Sermons
A Cry From The Deep
Series: Man Overboard: Jonah In JeopardyA CRY FROM THE DEEP
Pt#4 / Man Overboard: Jonah In Jeopardy
Sermon Outline By Terry Siverd
Cortland Church of Christ / February 14, 2016
In our sermon series on Jonah, we left off with Jonah in the belly of the whale (sea monster).
He had attempted to run away from God.
The assignment given to Jonah to preach to the wicked city of Nineveh was too great for him to handle.
So Jonah ran to Tarshish, conscripted with a ship’s crew headed for the outer reaches of civilization (Spain).
A severe storm arose at sea and it was determined by the casting of lots that Jonah was the culprit,
so he was thrown overboard (Jonah 1:15). Yet God did not abandon Jonah on the surface of the raging sea (1:17).
The Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish for three days & nights.
Chapter two begins, not surprisingly, with Jonah PRAYING from inside the belly of the fish (Jonah 2:2)
I called out of my distress to the Lord, and He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; Thou didst hear my voice.
Scholars have attached a date for the events of Jonah’s life in and around 780BC.
David ruled as King around 1,000 BC. Apparently the writings of David were already being highly circulated.
It is not unrealistic to imagine that, as King, David’s words had been inscribed immediately.
In the 200 years between David’s death and Jonah’s life, the psalms were well known by the Hebrew people.
We say this with a high degree of confidence because, as we will see, Jonah prays the psalms.
To illustrate this, let’s first read Jonah’s prayer.
Jonah 2:1-9
Now, get out your pen and paper and note the following references from the psalms.
Ps.18:4-6 (David writing about his deliverance from King Saul)
The cords of death encompassed me, and the torrents of ungodliness terrified me. The cords of Sheol surrounded me;
the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried to my God for help;
He heard my voice out of His temple, and my cry for help before Him came into His ears.
Ps.31:22
As for me, I said in my alarm, ‘I am cut off from before Thine eyes’;
Nevertheless Thou did hear the voice of my supplications when I cried to Thee.
Ps.69:1-2 & 14-15
Save me, O God, for the waters have threatened my life. I have sunk in deep mire, and there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters, and a flood overflows me. I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched.
My eyes fail while I wait for my God …Deliver me from the mire, and do not let me sink;
May I be delivered from my foes, and from the deep waters. May the flood of water not overflow me,
And may the deep not swallow me up, and may the pit not shut its mouth over me.
Ps.88:1-7
O Lord, the God of my salvation, I have cried out by day and in the night before Thee. Let my prayer come before Thee;
Incline Thy ear to my cry. For my soul has had enough troubles, and my life has drawn near to Sheol.
I am reckoned among those who go down to the pit; I have become like a man without strength, forsaken among the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave, whom Thou dost remember no more, and they are cut off from Thy hand.
Thou has put me in the lowest pit, in dark places, in the depths. Thy wrath has rested upon me,
And Thou hast afflicted me with all Thy waves.
Ps.102:1-2
Hear my prayer, O Lord! And let my cry for help come to Thee. Do not hide Thy face from me
in the day of my distress; Incline Thine ear to me; In the day when I call answer me quickly.
Ps.116:3-4
The cords of death encompassed me, and the terrors of Sheol came upon me; I found distress and sorrow.
Then I called upon the name of the Lord: ‘O Lord, I beseech Thee, save my life!’
Ps.130:1-2
Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord. Lord hear my voice!
Let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.
These seven citations from the psalms are but a sampling. But there’s such a strong similarity between these psalms (of David) and the prayer of Jonah, that we are driven to conclude that Jonah knew well the prayers of David.
There is no doubt that these psalms had been previously etched deeply into Jonah’s psyche and soul.
And if ever there was an occasion for Jonah to recollect these psalms it was now.
In his prayer from the belly of the fish, Jonah refers to his own status as being in:
the depth of Sheol (vs.2) … in the deep (vs.3) … expelled from God’s sight (vs.4) … at the point of death (vs.5) … in the pit (vs.6).
The great prophet Isaiah (Isa.38:17) once wrote of “the pit of nothingness”.
This is where Jonah has found himself. If, indeed, he had intentions of running away from the presence of God,
he must now be wondering if he’s achieved his goal - - and what a frightening thought - - to be beyond God’s reach.
For someone who has a touch of claustrophobia, Jonah’s predicament for me would be a living hell.
We can only imagine what it would be like in the belly of a whale. The stench would be horrible.
Digestive acids would be burning one’s skin. Seaweed would be wrapped around you.
In vss.3, 5 & 6, Jonah records (later on in recollecting and recording his experience) :
For Thou hadst cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me.
