We open to Jonah, chapter 2. God our Father, be with us now
as we have opened your word. Your word is a blessing to us,
Lord, but we realize that it becomes a blessing to us only
as you bless it to us. Deliver us from that spirit of
the Pharisees who sought the scriptures and yet did not see
Christ in them. Bless us with a view of your
son this evening. It's in his name we pray. Amen.
Now the story of Jonah, I'm sure you're all familiar with it.
It's one of the most fascinating stories of the scripture. Probably
one of the stories most often put to ridicule by unbelievers,
because it seems ridiculous that a man should be swallowed by
a huge fish, be inside the fish for three days and three nights,
and then be vomited up on the shore, ready to go and preach. It stands out among the prophets
as a testimony of God's sovereign grace. Over here in verse 9 of
Jonah chapter 2, the very last line is, salvation comes from
the Lord, or more strictly, salvation is of the Lord. It comes from
the Lord. It started with Him. He originated it. He dispenses
it. He gives it. He causes it to
happen. Everything about salvation is
of Jehovah God. In fact, as one of the elders
of 13th Street back there, in fact, is the last time I heard
this old gentleman preach. He's since gone to be with the
Lord. But Cecil, I mean, Cecil Roach, Bonnie, if you remember
him, I was there in 1998 and heard him preach. And he preached
through the whole book of Jonah in one night. And he's one of
these fellows that the Lord gifted him with the ability to take
the the stories of the Old Testament and apply them to the principles
of the gospel. And he made this. This was the
end of his message. He says, God is sovereign and
he will save his people with a willing prophet or an unwilling
one, but he will get it done. And even though Jonah fought
him from one end of the book to the other, God still got Jonah
in Nineveh. God still got his word into Nineveh.
God still sent his grace to Nineveh and God's people in Nineveh were
saved. We, you know, we tend to rely,
even though we know better, we rely way too much on the flesh. We say, well, we need faithful
preachers, and that's true. We look for faithful preachers,
but you know something? God can get it done with unfaithful preachers. And it's a good thing, because
faithful as we preachers try to be, there's a lot of unfaithfulness
to us also. God gets it done. He is the sovereign
God in control of every detail of the world. And that includes
all the details that work out to our salvation. The story of
Jonah and the huge fish is remarkable. Some even suggest that it's not
really to be taken as a historical event, but it's only a parable
that never was intended that we believe it as it's written.
There are some that think it's that way. They don't think that
it's, you know, that God's trying to lie to us or anything like
that, but rather that it was just a story that was made up
and everybody understood that from the beginning. Kind of like
one of the parables of the Lord. However, this story is told like
it's history. You know, the parables of the
Lord, the stories that he made up to illustrate spiritual things,
it began with, and the Lord spoke this parable. It told you right
up front, this story is not a historical event. It's a made up story to
illustrate a spiritual truth. Well, this book doesn't start
that way. It starts with the word of the Lord came to Jonah. This book involves a historical
person. Parables didn't involve historical
people. They were fictional characters in a fictional story. Jonah's
a real prophet. You read of him in the books
of the Kings. They know the time that he ministered.
He ministered between 800 BC and 750 BC. That's about the
era in which he was prophesying. I take it as a truth just like
it is. By that I mean I take it as a historical event. The
things that are recorded in there happened just as it was said. The story is a great illustration
of God's salvation. We see ourselves in it, don't
we? We see ourselves in Job's rebellion. The Word of the Lord
comes to us. How long did the Word of the Lord come to us before
we bowed to it? The word of the Lord, the gospel
was sent to us and we heard it. Did we believe it instantly?
The first time we ever heard of God's grace, did we bow before
him and cry out for his mercy? No. We said, I'll think about
it or haven't got time or I've already got something good enough.
