Good evening. I invite your attention
tonight back to the book of Jonah, this time chapter two. Jonah chapter two. And this morning, I think I forgot
to say it, but Brother Gabe and your brethren in Kingsport send
their love and greetings. You know, I was just thinking,
I mentioned this morning that I was tired and I got a good
nap today, but I'm tired again. But the songs we keep singing
just keep getting me excited to tell us again of our wonderful
Lord and Savior. And I was just sitting there
thinking, singing that last song. We're singing it nice and slow
like you guys do, and I love it every time. And it really
lets you enter into it sometimes. And I was just thinking, this
is what we're gonna do forever. Y'all mention all the time, our
time is coming, we're gonna leave here. Not out the doors, I mean
leave here in the world and pass into the new heaven and the new
earth to be with our Lord. There's gonna be one preacher
there, you know that? It ain't gonna be me, I'm so
thankful. It ain't gonna be Donny, it ain't gonna be Gabe, it ain't
gonna be Don, it ain't gonna be Henry, it's gonna be our Lord. And we're all gonna sit at his
feet and we're gonna hear him speak. I'm looking forward to
that. Just that very thought got me
excited to get up here for a few minutes and look into his word
again. Pray he might truly bless us. Jonah chapter two. So this morning we looked at
chapter one. We saw Jonah, God's prophet here. We saw him blatantly disregard
God and his command to go to Nineveh. And then we saw God's
goodness to him in spite of him. And I love that. Like I said,
I can see myself in Jonah. I do nothing but sin against
my God. I should be thankful and praising
him every moment, but I'll just be honest with you, I'm not.
More often than not, I'm not. Okay, and yet in spite of me,
in spite of who I am, what I am, what I do continually, God has
nothing but goodness for me. Shows you who gets the glory,
don't it? It ain't us. We saw the God of all grace,
and that's who He is, that's the God we serve, the God of
all grace, gracious God, loving, kind God, merciful, forgiving.
We saw Him overrule Jonah's evil, for much good, not only to Jonah,
but to all those sailors. And that just blesses my heart
to read what the Lord did for them. And we saw Jonah as a picture
of us and a picture of Christ. It's all about Christ. Now, I'd
like to pick up where we left off, and we'll actually start
with the last verse we looked at, Jonah 1, verse 17. It says,
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. Now chapter two, it's a short
chapter, I pray this message will be short. And this whole
second chapter is about Jonah in the belly of this fish. What
took place while Jonah was in the fish's belly, all right?
Now let's look here, verse one of chapter two. Then Jonah prayed
unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly, And 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 heardest my voice." Here Jonah is. He's just been
swallowed by a fish or a whale. Had to be a big fish, right?
What does he do? He prayed. What else could he do? But you
know what? I say that, but we don't read about him complaining.
When a trial comes my way, that's the only thing I do. He prayed. And I'm glad he did. You know,
not long ago, Jonah was there sleeping on a boat, not even
caring about what he'd just done. You remember, God used that captain,
that shipmaster, to go wake him up. He was awake then, and buddy,
you better believe he's awake now. in the belly of a fish. We can't even imagine such a
circumstance. And here he is. God put him there. Isn't it obvious? Now, remember
Jonah, he put himself in trouble. He got himself in trouble. That's
where we are because of our sin. But then God in mercy, I want
us to remember that as we go through this. God in mercy put
him in that fish. When they threw him off that
boat, yes, God preserved him to be a picture of Christ. God
used Jonah physically to be the physical substitute for those
sailors. And here he's about to use this whale to physically
substitute for Jonah. It's all a picture of Christ.
But when they threw him off that boat, God didn't have to cause
that fish to come right where he was and swallow him up. It's
amazing that he did, isn't it? Truly amazing. And here he is
in this fish, and he's praying. And you know this, but when do
we find ourselves praying? When we have a need. You think
Jonah had a need? Here he is stuck in the stomach
of a fish. He found himself poor and needy. And we pray needing God to hear
us. We need Him to hear us. And if
you notice at the end of verse 2, He said, I cried and thou
heardest me. Thou heardest my voice. Do you
know why God will hear us? He hears us because He hears
His Son in whom He's well pleased. This prayer that we're going
to look at here, it's Jonah's prayer. But it's also our Lord's
prayer. He said, out of the belly of
hell. Jonah wasn't in hell. Do you know where Christ went to
save us? We'll see it here in a verse in just a minute. He
hears us because he hears Christ. Now look here, verse 3. He said,
for thou hast cast me into the deep, into the midst of the seas. You recall, who threw Jonah off
the boat? He just said, thou cast me into
the deep. Who threw him off the boat? Look
back at chapter one, verse 14. The sailors, they cried unto
the Lord and said, we beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee.
