin, for me, for what I am. We see
there in chapter 1, verse 11, those mariners were on that boat,
the Lord sent the storm, and those mariners said unto Jonah,
Jonah 1.11, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be
calm to us? For the sea is wrought and was
tempestuous. And he said unto them, Take me
up, and cast me forth into the sea, throw me into the wrath,
so shall the sea be calm unto you." The raging sea is a picture
of God's wrath, God's judgment against sin. What will it take
for that sea to be calm for a sinner? I see the Lord's judgment, what
is it going to do to me? What's going to make that go
away? What's going to make it calm down for you and me? Jonah is
a sign of Christ. He's a picture of Christ. He
says, you throw me in and the sea is going to be calm to you.
I'll bear. It's going to be calm for you.
Jesus suffered in our place and He consumed the wrath of God
for His people. Verse 17, Jonah 1.17, Now the
Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah
was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
This is a picture of Christ going to the grave. This is a picture
of Christ. So many people say, well, you
believe in God, prove it. Show me something. If I could
take my finger and pick a chair up and move it over to that side
of the room, that wouldn't prove nothing to you if you want me
to move more chairs. Our Lord told them in Matthew 12, those
Pharisees and those scribes, those high-minded theologians
of that day, they came to Him and they said, we would see a
sign from thee. If you're Christ, prove it. I
want evidence. Prove it. And Christ answered
him. He said, An evil and adulterous
generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall be no sign given
to it but the sign of the prophet Jonas, of Jonah. For as Jonah
was in the three days and three nights in the whale's belly,
so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth. He said, Do you want a sign that He is
the Christ? Go read Jonah and watch what's
about to happen. Christ told them, I am the Christ.
Here's your proof. The Scriptures speak of me from
beginning to end. It's a hymn book. H-I-M. From Genesis to Revelation, it's
about Christ. That's our sign. We have that
sign today. And the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
That word prepared means He ordained. He purposed a great fish. Now that happened before Jonah
was thrown overboard, wouldn't it? This wasn't happenstance. The Lord prepared a great fish.
Christ's death on Calvary's cross, His bearing our sins, that was
purposed. It was ordained by God the Father. In Acts 2.23, it says, Him, Christ,
being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of
God. He was taken to Calvary. The
love of a particular people. The foreknowledge. Knowing. We
looked at before. Knowing is loving. Before. That foreknowledge of God the
Father through His determinate counsel. That's not a suggestion. That's a determinate counsel.
He delivered Christ to His throne of judgment. It was ordained. It was prepared. Here in Jonah
chapter 2 we see Christ our Savior pictured in His death. his burial
and his resurrection. Now if this was only a historical
figure, if Jonah was a prophet, if this was just a story about
Jonah the prophet and that was it, we would sit back and say,
what a lovely story. We can make some wallpaper to
put in nurseries about this stuff and tell kids these stories go
to bed. That's just nice, isn't it? But
if we can see this, if the Lord gives us eyes to have insight
to what Christ actually suffered in the just wrath of God, we
have something truly to rejoice in. Something truly to magnify
Him in. Now this fish was a picture of
the grave. It was a picture of death. And it swallowed up Jonah.
Christ was immersed in the grave and in death that we rightly
earned. we truly earned. Paul wrote to
us in Galatians 4 and said, but when the fullness of time was
come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the
law, to redeem them that were under the law that we might receive
the adoption of sons. Christ came and obeyed the Father
as a man on this earth. He honored the Father in all
things. and lived a perfect life, a sinless
life, righteously for His elect, for those people put in Him,
and given us His righteousness. And that perfect conception,
that perfect life, perfect death, that perfection counted, put
in our account and counted to us, imputed to us. He took our
suffering and our wrath. And 2 Corinthians 5 says, He
was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made
His righteousness, the righteousness of God in Him. Because He was
made what I am, I'm made what He is. And because, just the
opposite, because I'm made righteous, He has to be made sin for me. Suffered look there in verse
1 Jonah 2 1 then Jonah prayed unto the Lord God Lord his God
out of the fish's belly And the first chapter we see Jonah is
that rebel a disobedient child cross was perfect, but he was
made to be Us rebels what now he took upon himself our sin
and our rebellion and he willingly entered the grave and for honoring
God and saving of those vessels of honor, those vessels put in
Him, and looking and praying to the Father always, upholding
that moral law. People bring up the law, and
they say, well, there's a moral law, and a civil law, and a Levitical
law, the Mosaic law, and all these things. That's the moral
law. We have to obey God and believe Him at all times. Remember
that first commandment out of Exodus 20, don't we? Thou shalt
have no other gods before me. That's no matter our condition.
