If you're still turned with me
to the book of Jonah, I want you to look at chapter 2, verse
4, which will be my text for this morning. Jonah said, Then
I said, I am cast out of thy sight. Speaking of God's sight.
Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple." I've often
thought about what mercy it is that the Holy Spirit gives true
accounts of God's saints in the Scripture. Some think that God's
elect are extinct from frailties, from sin, human imperfections,
that they never suffer slips or falls, but continually walk
in the beauty of holiness. But that's not so. That's not
so. God does not convey such things in the Holy Scriptures.
He does not hide the depravity and nature of sin that still
plagues the saved sinner. God didn't hide the drunkenness
of Noah. It's written plainly in the Scriptures.
He didn't hide the incest of Lot, the unbelief of Abraham,
the obstinacy of Moses, the adultery of David. the idolatry of Solomon
that are recorded in God's Word. He didn't hide the pride of Hezekiah
and the cowardice of John Mark, who was Barnabas' nephew. He
didn't hide the cursing and swearing of Peter and the denial of the
Lord three times. Why has the Holy Spirit left
on record these sins and falls of God's saints? Well, at first
thought, I have three reasons I think that's so. First, it
teaches us that God's people were saved as Saved by grace
is poor, lost, ruined sinners. Christ said, I came not to save
those that are righteous. I came to save those who are
sick and in need, in a desperate condition. Those that are righteous
have no need of a physician. Those that are well don't need
a doctor. It's those that are sick. And Christ is the great
position. Secondly, God doesn't hide these
things from us so that our slips and our falls may be warnings
to us to guard us against being overtaken by the same sins. No, God doesn't hide the imperfections
of His people. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10
that all these things happen to these ones that we've mentioned
for examples and are written for our admonition, for our encouragement. for our warning. And thirdly,
the people of God who are overtaken by sin, it teaches us that when
we're overtaken by sin, that we should not be cast into total
despair. God said, I'll never leave you
nor forsake you. When a child of God trusts in
Christ as his all in all, we become perfect in the eyes of
God, but we become far from perfect in our own eyes and in the eyes
of others. We're still plagued with sin.
Paul said, there's a war going on in my members. There's an
old man that wars against the Spirit that God has indwelled
in me. It's a war and it's a constant
battle. He said, what I would do, I don't
do. And what I should do, I don't
do. And what I shouldn't do, I do. And he summarized the whole
matter by saying, oh wretched man that I am. Not that I was,
but that I am. Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? There's only one that can. And
friends, as long as you live in this flesh, you'll never live
perfectly. you'll fall and you'll slip.
And God left these examples in the scripture to encourage us
and to admonish us. Thirdly, that the people of God,
should they be overtaken by sin, should not be cast into total
despair." You see, in seeing what is recorded in the Scripture
concerning the slips and the failings of the saints of old,
we might be lifted up from our hopelessness and brought once
more to hope in the Lord. Why, He had mercy on David. Why
wouldn't He have mercy on me? He had mercy on Lot and Abraham,
all these that failed miserably and fell and slipped. Just maybe
He'll have mercy on me, and He will. He will. He'll never leave you nor forsake
you. I wanted for a few minutes this
morning to talk to you about a very familiar story that we
just read about concerning Jonah. And as I said, it's been told
to us since our youth. And in consideration of all the
mentioned saints that have fallen, it's quite possible that Jonah
stumbled the most. He was just an outright rebellion. And I need hardly remind you
that the words of the text were uttered by Jonah when he was
in the whale's belly or in the fish's belly. He was a great
fish. Whether it was a whale or not, I don't know. And it
was there that he spoke these words in the bitterness of his
soul. And it was there that these words
of sad hopelessness and helplessness and yet strong faith. Verse from his lips. Look again
at verse 4. Then I said, I am cast out of
thy sight. What helplessness and hopelessness
it is to be cast out of God's sight. Yet, I will look again
toward thy holy temple." Now before we enter into the words
of this text, it's desirable to trace out a few of the steps
by which Jonah came into this spot. We read them in chapter