Let us not perish for this man's life and lay not upon us innocent
blood, for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee. You
did this, Lord. But then the very next verse
says, so they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea and
the sea ceased from her raging. Who did it? They did. Yeah, they did. Well, God did.
Yes, He did. Who crucified our Lord? You by
wicked hands have crucified and slain Him, and yet it was determined
by the foreknowledge and counsel of God. God did it. He's the
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Did we do it? Yep.
We're guilty. His blood's on our hands. That's
what our Father said. Let it be on our hands. Yet God
did it. I love that, blessin' my heart
to know it. Verse three again in chapter two. For thou hast
cast me into the deep, into the midst of the seas, and the floods
compassed me about. All thy billows and thy waves
passed over me. Jonah was cast into the depths
of the sea, but our Lord went far deeper than that. We can
say what the scriptures say, but we just can't understand
just how far down he went on purpose for us. You know, we're
going to be lifted up, literally lifted up with Him in the skies. That's what the scriptures say,
1 Thessalonians 4. And in glory, lifted up. For us to be lifted
up, He had to be cast down, down as far as He could go. He cried,
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Notice, Jonah didn't
cry that. Jonah, he's in a pitiful state
right here. He didn't cry that. He couldn't
cry that because he had not been forsaken by God. He hadn't. He couldn't be because
Christ was forsaken for him. You know, Jonah, I imagine he
felt forsaken. I imagine he felt forsaken. He
felt like all hope is lost. Look at me. Look at where I got
myself. Though it sometimes feels like
God has forsaken us, please remember this brothers and sisters and
I pray God will help me to remember it. He will not forsake us. He won't do it. Christ was forsaken
in our place. We won't be forsaken too. He
said concerning His people that He went to prepare a place for
us. He said He's going to bring us with Him. He said I'll never
leave you. I'll never forsake you. Take
that to heart. Take it. Remember it. Pray God cause us
to dwell on it. Now this matter of being cast
out and forsaken, somebody had to because of sin. Because of our sin, somebody
had to be cast out. Sin had to be punished. And you
know why hell is eternal? Why if we die in our sins, we'll
be forever in hell is because we can never satisfy God's holy
justice. But Christ can and He did. I'm
glad He was cast out in my place, aren't you? I'm glad I won't
have to suffer my sins forever and that He died to put away
my sin and He did. Forever. Verse 5 right here says,
The waters compassed me about, even to the soul. The depth closed
me round about. The weeds were wrapped about
my head. This matter of Christ being forsaken,
this matter of Christ being cast out in our place, how could that
be? He's God. How could God forsake
God? How could God die? He's God. He died. How could this happen?
Only one way. First of all, it must have been
an act of God. Second, He was made sin. The soul that sinneth
it shall die. Christ knew no sin. No guile
was found in His mouth. He only did that which was right
and just and holy and good. That's all He did. That's all
He was is nothing but goodness. The goodness of God personified.
And yet for Him to die, for Him to be forsaken, He must be made
something that He was not. Sin. made himself to be sin for
us who knew no sin that we, he didn't do it so that well maybe
somebody, no he did it so that we shall be made the righteousness
of God in him. He was made something he's not
and he made us to be something we're not and we could never
be on our own or by any works of our flesh. I rejoice to know
it. And where Jonah here, he said the weeds were wrapped about
my head. Christ wrapped himself head to
toe in the weeds of our sin. You know, they put that crown
of thorns on his head. From head to toe, he became what
we are. And he made us head to toe to be what he is. You know,
to be perfectly conformed to his image, can you imagine anything
greater? Honestly. You think of how disgusting
we are sometimes in our own sight, but imagine what we look like
to Him in His flesh. And yet He made us to look exactly
like His spotless Son. Oh my. One with Him. He is the righteousness of God.
And He said, this is the name wherewith she, my bride, shall
be called the Lord our righteousness. Same name as Him. One with Him.
Perfect in Him. It feels like right now we're
separated from Him, doesn't it? Because we're in this flesh,
we have these two natures warring against one another. We know
which one's winning, don't we? It's already won. The battle's
over. It's finished. The elder shall serve the younger. That
old man we've been living with is going to serve that new man.