And just like Job ran away from the word of the Lord, so did
we run away from the word of the Lord. But the Lord is sovereign
and sinners run, but God runs faster. And in due time, he catches
all of his sinners and brings them to bay and to make the confession
that salvation is of the Lord. We also see ourselves in Job's
prayer. I want to notice 12 things quickly
because this really isn't the main point, but it's good for
us to just lightly jump over these things to remember or to
be reminded of these gospel principles. First of all, and we're talking
about Job down here in the belly of the fish. and how that illustrates
our condition as sinners before God. First of all, we're in the
belly of the fish by God's design. It says here in chapter 1, verse
17, But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah
was inside the fish three days and three nights. Now, everybody
in the world is in sin. That's just a fact. We were born
in sin, shaped in iniquity. The belly of the fish is not
to be in sin. It's not simply to be under the
judgment of God. To be in the belly of the fish,
at least as far as our experience is concerned, is to be under
the convicting power of God. And God does that. God puts us
in the belly of the fish. I've tried to put people in the
belly of the fish before. I've tried to put together messages
that I thought would be particularly powerful and convicting. And
what I found out is I have no power in that area. Just like
I have no power to deliver anybody from the belly of the fish. I
can't make the fish. I can't put people in it. I can't
get them out of it. And that shouldn't surprise us.
Salvation of the Lord is the Lord's fish. He prepared it. Some even speculate that this
fish was a one-of-a-kind thing that God created on the spot.
Very well may have been. You know, they tried to figure
out what kind of fish is big enough to swallow a man. Some say it was
a whale. But at least none of the whales
that are alive today could do this, because whales, believe
it or not, have a very small throat, and a man won't go down
it. There are some fish which are big enough to swallow a man
whole. But some say the Lord provided, prepared, created at
that time a fish suitable to this purpose. And I know this,
that whatever is necessary for your conviction, God prepares
it at the appropriate time just for you. It's not the same for
everybody. It's not the same fish for everybody.
He prepares it. Custom-made, just for you. It's from the distress of God's
convicting grace that we cry out. Chapter 2, verse 1, from
inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God. We may say prayers. Now, we're
talking about up until a man is regenerated. We may say our
prayers, but we never pray until God puts us in the belly of the
fish. We learn to say our prayers when we are children. Now I lay
me down to sleep and so forth, and God is great and God is good,
and we thank Him for our food. And the prayers we learn to say
may become more sophisticated as we get older, but it's still
just saying prayers. We pray. We begin to pray. when God begins to turn the screws,
when He puts us in the belly of the fish. And we're no longer
interested in forms. When you're in the belly of the
fish, it's not time to start thinking about, you know, all
the rules of the sea, all the nautical science and trying to
figure out how to sail a boat. It's too late for that. It's
too late for forms. It's too late for ceremonies.
And from the heart, inside the fish, we begin to pray. And he
said, In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered
me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened
to my cry. It's in distress, it's in the
shadow of the grave that we cry out. And when we cry out, God
hears. There has never been a person
who truly from his heart, from a sense of his need, from the
belly of the fish cried out and wasn't hurt. Verse three, you hurled me into
the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the current
swirled about me. All your waves and breakers swept
over me. Jonah acknowledged God's hand
in all this. You know, conviction, the conviction
of sin looks different from person to person. Because how it looks
is going to depend somewhat on our psychological makeup. Some
people being of an emotional nature, well, conviction brings
forth tears. Others, it just might bring silence.
Who knows? It's not our business to determine
how a person is supposed to outwardly demonstrate that he's under the
hand of God. But one thing that is true in all conviction is
this, it comes from the Lord. True conviction. Now, preachers
can make you feel bad about your sin. Preachers can make you try
to mend your ways. But only God can convict you
in such a way as that you have no hope but Him. We stand here at the end of 2006. I better catch up. We're here
at the end of 2006. How many people tonight are going
to make resolutions to do better next year? How many church services
are there going to be tonight? And I was in some of them. In
fact, we had a watch night service every New Year's Eve. And they'd
have some preaching and some singing and some testifying.
And it would finally come down, they would They would somewhere
along the line appeal to you this way. Why don't you resolve
in your heart to do better for God next year? Resolutions made by sinful men
are just so much self-righteous, filthy rags. Boy, have I made
a lot of them. I'm going to quit doing this
sin. Then you fall. Well, I'll try again. Well, I'm
going to do better next time. Okay. Two days. I'll try to go
with two days, and I'll extend it to three, and I'll do better
and better. But when the Lord God puts you
in the belly of the fish, there ain't no way out. There isn't
any doing any better. Here's how you know. You know,
the Lord said, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will convict
the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. And when the
Holy Spirit convicts you of these things, you quit promising to
do better because He'll teach you, you can't do any better.
That's the problem. If I could do better, I wouldn't
need Him. I don't need Him just to convince
me that I'm a sinner and need to try harder. I need Him to
convince me that I'm a sinner without any hope in myself at
all. That's Holy Spirit conviction. And it may bring a man to tears.