1. And if the Lord enable us, may we see something not only
of the obstinate rebellion of a saint of God when left to himself. I'm telling you right now that
if God lead me to myself, I'm capable of doing anything and
everything. Now we read in chapter 1, verses
1 and 2, that the word of the Lord came unto Jonah. Jonah was
a servant of the Lord. And he said, Jonah, you rise
and you go to Nineveh, that great city, and you cry against it,
for their wickedness has come up before me. This was a wicked
city, yet God had determined to show mercy to this city. Jonah
wanted no part of it. I don't know if he had a personal
vendetta against the folks or what, but he just flat said,
I'm not going. And that is shown by his actions
here. The Lord gave him a certain command
that was somehow contrary to his fleshly feelings. And what
was the effect of this command on Jonah? He disobeyed it. God
simply did not give him the strength to obey it. Now, you say, that
sounds funny. What do you mean God didn't give
him the strength? Well, let me tell you something. When trials
and tribulations come our way, the only way that we will ever
overcome them is if God gives us the strength to do so. And
in this case, God did not give Jonah the strength to obey it.
You know why? It was the Lord's will at this
time to teach him something. To teach him another lesson.
Therefore, He withheld from him the strength which he alone could
give to cause him to obey His command. So how did this disobedience
play out? Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish,
the total opposite direction that the Lord had commanded him
to go. And it says from the presence
of the Lord, but that's impossible. You can't flee from the presence
of the Lord. And he went down to Joppa according to verse 3
of chapter 1. Do you know that it's futile
to disobey God? And in this very rising up of
Jonah to flee from the presence of the Lord, we see the workings
of God's keeping grace in the midst of his rebellion. Now that should be a great comfort
to you. It's a great comfort to me. In my rebellion, God's
going to keep me. If I'm one of his, he's not going
to let me go. And again, I'll use the verse
so familiar where God says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Now, did God mean that when He
said it? Is God a man that He should lie? No. He's God and
He cannot lie. And you've often heard me say
that trials will do two things in a believer's life. It will
either draw the child of God near to God, or to cause the
believer to run from the presence of the Lord. And that's what
Jonah did. He ran. He fleed the presence
of God. That's what Adam and Eve did.
Do you remember that in the garden? God said, you don't eat of the
fruit of this tree. In the day you do, you shall
surely die. They ate. And they ran and hid
themselves in the garden. And God came in the cool of the
day and said, Adam, where are you? But you can't run from the
presence of God. And unfortunately, the first
step which a child of God takes when he cannot, because of his
flesh, obey God's command is to withdraw himself from the
presence of the Lord. They shun, they forsake the places
where his presence is manifested, their conscience being unable
to bear it. They withdraw themselves For
instance, from God's heart-searching ministry, from gospel preaching,
and from the company of God's people who are walking in the
light, life, and fear of the Lord. I can remember when I was
in my greatest rebellion against God, the last thing I wanted
to do was to go to church and hear the Word of God. Just didn't
want to do it. They withdraw themselves. They
can't bear the conviction which the presence of the Lord produces.
They're unable to walk in the path that they should. And in
verse 3, after Jonah had withdrawn himself as much as he could from
those things which tormented him most, he goes down to Joppa
and he finds a ship going to Tarsus from, it says, the presence
of the Lord. How futile and how ridiculous.
The Lord is everywhere. The Lord is everywhere. But did
the Lord leave Jonah there and let him fulfill his intentions?
No. And he won't any child of God.
The Lord sent out a great wind and there was a mighty tempest
in the sea so that the ship was like to be broken. Now that takes
some great wind and some raging waves to accomplish that. But
what effect does it produce on Jonah? Apparently none. It affected
him in no way whatsoever. You see, he'd withdrawn himself
from the presence of the Lord. His conscience, though it wasn't
dead, had become certainly calloused. And the very storm that frightened
the experienced mariners. I mean, these men knew something
about the sea. They knew something about ships.