He's going to serve Christ in us. Sin shall not have dominion
over us. We're going to drop this body of flesh. This corruption
is going to put on incorruption. We're going to look just like
him. We're going to be forever with our Lord. Now here in this
fish's belly, Jonah was troubled. He was troubled. He said there
in verse five, even to the soul, but by the grace of God and only
by the grace of God, Jonah had a good hope. It was exactly what
I'm here telling you about. He had a good hope in Christ.
And I pray we do too. In verse six, he went on to say,
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. Oh, Lord, my God. Jonah, literally,
he hit rock bottom. I don't know if I mentioned it
before, but in studying this, I read that the tallest mountain
in the world is actually underwater. He said, that's where I sank
to, the bottom of the mountains. The lowest he could go. You ever
feel like you've hit rock bottom? I really don't know if I have.
I mean, I feel troubled often, but I mean rock bottom. You just
utterly in despair. Well, that's where our brother
was. And spiritually speaking, that's
where I want to be. It's where I need to be, to have
no goodness in myself, nothing to cling to in here. It saddens
me when I hear people talk about their faith and Anything that
gives any boasting to us, because all boasting belongs to Him.
I'm telling you, there's nothing I can glory in. You know, we
think we're wise. I mean, surely, be not wise in
thine own eyes. That convicts me because I know that I am.
And it disgusts me when I think about it. I want to be wise in
Christ. I want Him to be all my righteousness.
You know, we think we're good, we do something or give, and
we think, oh, I did something good. Brother, we're filthy. We're not good, we're evil. Bad
don't cut it, we're worse than bad. Christ is good, he's so
good. I need him to be my all in all.
Jonah did, and God's teaching him that. And I pray he'd teach
us that too. Cause us to have nothing but him. To have nothing
to cling to in here and to find ourselves clinging completely
to him. Pray that's where we might find ourselves. May Christ
be all our hope from start to finish. And turn back here with
me to, we're gonna look at a couple verses in the Psalms. Look with
me at Psalm 16. So hold a finger in the Psalms
after we look at this. We'll go back to Jonah and then come
back. Psalm 16, verse 10. Jonah had said at the end of
verse 6, thou hast brought up my life from corruption. Oh Lord
my God, here's a picture of Christ. Psalm 16 verse 10 says, this
is speaking of Christ, for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell,
neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Well that verse right there tells
me Christ went to hell for his people, but he said you won't
leave my soul there. When Christ arose, that was proof.
God did not leave His soul there. He brought Him out because He
made satisfaction. His death atoned for our sin.
The resurrection is proof. He satisfied all He came to do.
He put away the sins of His people forever. He said, Thou wilt not
leave my soul there, and you will not suffer. You're holy
one to see corruption. Christ, shout, He was made sin,
but He was not made to see corruption. Explain it. You forget it. I
don't know. All I know is God said it, and I believe it. By
His grace, I believe it. God settles it. God said it,
that settles it. And I'm thankful He gave me faith to believe it.
I look back in Jonah. Jonah 2, verse 7. And let me say this. He will
not suffer Christ to see corruption. I just mentioned this corruption
is going to put on incorruption. All we are in this flesh is corruption.
God said, we're going to become incorruption. That's a blessed
thought. As we get older, me and Houston
will be 30 this year. Or, well, you may be next year.
Actually, I don't know. But anyway, we're getting old. And I'll go out, and I'll exercise. Then my hip will hurt for a week.
And then I'll go, and I'll get hurt. And something else will
hurt for a couple weeks. I mean, it's a reminder that literally,
physically, we're corruption. We corrupt ourselves physically,
but we've corrupted ourselves spiritually as far corrupt as
we could. Do we understand that? And God says, we're going to
put on incorruption. What a blessed thought. In Christ,
what Christ is, is what we are. It's what He made us to be. One
with Him. One with Him, He Himself. Whatever
He is, that's what He made us to be. Perfect, incorrupt, spotless,
holy, righteousness. That's what He's made us to be. You know, for anybody that is
still trusting in themselves, oh, may God have mercy on your
soul. May He cause us to truly need Him. Will you ever see how
beautiful He is? and just how putrefying, wretched
we are. Oh, we'll run to Him. Pray God
will cause us to. All right, Jonah 2, verse 7.
He said, When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord,
and my prayer came in unto thee and to thine holy temple. By God's grace, God preserved
Jonah, put him in this fish's belly. He put it on Jonah's heart
to pray out, call unto the Lord. His soul fainted within him.