It may just make him, like I said, quiet. He may even, for a while,
try to put on an outward appearance of being happy, you know, because
none of us like sadness. As soon as something makes us
sad, we try to cover it up with happiness. But here's the thing
about the Spirit of God. When He begins a work, He won't
quit. He will pursue. Remember old
Saul of Tarsus. The Lord Jesus said, Saul, Saul,
Is it hard for you to kick against the goads? God, and the picture
there was, you know, you've probably seen them when they had those
ox drawn carts. There'd be a guy over there with
a long stick with a point on it, poking that ox to keep him
moving. And the oxen would kick back
at it. Of course, there's nothing there,
you know. And so it was an irritant, but it kept them moving. And
God had been like that goad with Saul. He'd been like that in
his conscience. He'd been like that in the law. He'd been like
that because Saul had heard the preaching of the gospel and the
faith of the Christians. And it was just like a goad to
him. And he said, how long are you
going to keep kicking back? Some get mad under conviction. But
here's the thing, they will all be brought to understand that
their conviction is from the hand of the Lord. They'll acknowledge
it. Jonah acknowledged that his sin
has separated him from God. Verse 4, he said, I've been banished
from your sight, yet I will look again towards your holy temple.
I've been banished from your sight. Now, to be out of the
sight of God means to be out from his protection. To be out
of the sight of God means for God to be out of the sight of
us, to be cut off, to be abandoned, forsaken. You know, While you're on the
top side of the ocean, you can see the blessings of God. But
get yourself in the belly of the fish and down there deep
somewhere in the darkness, you see nothing of God's goodness. But notice this, yet I will look
again toward your holy temple. Even in this time, God is gracious
to give men a bit of hope. Here's how we know or here's
how we can tell that we or someone else has been the recipient of
God's grace's conviction. His hope does not lie in what
good things he will be able to do. His hope lies in God's temple,
that place where the sacrifices are made, where God can meet
men and live. The belly of the fish shuts us
up to all hope but the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus is, to
us, God's holy temple. The temple is the place where
God is. And it said God was in Christ,
reconciling the world to himself. Verse 5, the engulfing waters
threatened me, the deep surrounded me, seaweed was wrapped around
my head. to the roots of the mountains
I sank down, the earth beneath barred me in forever." Here is
a description of divine judgment. And you know, the conviction
of sin, when God convicts a man of sin, it's as though he gives
to that man or that woman a token of his judgment. When we are convicted of sin,
we gain something of a sense. of what it will be if we die
in our sins. We begin to feel the guilt. We
begin to feel the anger of God. And we've got to justify God
in it. We say, God's right to be angry with me. God's right
to judge me. God will be right to leave me
in this miserable condition and finish it off with an eternity
in hell. And when we're under the conviction
of God's Spirit, we recognize that If nothing changes, this
shall be forever. You know, God's judgments are
not for a moment. One of the things that can really
bring trouble to my mind is if I think for a moment on the eternity
of God's judgment. You know, we get angry We may
not do it anymore. Then again, we might, but sometimes
people get angry and they'll tell someone, why don't you just
go to hell? Do you know what that means? Do you have any idea
what hell is? Aside from what horrendous a
place it would be for a moment, for a second, for a minute, it's
forever. The torment is never backed off. You give me a little pain, it
don't take long. I'm in despair already. In just a while. Hell is forever. For that reason, that certainly
should stir our minds and our hearts to seek after the Lord. If for nothing else, even if
just for that most basic thing, to escape that horrible everlasting
place, it should make our hearts break for those who stay in their
rebellion against God. It's a fearful thing to fall
in the hands of the living God, because He lives forever. But verse 6 says this, But you
brought my life up from the pit. And here is the wheel on which
grace turns. It says, I'm down here at the
roots of the mountain. I'm down here at the bottom of all things,
and it's forever. I have been locked in forever.