And they were scared to death. And they made every man cry unto
his God. But it didn't alarm Jonah at
all. Well, he was gone asleep. How
callous he had become. And how callous we can become.
Have you, because of your disobedience, fallen asleep? and become callous
to God's grace. Now, I mean that seriously. Are
you just going through the motions? Have you, because of disobedience,
become callous to the Word of God? Well, if you're one of His,
I'll tell you this much. He will graciously send great
winds your way, and He'll send His mighty tempest to bring you
to the end of your sin. He will not let you perish, not
if you're one of His. If God saves you by grace, He'll
keep you by grace. You've heard me say before that
you and I did nothing in order to be saved. It was absolutely
100% by the grace and mercy of God, and we can't do anything
to lose that salvation. If so, God would cease to be
God. Salvation's of the Lord. It's
His from beginning to end. Now, I know people backslide. They use that term a lot. People
grow cold and indifferent. And there have been many that
have left the gospel. I know many men who preach the
gospel faithfully who no longer preach or attend church. You
say, well, what about that? They never knew Him. Never. They never knew Him. And God
never knew them, more importantly. He said, I never knew you. Heaven,
we've done many marvelous works in your name. We've cast out
devils. We've preached the gospel. We've fed the sick. We've clothed
the poor. He said, depart from me, you
doers of iniquity. I never knew you. But if God saves you by His grace,
He'll keep you by His grace. When our hearts begin to grow
hard, and our conscience has lost its former tenderness to
God and His love to us. The very thing that frightens
others seems to have no effect on us. The judgments of God and
the manifestations of His anger, which terrify even those who
make no profession of religion, can pass by us unfelt and leave
us unmoved, just as it did Jonah. These men were scared to death.
Jonah was asleep. But God's finger singled him
out. God will find you out, friends.
And He singled him out from all the rest. And now when his conscience
is awakened, the wrath of God penetrates his soul through and
through. And with a sense of disobedience, we see in verses
3-12, and look at verse 12. And He said unto them, Take me
up, and cast me forth into the sea, so shall the sea Be calm
unto you, for I know that for my sake this great tempest is
upon you." He feels the hand of God against him. And he says,
take me up and cast me in the sea. Now listen friends, I've
sinned against God, even since I've professed to know Him. And
I've become cold and indifferent and calloused many times. There
have been times where I thought, what's the use? I can't do what's
required of me. That's where we go wrong. Christ
has done for me all that is required of me. And I get to looking at
myself instead of to Him. And I've often thought to myself,
cast me out, for I know that for my sake this great tempest
is upon me, verse 12. And with much reluctance, these
mariners that had taken him up, they rolled all that much harder.
They didn't want to throw him into the water, but they did
because they futilely failed. It was futile to fight against
God's mighty winds and tempest. And they threw him into the sea,
but God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And
he was in the belly of this fish three days and three nights.
But in this awful spot, the very belly of hell as Jonah causes
in chapter 2, Jonah begins to come to himself. Jonah's disobedience
and the consequence of it, the anger and wrath of God was so
opened up to his soul, when the darkness and death closed up
around him, he was overwhelmed with distress. Now here is a
great spiritual lesson for the child of God. God's wrath against
Jonah was also a great mercy in not suffering him to do what
he pleased. God intervened. God didn't let
him have his own way. Many of the men here often pray,
Lord, deliver me from myself. Don't let me have my way. Not
my will, Lord, but thy will be done. Deliver me from myself. God was not going to allow him
to go down to Tarsus. He wouldn't allow him to bury
himself in the world and forsake his calling. And friends, God
will not suffer any of his people, whose hearts he has touched by
grace, to do so either. He just won't. He just won't. We may lay down our plans and
we may say, we're going to do this and we're going to do that.