No matter what's going on in our lives. That's not on Wednesdays
and Sundays. We are to honor the Lord, trust
the Lord, and pray to the Lord at all times while we're sleeping. Our Savior did that from the
tomb while in the fish's belly. Talk about a trial. When things
come up in our lives, we say, wow, I have to go to church this
week because something is going on. Or I don't have to read this
morning because I got up late last night and had to work some
or something. While in the fish's belly, Christ prayed to the Lord.
Verse 2, and said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto
the Lord. By reason of His affliction.
Let's turn over to Psalm 51. We'll be looking back and forth
between Psalm and Jonah a little bit this morning. We know that these psalms, they
label some psalms as messianic psalms, but every psalm is our
Messiah speaking. We know that. Psalm 51, look
in verse 1. Psalm 51.1, Have mercy upon me,
O God, according to thy loving kindness, according unto the
multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine
iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin, for I acknowledge my
transgressions. And my sin is ever before me.
Against thee and thee only have I sinned, and done this evil
in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest,
and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me." Well, people would say,
well, that's not Christ. He had immaculate conception.
He was born of the Holy Ghost. Yes, but we were made one with
Christ. He bore our sin. Each and every
one of them. Not just what we are, but the
individual ones. And we became His righteousness.
That means the sin we've committed since 13 minutes ago we started. Christ bore those sins for His
people. He bore my conception. He didn't commit that, but He
owned it, didn't He? I didn't perform His righteousness,
but I own it now because of Him. We are required to repent. We're
required to turn from ourselves. We're required to acknowledge
what we are and turn from it. To denounce ourselves and to
beg the Lord for mercy. Do we do that for every sin?
Every time I sin, since I've sinned here this morning, have
I turned from it, rejected it, and begged God for mercy for
my sin? the millions I've committed. We don't even know what our sin
is, do we? It's those Levitical laws. That's
been on my mind all week, because we're going to be eating quite
a bit. If you're going to obey the Ten Commandments, you have
to obey the moral law and you have to obey all the Levitical
law. And if you ever have a medium well steak, you just ruined every
bit of it. We don't even know what them
laws are. We don't even know what our sins are, do we? But our Master prayed
for mercy on our behalf. He bore our sins. Look there
in verse 9, Psalm 51 9. Hide thy face from my sins and
blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O
God, and renew a right spirit within
me. Cast me not away from thy presence and take not thy Holy
Spirit from me. Every time, every day I'm required
to beg, Lord, don't leave me alone. Give me a new heart. Keep me clean and pure. Look
unto you. My master begged that for me.
I'm back in our text in Jonah 2. Jonah 2, verse 2. It said, I
cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and He heard me. Out of the belly of hell cried
I, and thou hearest my voice." The Lord heard him. The Lord
hears him always, didn't he? We remember whenever Lazarus
had died, Martha Mary sent for our Lord and he waited three
days, didn't he? Waited a few days and he went there and they
took the stone away from the place where the dead was laid
and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank thee
that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest
me always, but because of the people which stand by, I said
it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me." He says,
Lord, I commune with you always, and you always hear me. But because
of these poor sinners that need to know that I'm the Christ,
I'm going to say this out loud, and they're going to watch this
miracle happen. That'd be something to see, wouldn't it? In Jonah, in this book that we
have in our homes, Christ cried to the Lord and the Lord heard
him. You ever want to see that happen?