But you have brought my life, my soul, up from the pit. God puts us in a place that only
He can get us out of. That's a convicting grace of
God. God puts us in a place that only He can get us out of. Someone
wants to find this. Define faith this way. Faith
is believing God to do what only God can do. Faith is to believe or to trust
God to do what only He can do. And therefore, what God does
in order to make us call out to Him in faith is to put us
in a condition that only He can get us out of. God says, I make alive, but He
says this, I kill and then I make alive. I wound and then I heal. I destroy, then I rebuild. God in convicting grace puts
us in a condition in which we are in despair of any hope in
ourselves, but that calls us to look on Him and behold, He
is able to save the uttermost, them that come to God by Him. Verse 7, When my life was ebbing
away, I remembered you, Lord, And my prayer rose to you, to
your holy temple." Our prayer rises to God when
we've lost all other hope, and indeed only after God has begun
a work of salvation. It says, you brought my life
up from the pit. Then, Job said, I remembered
you. God may bring conviction on a
man, and that man will be in such despair he won't even be
able to remember God. It doesn't even occur to him
to call out to God. In Psalm chapter 40, David's
talking about his sin. He said, My sin is more than
the hairs of my head. He says, I cannot look up. What does he mean by I cannot
look up? It doesn't mean simply that he was going around with
his head hanging down. The Jews prayed in that posture. their
head up and their hands out, I came bright. I am so burdened
with the sense of my sin, I don't even have the ability to call
out. But in that time, God comes and
begins a work of salvation, begins to pull us out of the pit, and
we call. It's only after God begins a work of salvation that
we call out to Him for His salvation. Verse 8, those who cling to worthless
idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. The grace of God-given faith
causes us to remove all false hopes and cling only to Christ. Sometimes people come under a
sense of their sin and conviction. Now, this is not the saving conviction.
This be a work of conscience or a work of the preacher or
something. And they will pull their idols all the more closely
to them. They'll pull to themselves most
often in our day the idol of their own works, the idol of
their own religious duties. Sin is brought to bear against
their conscience and they recall to mind that at least according
to the papers at the church, they were sprinkled as an infant
and brought within the covenant. And they cling to their worthless
idol. Or they remember that time way back yonder. When the preacher
put them under the water, and somebody told them they were
a Christian, and they cling to the worthless idol of their adult baptism, or they
cling to the worthless idol of their theological system. And
those that cling to these worthless idols, whatever form it takes,
they forfeit grace. Oh, for the grace to let go.
of everything, to be able to say, as did Paul, God forbid
that I should glory in anything other than the Lord Jesus Christ. I've got all these things. I've
got my heritage. I've got my religion. I've got
my righteousness. I've got all these things, but
I gladly let them go and throw them out and put them on the
rubbish heap, for they are worthless idols. And I let them know that
I may gain Christ, that I may lay hold of the grace that's
in him. Verse nine, but I, with a song of thanksgiving, will
sacrifice to you all those that have been saved
by God. Give him a sacrifice of praise.
What I have vowed, I will make good, not a vow of righteousness. of our sacrifice of praise and
honor. And then the work of God's convicting
grace always ends here. Salvation is of the Lord. That was its goal the whole time,
was to bring the man to that conviction. God put Jonah in the belly of
the fish. Jonah was rebelling against the
saving grace of God. He didn't want to go to Nineveh
because he knew God was a gracious God, and he knew if God was sending
him to Nineveh with a message to repent, that he was going
to send also the grace to make Nineveh repent, and Nineveh would
be saved. And Job hated Nineveh, and Job
wanted God to destroy Nineveh, so he thought that he could run
and upset the whole process of God's salvation. And God put
him in the belly of the fish and taught him this, salvation's
of the Lord. He'll decide who he will save.
And he will bring it in his time. And we likewise may rebel against
God and wiggle and squirm and do everything we can to resist
God's salvation, but in the end, if we belong to Him, He will
make us abandon all hopes in ourselves and cry out, salvation
is of the Lord. And when we do, And the Lord
commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto the dry ground. Once
the goal is reached, out we go. Once we call on the name of the
Lord, it's done. Out we go. But I read over this, and was
looking at this scripture, and you see all these wonderful things,
and they're such a blessing to our hearts. And then I thought of this. Our
Lord said, as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three
days and three nights, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart
of the earth for three days and three nights. There's nothing
wrong with looking at this scripture and applying it to ourselves,
but do you know who this is really about? This is about our Lord
Jesus. This is Him in the belly of the
whale. Now, the reason that we can identify
with it, the reason we can see something of ourselves in it,
is because He went through what we deserved. And when God gives
us a little taste of that in convicting grace, we gain a little
taste of what it was our Lord endured in our behalf. Chapter
2 is not primarily about you and me. It's about Christ. You
know, I have said ever since I was a member of 13th Street
Baptist Church, I've been saying that this book is about Christ. And yet today, I see that more
than I saw it then. I see less and less of me in
it and more and more of Him. He's the one that suffers. I
got a vision of it. He got the reality. I got a little inward pain, a
little conviction, a little despair. He actually went through it.