But I'm going to tell you this, God would disappoint every plan
we make, which will not be for our spiritual good and for his
eternal glory. Everyone, I can assure you of
that. And I'm sure each and every one
of you can look back at the providence of God and see things that happened
at certain times in your life where God divinely intervened
and kept you from doing what you shouldn't have done, all
because you were one of His. What a saving, keeping God we
have. He'll cause all things to work
for our spiritual good, Romans 8.28. And like Jonah, we are
our own worst enemy, and we learn to pray, as I said, Lord, deliver
me from myself. Then we come to the words of
our text in Jonah 2.4. Jonah breathed forth these words
when he was in that awful and distressed condition. He said,
I'm cast out of thy sight. What a helpless and hopeless
place to be, to be cast out of the sight of the Lord. But then
he says, yet, yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.
The first thing here I want you to briefly see is Jonah's hopelessness. He said, Then I said, I am cast
out of thy sight. What do those words imply? Well,
the child of God will never find comfort in being out of the will
of God. I can assure you that. What is
it to be cast out of God's sight? It's to be cast out from the
manifestation of God's presence to the soul. And when Jonah spoke
these words, he felt that he was cast out of God's gracious
presence. Jonah's hail, now listen, Jonah's
hail was not being in that nasty, smelly belly of the great fish. Oh, that would be horrible enough,
but that was not His hell. His hell was the feeling of being
cast out of God's presence. That's what hell is. To be separated
forever from God. That's what hell is. And you
know what heaven is? It's to be forever in His presence. Do not all God's people feel
a measure of this when sunk deep in distress and hopelessness?
Are you feeling hopeless this morning? If you are, it's maybe
because you're running from God. Maybe it's because you're running
from God. To be cast out of God's sight implies a burden of guilt
lying on the conscience. It's to feel that our sins are
too numerous. Do you feel like sometimes your
sins are too numerous? Why would God be merciful to
me? My sins are too numerous, too
great. That our iniquities are too dreadful. That we dare not come into the
presence of Him whose holy and pure eyes cannot look upon us
with acceptance. Do you feel that way? Are you
feeling your filthiness before a thrice holy God? Let me tell
you this, when the Spirit of God opens up the depths of a
man's corrupt heart or a woman's corrupt heart and takes away
the illusion of this self-righteousness that we think we have by nature,
we're covered with shame and we're made to feel that we're
too black and filthy and too vile and polluted to be admitted
into His holy presence. And therefore we feel cast out.
being too filthy to come into God's presence. So let me ask
you sincerely, have you ever felt this bitterness of soul
and known what it is to be cast out of God's sight? I'll tell
you this much, it's the most painful feeling that you could
ever feel. I felt it often. I've passed
through my share of natural trouble, but I'm telling you something.
I never found any natural trouble that compares to spiritual trouble. Never. Spiritual sorrows, temptations,
troubles way outweigh those that are natural. But if you're one
of God's people, you're a child of God, one of His elect, then
I've got good news for you. Oh, do I ever have good news
for you. God will never leave you or forsake you. Is that not
what we see in the story of Jonah? Is that not what we see? You
see, in the midst of all his hopelessness, we find Jonah still
having faith, living and working in his heart. God hadn't left
him or forsaken him. Oh, he's let him fall low. He's
let him come to the end of himself. He feels as though he's been
cast out of the presence and the sight of God. But this blessed
grace of faith in Jonah was not merely alive, but alive in the
midst of all these burdens and hopelessness that he lay in.