Go read Jonah 2. We get a witness of miracle every time our eyes
go across them words, don't we? What did he cry? The payment
for sin was made. He's bowing what he bowed, paying
what he bowed. In Matthew 27 it says, And in
the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli,
lama sabachthani? That is to say, My God, My God,
why hast thou forsaken Me? He was forsaken. God turned His
back on him. And He's the one that did it.
You who believe Christ, you who look to Him for all your salvation,
He's your only hope. God forsook God in your place. He did it. That sacrificial work
of Christ and the act of divine justice on behalf of the Father
took place for you. He did it. We saw this morning,
but God. Salvation to the Lord. Look in
verse 3. For thou hast cast me into the
deep. In the midst of the sea and the
floods compassed me about, all thy billows and thy waves passed
over me. The Father made Christ to be
us and then He smote Him over and over again. Christ did exactly
what was demanded and exactly what God's eternal counsel dictated. And all of thy billows and waves
were cast on Him. Nothing was held back. It wasn't
a slap on the wrist. He took it all. Everything I
deserve, everything you deserve, and everything that every saint
deserves from creation to the end of this world. That's unfathomable. My sin is unfathomable. You multiply
that by the grains of the sands of the sea. God Almighty must
deal with sin, wave after wave. He says in the Scriptures, without
blood there's no remission of sins. He will in no wise clear
the guilty. The soul that sinneth, it must
surely die. And He's God. He cannot lie.
He's just. He's holy. It has to be dealt
with. Verse 4, Jonah 2.4, Then said
I, Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight, yet will I look
again toward thy holy temple. Because of our iniquity laid
on him, our master was cast from the presence of the Father. I've
told you that several times. Hell's not a place where there's
a little bit of fire and a devil with a pitchfork and somebody's
being mean to you. It's knowing. Every knee shall
bow and every tongue confess that Jesus crossed His Lord.
You will know Him. You will love Him for who He
is and what He did and then you'll depart from Him. And that worm
that never dies. Talk about homesick. Spend eternity
being cast away from God and knowing Him and loving Him and
wanting to spend time with Him. And His presence not be with
you. I am cast out of thy sight."
And while on the fish's belly, while cast out of the Lord's
sight, he says, yet will I look again towards thine holy temple.
He still looked towards God's holy temple as an obedient servant. In Psalm 5, it says, the foolish
shall not stand in thy sight. Thou hatest the workers of iniquity.
Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing. The Lord will
abhor the bloody and deceitful man, but as for me, I will come
into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy, and in thy fear
will I worship toward thy holy temple." 300 years before Jonah
wrote his autobiography called Jonah, David prophesied this. Jonah came, wrote it, prophesied
this. Our master came and said, this
is what will happen, and then it happened. Two or three witnesses,
there's four. Here, Christ is the obedient
Savior. In full faith, in full hope,
in full assurance, He looked to the Father's holy temple while
bearing the full wrath of His judgment. That is true faith,
isn't it? That's why we always say it's
the faith of Jesus Christ that's given to us. It's His faith in
us. Do you want your own faith? Or do you want this faith? If
I was in that position, I would fail. Whatever I mustered up
ain't going to last. Not that fire. Not those waves.
His faith. That's the faith we're given.
Now, verse 5. The water encompassed me about,
even to the soul. The depth closed round about
me. The weeds were wrapped about my head. He says this happened. It's not just on the outside.
This is not as if. It happened to His soul. In a
garden of Gethsemane, Our Lord took those three disciples up
there and He said, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto
death. Tear ye here and watch with me.