Again, he hit the bottom. And he said, my prayer came in
unto thee, into thine holy temple. Sometimes we're troubled. And
I told you, my first reaction, my natural inclination is to
complain, to murmur and complain. Why me? I truly pray this, whatever,
I'm troubled by some things right now. I'm sure you are too, and
you mentioned all our brethren going through trials and tribulations.
I pray sincerely God would enable us to remember our Lord. There's a song, we sing it sometimes,
it's called In Tenderness He Sought Me. It says, oh, the love
that sought me. Remember the love that sought
you. Oh, the blood that bought me. You remember that blood that
was shed to redeem your soul and your body. Oh, the grace
that brought me to His fold. Remember His love, everlasting
love, perfect love, saving love. Remember His blood, that spotless,
perfect, pure, sin-atoning blood shed to redeem sinners from all
their sins. and that free, sovereign, amazing
grace that God so freely bestows to all His people. You remember
that. And remember that all of that is found in our Lord Jesus
Christ. Remember Him. He's got to remember
us. Yeah, that thief cried, Lord,
remember me. He did. He's got to remember all His
people. And I pray while we walk this earth that He'll cause us
to remember Him. Remember Him. who loved us and
gave himself for us. Verse 8, Jonah said, but I, I'm
sorry, verse 8, that they that observe lying fanaties forsake
their own mercy. Every time I read that, it feels
out of place to me. Every time I get to that, I think that.
But what Jonah's saying here, Jonah is owning up to what he
is. Jonah is calling out unto the Lord whom he needs to save
him, to help him, to get him out of that fish's belly. And
then he's confessing something. Lord, I'm a sinner. I forsake
lying vanities. Observe lying vanities. Forsake
mercy. Jonah knew that's what he was,
he knew that's what he'd done, and I know it too. God has been
so good to me, and yet every day of my life I take it for
granted. You just acknowledge the fact
that Jonah was a prophet of God. Told him, you go to Nineveh,
you preach to them. Cry out against their wickedness that's come
up before me. Jonah's response was, no God, I'm gonna do what
I wanna do. as a child of God. You think he took being a prophet
of God for granted? Sure seems like it, don't it?
You think he took being a child of God for granted? You think
in chapter 4, right after God had saved Nineveh, showed mercy
to who knows how many people, and the Lord has to ask him,
should I not? Shouldn't I be gracious and merciful
to them, Jonah? You think He took God's mercy
for granted? Of course He did. And I do too. I'm no better. But I pray that
as we look at this, that it would convict us, that we would see
ourselves, that we would truly see just how awful we are right
now. Not how bad I was 10 years ago.
I mean right now. While I'm sitting in a pew, I'm
going to church, I'm worshipping God by His grace. Yes, you are.
And yes, I am too. And I'm so thankful because my
flesh wouldn't put me here. My heart, people want to talk
about their good heart and get and keep their heart right with
God. There ain't but one good heart and that's Christ's heart. God sees the heart of man that
is desperately wicked. Every imagination and the thought
of it. We need that new heart. We need the very heart and mind
of Christ our Savior. Jonah's prayer and mine. Was
God have mercy on me, a sinner? That's all I am. Lord, I'm so
thankful for your grace. What's your story? I'm only a
sinner saved by grace. That's it. I'm never going to
grow beyond that. I don't want to grow beyond that. I'm pursuing
an education right now. I pray I'll only grow lower and
lower. You know, Lord gives us means
and we pursue them and that's fine. Ought to do what we can. But I'm telling you spiritually,
there ain't a thing we can do. Pray God will cause us to look
to Christ. You know, we mentioned a couple of verses ago, I'll
look toward thy holy temple, that's Christ. The temple of
God. And you know what? He said to
his people, you're the temple of God because we're in him,
one with him. All right, look at verse nine with me. But I
will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving. I
will pay that that I have vowed salvation is of the Lord. It's a part of a verse we quote
probably about more than any other. Salvations of the Lord.
Now I thought, you think about where he was when he said that.
When he prayed, he's praying that. We say it a lot. We say
it up here in the pew. We say it in conversation. Jonah
prayed that from a whale's belly. Salvations of the Lord. You know
who needs salvation? Sinners. And I'm, you know, I've
heard it said that, well, you, I'm not saying about me, I've
just heard that people may react like this, saying, well, I don't
like how you talk about our sins so much. You know what? I need
to hear my sin talked about a lot, and that I am a sinner, because
that's who Christ came to save. That's who God loves. That's
who Christ died for. That's who's gonna find the Savior.