And it was by this God-given living faith that caused him
to say these words, Yet will I look again. toward thy holy
temple. I'll look again. I'll look again. Now it was not the literal temple
to which Domah looked. A building of stone couldn't
profit him. As he lay in the belly of that
fish, or the belly of hell, he looked beyond the temple to what
the temple represented. He looked through the natural
building to that which was set forth by it. He looked to Christ,
who the temple represented. He looked again to his only hope. What is our only hope? Christ
and Him crucified. Emmanuel, God with us. He is the one, one, only one
mediator between God and man. In order to be reconciled to
God, dear friends, and put back in fellowship, or put in fellowship
with Him, or back in fellowship with Him, you're going to have
to go through this mediator. He's the only one that can reconcile
you to God. And then we have this word again,
which shows that Jonah had looked there before. That it was not
the first time that his eye had been fixed by faith on the person
and work of the mediator. It was not the first time his
soul had received benefit from Christ's blessed mediation. But all what is contained in
the expression, look, look, look. He looked again to Christ. Now
there are various kinds of looking, and I'm about finished, bear
with me briefly. There is the look of mere fleshly
observance, but that won't profit you anything. The looking by
the eye of the senses, you know, the five senses, one being looking
with our eyes, Just as the Jews who crucified Christ looked on
His bleeding, agonizing body, but that didn't profit their
souls at all, did it? Just to look at Him there, crucified,
bleeding, beaten to the point of where He wasn't recognizable
as a man. Did that do their soul any good?
No. No. Didn't profit their souls
at all. The looking I'm talking about.
They're looking on Him as He's revealed in the Word of God,
seeing the name of Christ in the Scriptures and the reading
of many texts that speak of His efficacy and His atoning blood
and righteousness. Oh, let me tell you, all this
is merely looking after the flesh. But the Apostle says, though
we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth we
know Him no more. The looking that profits the
soul. Now, get this if you don't get anything else. The looking
that profits the soul is a confident look at He who has done for you
what you cannot do for yourself. There's nothing that can really
comfort a God-taught soul but the consolations that God alone
can bless him with. The only food that can readily
satisfy a man is the bread of life. the Lord Jesus Christ. God will not allow His people
to continue in disobedience. God will shut you up in a dark,
dark place and He will cause you to call upon Him. If you
want to, He will. And aren't you glad? Aren't you
glad that God won't leave you to yourself? Stop running. Stop fighting. Commit your soul
to Him that is able to keep it against that day. Paul said,
I'm persuaded that He's able to keep that which I've committed
unto Him. What did Paul commit unto Him?
His soul. His soul. Look at verse 1 of
chapter 2. 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." I don't care how dark, deep,
dirty of a place you're in, if you cry unto Him, He'll hear
your voice. For thou hast cast me into the
deep." And he often casts his people into the deep. In the
midst of the seas and the floods come past me about, all thy billows
and thy waves passed over me. Then I said, I'm cast out of
thy sight. But did he stop there? Did he just give up? Did he say,
this is what I deserve? Go ahead and just kill me, Lord?
He said, no, yet I will look again unto thy holy temple. The
waters compassed me about, even to the soul. The depth closed
round about me. The weeds were wrapped about
my head. And 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. When my soul
fainted within me, as your soul fainted within you, did Jonas,
he said, I remembered the Lord. I remembered the Lord. And my
prayer came unto thee and to thine holy temple. They that
observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. Now verse 9,
but I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of what? Thanksgiving. Thank you, Lord, for saving my
soul. Thank you, Lord, for making me
whole. Oh, I will pay that which I have
vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord. That's
the conclusion of every child of God. Salvation is the Lord's
doing from the beginning to the end. God chose a people before
the foundation of the world. That's in this Bible now. I'm
not making this up. For the foundation of the world,
God chose the people in Christ. And in time, He called them by
His grace. He revealed to them the gospel
of His Son, and He saved them by His grace. And no man can
pluck them from his hand, so that those that endure till the
end will be saved. And those that are His will endure
till the end. God will see to it. He saw to
it that Jonah did, didn't He? Oh, what an example, friend.
Salvation, what an example of God's sovereign grace. Salvation
is solely Completely 100% of the Lord God. Don't you ever
forget it. And the next time you're in a
dark, deep place, and you find yourself, your conscience calloused,
and you find yourself in deep disobedience, look and live. Look to Him and live.