All Thy breakers ad billows passed over me … Water encompassed me to the point of death.
The great deep engulfed me, weeds were wrapped around my head.
I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever…
In the belly of the whale, it would be total darkness. You would be so constricted that you would not be able to scratch an itch. You would very likely be on the brink of suffocation and perhaps pushed to the brink of insanity.
When I fell off a ladder way back in 1996, I fractured by skull and both elbows. I itched, but I could scratch.
In the sanitary confines of a hospital room, I just about went crazy.
With night-lights in the room and Jeannie at my side, the non-stop itching pushed me to the brink.
In restropect, that was the most dreadful part of my mishap and it almost drove me nuts.
It was much worst than having to be put in a CAT scan multiple times before surgery.
My event was quite minor, but Jonah’s circumstances were truly an ordeal of seismic proportions.
For Jonah, the worst of it all was contemplating that he might well have been abandoned by God.
The Hebrews had a word, Abaddon, which was used to describe the absence of the presence of God.
cf. Job.26:6; 27:20; 28:22 & 31:12 and Ps.88:11 & Prov.15:11.
Literally and figuratively, Jonah had no place to turn, except to pray to God Almighty.
Now, as we bring this message to a conclusion, let’s make some practical observations.
Many of us have found ourselves in predicaments that threaten to unravel us and do us in.
Sometimes, like Jonah, these events are the product of our own sinful behavior.
Sometimes, however, these perilous calamities come our way without any explanation as to why.
At November’s end last year, Mike & Belinda Collier tasted the bitter pill of a head-on auto collision.
Belinda has now been in the hospital and/or rehab center (Hillside and Lake Vista) for 10 weeks with several more to come.
Mike was injured badly himself, but Belinda’s body was mangled - - multiple cuts and abrasions,
a broken sternum, a fractured skull, broken ribs, a broken hip, a broken leg, a broken wrist, a crushed hand & six broken toes.
In some ways this whole ordeal has been even more painful for Mike - - having to watch Belinda learn to walk again.
Yet, this terrible catastrophic event has worked to draw Mike & Belinda closer to God.
From what I have discerned, they have prayed over the last three months like they’ve never prayed before.
The odds are we will never find ourselves in the belly of a whale, but we may find ourselves in the pits.
Whatever trial or tragedy we might experience, we need to remember the story of Jonah.
Even if we have brought our problems on ourselves, we are never beyond the reach of God.
In Jonah 2:7, we read, “While I was fainting away, I remembered the Lord…”
This is not just a case of Jonah remembering that God existed, but rather it is Jonah remembering God’s nature.
David wrote in Ps.86:13, “For Thy lovingkindness toward me is great…”.
In the midst of our troubles we must REMEMBER that God is and that He loves us dearly.
Secondly, and particularly when we are to blame, we must REPENT.
There was something about the ocean depths that spoke to Israel about the judgments of God.
In the psalms we can see that Sheol or Abaddon is often associated with the tyranny of the sea.
I have researched this topic briefly and I cannot find any immediate answers, but I will offer my thoughts here.
For the most part Israel was a nation of landlubbers and land-lovers. They were not a sea-faring people.
The events of their world, by and large, took place inland and not on the ocean.
The Old Testament people had little to do with the sea. In New Testament times we read about the Sea of Galilee, but other than Paul’s missionary journeys we read very little of the Great Sea (Mediterranean).
Prov.36:6 states, “Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God; Thy judgments are like a great deep.
Jonah’s experience on the deep was indeed the judgment of God.
As Jonah chapter two indicates, Jonah understood that his calamity was not the sailors doing, but God’s.
It was GOD who cast Jonah into the deep (vs.3) … It was GOD who expelled him (vs.4).
For Jonah, the belly of the whale brought repentance. In Rev.2:5 the angel writes to the church at Ephesus saying,
Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first.
When we remember God (His righteous judgments & His tender mercies) it brings repentance for our misdeeds.
But true repentance always issues in a RETURN to God - - remember…and repent and return to your first deeds.
As we will see next week, Jonah’s repentance brought about a return to dry ground and a return to his assignment
- - a turning again to go to Nineveh - - not Joppa … not Tarshish … but Nineveh, where God directed him to go.
In vs.9, Jonah declares, “I will sacrifice to Thee with the voice of thanksgiving and what I have vowed I will pay.”
No matter what we’ve done. No matter what has happened to us, God is eager for our return.
I think if I had to summarize the book of Jonah in one sentence it would be something like this:
There is no calamity, no tragedy, not act of disobedience & rebellion that puts us beyond the ears & heart of God.
As in the story of the prodigal son (Lk.15:20), God runs to meet us.