That's who's gonna find grace in the eyes of the Lord, is sinners.
Sinner's a sacred thing. The Holy Ghost hath made him
so. Sinners have been made righteous in Christ. Well, that's what
I want. Sinners are going to be interested
in salvation that's of the Lord. Not salvation that we can work.
Not salvation that we can do something to attain. It's not our work. It's His work.
That's what it means. It's of the Lord. It's from the Lord.
It's the Lord's. It's His work. It's all of Him. It's all of
Him. Now, notice this too. Jonah was
in the whale's belly when he cried that. He was at his lowest
point when he tells us salvations of the Lord. What's your hope,
Jonah? The Lord. Well, who put you in the whale's
belly, Jonah? Well, who did he tell us? He said the Lord did. And that's
your hope? Yep. Song y'all sing, He hath
done all things well. Our Lord hath done all things
well. We will look to the Lord when
we feel our need of Him. When we feel the guilt and the
weight and the burden of our sin, we'll look to Him and we'll
see it all forgiven. It's all taken away, away. I pray God will cause us to look
to Christ now. I pray He causes us to look to
Christ in the bad times. This was a bad time for Jonah.
He wasn't happy. He was where he needed to be.
But I pray God would cause us to seek Him, to seek His will.
We don't know what's best, He does. To seek His glory, to sing
His praise, and to worship Him in times of trouble and in times
of happiness. Whatever my lot, may He teach
me to say, it's well with my soul, salvations of the Lord.
You know, as I'm getting older, I'm beginning to realize that
often the greatest blessings come in the most trying of times.
Has that been your experience? You know, people rarely, I feel
like, think of God when everything's going well. And that's why it's good to be
in trouble, because maybe, just maybe, God will cause us to need
Him. And if He does, He'll cause us to have Him, to find Him.
Verse 9 again, I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving.
I will pay that that I have vowed salvation. is of the Lord. Right here, Jonah's doing something
similar to what those sailors did. He's vowing a vow. A sacrifice
unto the Lord. It's a vow of praise. It's a
sacrifice of praise and adoration and gratitude and worship. That's
what it is. You know, people People trust
in, and I say people, but it's all of us by nature. But this
religious world, they're trusting in something that they have vowed.
I gave my heart to the Lord. I decided to follow the Lord.
I'm living for God, right? I hear it all the time. I know
it's so. That's not what Jonah's saying. He just said salvation
is of the Lord. It's not of works of righteousness,
which I've done. It's of your mercy. Jonah was saved by mercy. Jonah was a mercy beggar. That's
what he's doing here in the belly of that fish. And that's what
I pray we'll all find ourselves doing by the grace of God. You
know, only God can truly pay that which He vowed. He vowed
to save a people. Christ vowed to come and be surety
for His people. And guess what? He is. He did. He did what He came to do. He
didn't leave part of it for us to finish up. The Holy Spirit has sealed us.
He's given us faith. And that faith can rest in Christ.
We know whom we believe. We know He's able to save us
to the uttermost. He's able to keep all that which
God has caused us to commit to Him. We've committed everything
to Him, haven't we? By God's grace, we're trusting in Him
and Him alone. And that's enough. We vow to vow to trust the Lord.
I pray God would keep us. That He'd give us faith and that
He would keep us looking to Christ. Now look back in the Psalms with
me real quick. Psalm 130. And it doesn't tell us who wrote
this Psalm. You know, a lot of the Psalms
were written by David. My Bible just says a song of degrees.
But I'm telling you, when I read this, I just see it as Jonah
speaking, literally, from what we're looking at. I'm not saying
I think Jonah wrote it, I'm just saying he could have taken these
words and made them his own. And I pray we can too. Look here,
let's read verse 4 verses, Psalm 130. He said, Out of the depths
have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice. Let thine
ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If thou,
Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But
there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared. Can't you see that being Jonah's
prayer? Right here in Jonah chapter 2. He had crying out of the depths.
Lord, please hear me. I'm crying. Hear me. Lord, if
you should mark iniquities, well, buddy, I... Had Jonah committed
iniquity? You better believe it. And he
said, if you mark them, I'm hopeless. I'm a goner. And praise God,
there's forgiveness with him. That's hope for me. I've sinned
against God, but there's forgiveness with Him that He may be fearing.
I'm so thankful it's so. Look right down here, verse 8.
It says, And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Do you need to be redeemed from
your iniquities? You need your sin to be forgiven? Jonah did. And he found forgiveness
with God. With Him is plenteous redemption. How much you need, He's got enough.