Watch with me. In Psalm 69 it says, Save me,
O God, for the waters are come unto my soul. I sink in deep
mire where there is no standing. I come into deep waters where
the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying. My throat
is dried. My eyes fail when I wait for
my God. They that hate me without a cause
are more than the hairs of my head. They that would destroy
me, being my enemies wrongfully, Armadi, then I restored that
which I took not away. A man can't say that. We can't
restore nothing, can we? I can build a chicken coop and
it'll last till the first wind comes along. They compassed him about. Verse
5, The waters compassed me about, even to the soul. The deep closed
round about me. The weeds were wrapped about
my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains. The earth with
her bars was about me forever. Yet hast thou brought me up,
my life from corruption, O Lord my God. It says there the bottoms
of the mountains. He was brought to be a man. He was made the lowest in the
kingdom. from His places on high, came down here to be with us
worms brought low. The bars of the earth, that's
translated as jagged places, piercing objects. He was pierced
for us. He must suffer and He must die. If Christ did not bear our wrath,
every one of us are hopelessly lost forever. We know nothing of the wrath
of God against sin. We cannot, on this earth, enter
into it. And I'm thankful that because
of Christ my substitute, I will never have to enter into that.
It'll never be experienced. But we do know how long it lasts.
He said forever. Man's payment for sin, the debt
I owe, can't be paid back to satisfy God. That's why damnation's
eternal. That's why it lasts an eternity. Now, I don't know what technically
took place, but I know that Christ fully paid in three days what
would take every saint of His, every sheep that was put in Him
before the earth, an eternity to pay individually. He paid
it in three days. That speaks to the value and
the preciousness of the blood of Christ, what it accomplished. His person and His majesty, His
glory, it's unfathomable. We can't enter into it. Verse 6 says, "...yet hast thou
brought my life up from corruption, O Lord my God." Psalm 1610 says,
"...for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou
suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt show me
the path of life in thy presence is fullness of joy at thy right
hand. There are pleasures for evermore."
It says, "...Christ was made sin, who knew no sin?" How could
it be effectual and really have, it's not as if, it's not pretend.
He became me, but not see corruption. God said so. I don't know how
He could become me, be made to sin, pay my eternal payment on
my behalf and never be corrupted. But I also don't understand how
this earth orbits the sun at the right distance where it's
not too hot and it's not too cold and it's spinning at 19,000
miles an hour. I can't enter into that really.
How did that happen? How does that keep happening?
But I go outside every morning and I stand in the sun and I
said, well, it feels good, don't it? I don't understand how that
happened, but boy, for a sinner who has no hope and no payment,
That feels good on your skin, don't it? That feels good in
your heart. That's understanding like a child. You have to be
like a child to enter the kingdom of heaven. I don't know how he
did it, but he did it. With faith given to us, his faith
given to us, we believe, don't we? Verse 7, When my soul fainted
within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came unto thee
into thine holy temple. We know something about this
person. Look, last week this is a prayer of a sinner from
Jonah's point of view, and this week we're looking at it as a
cross prayer. But we experience something with this. We have
trials, and we're made to remember the Lord's suffering. And that's
why you and I don't faint. That's the heaviest trial that
we put on us. Boy, we get down low, sometimes
for a long time. And we're depressed and miserable.
And then we're brought to remember our Master, what He suffered,
just to slightly enter into it. And we said, well, that's nothing.
What I've got is nothing, is it? That's why Paul told us in
2 Corinthians, for which cause we faint not. That's why we don't
faint. But though our outward man perish,
yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction,
which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and
eternal weight of glory." Our kinsman redeemer. One that was
akin to us. He was able to redeem us and
He was willing to redeem us. He willingly became sin. He willingly
bore that wrath for His people and He took the full punishment.
All of it. And it says there, He fainted.