I heard about Jonah in the belly of the whale. He is Jonah in
the belly of the whale. And let's just take a few minutes
and look at how this applies to him. Verse 17, the Lord provided
a great fish to swallow Jonah. This business that our Lord endured
in our behalf was ordained and organized and put in place by
none other than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our great
God. I know there were Jews that got
the people stirred up, and I know that there were Romans who devised
the method of crucifixion and gave out the decree for our Lord
to be crucified, but Peter made it clear that what they did,
they did by the foreordination of God. Satan was behind it. Of course,
Satan didn't have the same purpose in mind. Satan's purpose in the
crucifixion of Christ was the destruction of Christ, and therefore
the destruction of God's people. And yet, even as Satan goes out
to overthrow the saving grace of God, he becomes unwittingly
a player in the whole process. The cross, the tomb, the thorns,
the whip, all of it is of the Lord. The Lord prepared it. From inside the fish, Jonah prayed,
and our Lord, in all his distress, called out to Jehovah, his God,
remembering again that our Lord Jesus lived his life as a man. And as a man in distress, he
called out to God. There in the garden of Gethsemane,
he called out to God. He prayed like you and I have
never prayed. He was under distress like you
and I have never experienced. I tell you, I've had some miserable
times in my life, and I never sweat blood. I've been also sad. I've been
through some mental torment that was pretty bad, but I never did
say my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death. There have been
a couple of times maybe I wished I could die, but there never
was a time I thought I was going to. In my distress, I called to the
Lord. Our Lord understood exactly why
He was in distress. He understood exactly why the
torments were laid upon Him. And yet in all of that, and I'm
amazed at this, in all of that, our Lord Jesus Christ called
out to the Lord and completely cast Himself upon the mercy of
God, even as He goes to pay for our mercy with His blood. In the belly of the whale, all
the sins of all God's people were laid upon Him and pressed
down upon Him. My friends, that's distress. From the depths of the grave,
I called for help, and you listened to my cry. Our Lord went into the very grave
itself, into the regions of the dead. I've never been there. And you know something? I never
will. I want you to think about it
a minute. I know this body is going to die. Remember what we
were talking about this morning? Our Lord said, he that lives
in me will never die. And he that lives and believes
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And here's what
our Lord is saying. There is a part of the believer
that never dies. He never goes to the region of
the dead. His body drops off, but he is
instantly there in heaven because he's been there all along. Heaven is opened up to him. He
sees what was there all along, but couldn't see before. But our Lord went to the regions
of the dead. He did die. And from the grave,
he called out to God. He describes his sorrows this
way, You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas,
and the current swirled about me. All your waves and breakers
swept over me. When we were on that cruise,
there we were out on that big boat, and it was big. And I don't
know, we were probably 75, 80 feet above the ocean when you
look over the rail, you know. But you look out there, Boy,
those oceans. Everywhere you look, that's all
you see is water. It's a little bit unsettling. Imagine how unsettling it would
be if you were underneath the water. Or even just floating on the
top of it and you see all those waves coming in. And they just
overwhelmed. What are you going to do against
the sea? There's nothing you can do. And
our Lord was cast out, as it were, into the sea. and dragged
down to its bottom. And I said, my God, my God, why
have you forsaken me? I said, I have been banished
from your sight. Child of God, think on this.
You have never been outside of the view of God. You may have
felt like it. He may have put you in the belly of the fish
and made you feel like you were outside of His sight, but you
never were. Do you remember when you were raising your kids? And
you tell them, I don't get far away here, you know, because
maybe you're at the carnival or the fair or something. I want
you to get lost. You stay close by. And they go
wandering away anyway. The whole time, you know just
where they are. You've got your eye on them. And then suddenly
they realize, where's Dad? I'm cut off from his sight."