He's got enough for all of us, enough mercy for all of us. So
thankfully, you know, we keep sinning. Shall we continue in
sin? Shall we sin that grace may abound?
God forbid. And yet we find ourselves sinning
all constantly, mixed with everything we do. And yet there's forgiveness
with Him. There's plenteous redemption.
There's mercy. with our Lord. All the sin that Jonah did, God
answered all that sin with mercy after mercy after mercy. Do we
see what we are in our flesh? Do we see what is coming to us
apart from God's intervention for us? It's not good. That's putting it nice. It ain't
good. But do we see what we have in
Christ, a good hope? that endureth, peace, rest, perfect
rest to us is promised in Christ. Oh, praise the Lord for the salvation
that's of the Lord. Look back in our text, Jonah
2. We'll wrap this up. Jonah 2, verse 10. And the Lord
spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.
I love thinking about the Lord talking to the fish. I'm not
even a big fish person, but I just love reading that. He said to
that fish, you spit out my profit. And when the Lord spake that,
it vomited out Jonah. Did it spit him out in the water?
Did Jonah have to swim to shore? No. We don't have to wonder.
It says it spat him out on the dry land. I love that. Now, just thinking about this
account, I don't know what amazes me more, the fact that The Lord
prepared a fish to swallow Jonah. And literally, Jonah, he gets
thrown off that boat and into the fish's mouth and belly he
goes. And then he sinks low and low and low and low to the bottom
of the mountains. Or does it amaze me more that
God says, fish, you spit out Jonah, spits him out right there
on the dry land. And off Jonah goes, marching
to Nineveh. I don't know what amazes me more.
But I tell you what amazes me is that God did it all. We sing
that song, Jesus paid it all. I'm so thankful He did. Thankful
none was left up to me. And right here again, this is
a picture of Christ our Lord. He prepared a great fish to swallow
Jonah. That great, the body was, it tells us this in Hebrews,
a body was prepared for Him. God prepared it for Him. You
know, there was no room in the end for Him when He was born.
Was it by accident? God prepared it that way. He
prepared it that way. Said He had no place to lay His
head. God purposed it to be so. And when Christ was crucified,
yeah, it says Pilate delivered him to the will of the people,
but like we just saw a minute ago, that was God's doing. I
pray it's marvelous in our eyes. Right here, when God caused this
fish to vomit out Jonah, picture of Christ rising out of that
grave on the third day, victorious over sin, death, and hell. Amazing. And Jonah came out on dry land,
Like those children of Israel, what a miracle. Walking through
the midst of that sea, you'd imagine it'd be a little muddy.
Nope. They walked on dry ground. God's people don't walk in muddy
ground. We don't have mud on our feet. You know, I suppose that's a
picture of sin. And in Christ, we have none.
We walk on dry ground because we walk in Him. We live, move,
and have our being in Him. Christ went to the depths of
the sea for us. He took all that. It was all
wrapped around Him. He took our place, and it's finished. Next time you hear that verse
quoted, you think about Jonah. You think of where this man was
when he told us that by the inspiration of God, which he's preserved
for us this day, salvation is of the Lord. May God bless that
to our hearts. Amen. Let's close with a prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank
you again for your word. We thank you for being so good
to us in spite of us. Oh, that we might have some understanding of just
how vile we are before you in this flesh. And just how holy
and perfect and pure and beautiful our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
is. We know He's that to you and I pray that He might be that
to us. That He might truly be our all in all. Thank you for
our brother Jonah. Thank you for all that is recorded
here. For your glory and for our good.
Thank you for not leaving salvation to us. but that you completed
it all. Thank you that salvation truly
is of the Lord. Pray you would cause us to feel
our need of you, to loathe ourselves and to run to Christ, to cling
to him. Lord, I know you're found of
them that sought you not, but I pray that you might cause us
to be found, cause us to seek you and find you, cause us to
look for you with all our heart. Please forgive us of our sin,
for it is great. And please be merciful to us
sinners and our loved ones, our children. Lord, there's so many
that we pray for constantly. And truly, we beg you that you
might do for them what you've done for us, what you did for
Jonah, what you did for those sailors and the Ninevites. Lord,
you're a God of mercy, and we rejoice to know it. We rejoice
to know that you delight to show it. And we pray that you would
show it to many for your glory. Please bless these words to our
hearts and be with us as we go home and cause us to seek you
continually, Lord. And bless us and keep us, direct
our steps, for Christ's sake, amen.