That word means it rolled up on itself. He bowed to the Lord,
to the Father. He fully submitted to the wrath
of Almighty God for sin in my place. That's required of us
too. He didn't flinch when He took it. And Deuteronomy 27 says,
Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law
to do them. After we're given that long list
of do's that we can't do, that proves Christ the one that did
it, it says you not only have to do it, you have to confirm
it. You have to agree with it. Some
might say, well I kept the Ten Commandments, but if you did
it through gritted teeth, it don't count. You have to confirm
it. Christ rolled himself up. He bowed before the Lord. While our Savior was being smote
of God, He did not resist that judgment. He remembered the Lord,
and He knew that that punishment that was put on Him was right,
it was just. Now here's the God-man suffering
for us. In the belly of the whale, the
full billows of the waves, we see in verse 8, they that observe
lying vanities forsake their own mercy. You look to something vain in
this world, some act of us doing. Well, I have strong faith. Not
this faith. That's a lying vanity, isn't
it? You're forsaking your own mercy. Well, I chose Him. That's forsaking your own mercy. He's reminding us. He's preaching
to us while in the fish's belly. Verse 9. Here's what true mercy
is. But I will sacrifice unto thee
with the voice of thanksgiving, I will pay that which I vowed."
He didn't say, I will try to pay. I'm going to do the best
I can to pay, or I'm going to pay most of it. He said, I will
pay that that I have vowed salvation is of the Lord. What did he pay? Himself. What was it that he
vowed? He vowed in time past, before
Adam was created, the Lord chose a people. That's what we read
in Ephesians 1 last week. God the Father purposed a people. Christ said, I will redeem them.
I will be their surety. Christ is the elect. He's the
firstborn among many brethren. And he said, I'll be their substitute.
I'll die for them. And he's saying here, I will
pay that which I have vowed. And it says, salvation is of
the Lord. That's capital L, capital O,
capital R, capital D. Salvation is of Jehovah. Now as Jonah, as a sinner, we
see these things, we say, Lord, I bow to you and I declare, but
God, salvation is of the Lord. Christ here is saying, I will
sacrifice unto thee with a voice of thanksgiving. Thank you for
doing this, Lord. I will pay that which I have
vowed. He's the only one that can pay
it. He's the only one that can vow it. And he says salvation
is of the triune God, Jehovah. He's saying salvation's of me.
Anything else is a lying vanity, and you're just throwing mercy
away. Salvation's of Him. Verse 10, at that, and the Lord
spake unto the fish and vomited out Jonah upon the dry ground.
That's where we'll begin next week in verse 10, but when salvation
was accomplished. When divine justice was satisfied,
when He bore everything that's unimaginable to us, the Lord
spake to the fish and vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.
We know that the seas, the Lord's wrath, that's His mercy. Was
there any waves on dry land? Ain't no water there. It's done. It's gone. Not to be worried
about, not to be remembered again. And whenever Christ said, it
is finished, that meant it is finished. That meant for you
that trust in Him, who don't believe in lying vanities, there's
no wrath for you for eternity, for time to come. You're set
on dry ground. Why? God the Father purposed
it. He said, I'm going to make a
whole people just like my Son. He predestinated them to be like
Christ. That means conformed to His image. Have His Spirit
in His image. Christ purchased us in this.
He suffered the wrath of God. Gave us His perfect conception,
His perfect life, His holy being, His Spirit. And the Holy Ghost
comes to us and reveals that to us. That's the whole first
13 verses in Ephesians 1. How does that happen in our day?
I just told you. Has the Spirit revealed it to
you? Does He work effectually in our hearts? Or do we hear
that and say, Christ did everything and He just tells me about it
and gives me a nature like His. Do we close our eyes and cover
our ears and say, No! Or say, Amen. I don't understand
it but that is wonderful. I want to learn more of Him. And to see that, to understand
that, I don't want to sin anymore. People say, the Lord abolished
the law. There's no moral law. There's
no civil law. Nothing for His people. Well, then you go out
and live like you wanted to. I don't want to. There's a payment
that comes for me sinning. I sin enough. I don't want to
sin no more. I can't keep from it. Only a new heart will beg
for that. I pray the Lord gives it to His
people. Let's pray together.