No, they weren't. You let them feel like they were
for a little while, teach them a lesson. Not to get so far away. We've
never been away from the eye of God, and yet for Christ it
was true that as a human being, he was utterly cut off from the
merciful and caring eye of the God in whom he trusted. The engulfing waters threatened
me. The deep surrounded me. Seaweed
was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains
I sank down. The earth beneath barred me forever. When our Lord Jesus Christ died,
He really, really died. And if God does not accept his
blood for the remission of sins. The Lord would be dead forever. It's too easy for us to think
that the Lord might have approached Calvary and said, well, it's
going to be a rough three days, but you know, we'll get it done. He cast himself entirely upon
the will of his Father And as it were, threw his life away,
knowing full well he would lose it forever if the Father didn't
pick it back up for him. Now he did all this in faith,
but he did it nonetheless. But you brought my life up from
the pit, O Lord my God. Our Lord Jesus Christ, as He
let out His dying breath, said, Father, into Your hands I commit
my spirit. And His spirit was well committed
unto God, and God raised Him up. When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered You, Lord, and my prayer rose to You, to Your holy
temple. Isn't it amazing that you and
I Suffer such a small trial and immediately we begin to doubt
the goodness of the Lord We get all troubled in your mind and
here our Lord is breathing out his last Full of the pains of divine wrath
Yet, what does he do? I remembered you And he commits
himself to his father Those who cling to worthless
idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. Oh, in times
of trouble it is so easy for us to look to something other
than the God of our salvation, but the Lord Jesus Christ, faithful
to the end, trusted His God. Now, verse 9, this is remarkable. Our Lord, in the pains and agonies
of our sins, says this, but I, with a song of thanksgiving,
will sacrifice to you. Now if I go and with thanksgiving
sacrifice to God, I'm going to be sacrificing something else.
But our Lord with thanksgiving, think on this, our Lord with
thanksgiving sacrificed himself. I've mentioned several times
when we've had the Lord's table that the Lord took the bread
and He gave thanks. Knowing full well what that bread
represented, His broken body. And He gave thanks for the cup,
which was His shed blood. So full of love was our Lord
Jesus Christ for His Father and for you and me who are chosen
by the Father, that He gave thanks to God. for the sacrifice of
his soul. What I have vowed, I will make
good. Have you ever made a vow to the
Lord that actually made good on it? I recommend this, don't
make any vows to the Lord. Because it's only going to double
your trouble. But our Lord Jesus Christ said
this, low in the volume of the book it is written of me, I have
come to do thy will, O God. He made a promise to the Father.
He vowed to the Father. The Father gave Him His people,
gave Him His chosen ones, and the Lord made a vow to save them. And He says, What I have vowed,
I will make good. And He did. And when our Lord breathed out
His last, having made good on the vow he
made, what was the result? Salvation is of the Lord. He threw open that door of grace. He opened wide the portals of
God's mercy. And all that God had purposed
in the salvation of His people, all that He had determined and
organized and ordained, Christ opened it up. And salvation was of the Lord. And you and I sit here this day
in a state of salvation, a state of divine salvation from the
Lord, for this reason, what Christ vowed, He made good. And once the Lord Jesus made
good on His vow, and the salvation of the Lord was brought in, what
is the result? And the Lord commanded the fish
and it vomited Jonah on the dry ground. The Lord commanded the
earth, says, give up my son. Give him up. Spit him out. It's done. And Jesus Christ,
just like Jonah came out of the belly of the whale by the command
of God, so did Jesus Christ come out of the tomb by the power
and command of God. Never to die again. And Jonah,
Now, our Lord's attitude was a whole lot better than Jonah's.
I'm not going to compare Jonah's attitude to the Lord. But Jonah
went into Nineveh, and he preached, and Nineveh was saved. And our
Lord came out of the tomb, and he declared peace with God through
his blood. And all of us Ninevites were
brought to repentance and given God's salvation. So the next time you hear the
story of Jonah and the whale, Remember Christ in the tomb. Gain what benefit you can in
seeing yourself in it, but gain more benefit in this. There's
our Lord. In all that suffering, in all that misery, in all that
death, fulfilling the vow that He made, and through doing so,
bringing about our salvation. Blessed be His name. Thank you
for your son, Lord. What can we say? We're dumbstruck at what we see
in your word. Lord Jesus, what you bore for
us. All of that should have been
our fate. Death should have been in our
cup, but you drank it dry. You were the one cut off. Lord, we can't pay any vows,
but you've paid yours. And you paid it for us. Impress
this on us in the coming week. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Okay, you're dismissed.