The sermon by Robert Bosley on Jonah 1:17 to 2:10 explores the narrative under three main headings: the fish, the crisis, and the salvation. Bosley emphasizes the importance of focusing on God's role rather than the fish itself. The 'fish' in the story is seen as a vehicle of God's mercy, rescuing Jonah from drowning. The speaker discusses two interpretations of Jonah's time in the fish: one where the fish is a means of mercy and Jonah survives, and another where Jonah dies and is resurrected. The speaker leans towards the traditional interpretation of God's mercy through the fish. Jonah's prayer in the fish reflects his repentance and thanksgiving, acknowledging that salvation belongs to the Lord. The sermon encourages believers to let their crises drive them closer to God and to trust in God's mercy and salvation, ultimately found in Jesus Christ.

And open up to the book of Jonah. The book of Jonah, and we're going to be looking at what is chapter 1 verse 17 through the end of chapter 2. So we're going to look at all of chapter 2 this afternoon. And I'll begin reading there in 1.17. Now, the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish's belly and he said, I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction and he answered to me, out of the belly of Sheol I cried and you heard my voice for you cast me into the deep into the heart of the seas and the floods surrounded me all your billows and your waves passed over me then I said I've been cast out of your sight, yet I will look again toward your holy temple. The waters surrounded me, even to my soul. The deep closed around me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountains, the earth with its bars closed behind me forever.

Yet you have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord and my prayer went up to you into your holy temple. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy, but I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord." so the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah on to dry land let's pray father we come before you again and we thank you that we have your word.

We thank you Lord that we can read and be amazed and marvel at what you have done for your people and Lord as we consider what you did for this rebellious prophet We pray Lord that we would again be amazed at your power and in awe of your compassion and mercy and may it draw us closer to you today. May we leave this place more in love with you than we when we came in. In Christ's name, amen. So when we began this study through the book of Jonah, I initially quoted a commentator who said, men have been looking so hard at the great fish that they have failed to see the great God. And now today we will finally turn our attention to that great fish and the psalm that Jonah sings or prays in the belly of this fish.

But I hope that as we do turn to this part of the story where the great fish appears that we will not get so caught up on the fish itself that we will not, as that quote says, look so hard at this fish that we miss God. As we look at this, let us, maybe we'll let it lead us to have a greater view and knowledge of our great God. And so we'll look at verses 117 through 210 under three basic headings. First we have the fish. Second we will have the crisis.

And third, we will have the salvation. So the fish, the crisis, and the salvation. And last time we finished chapter one and we considered the majority of that chapter and saw how God sent this massive wind that created a huge storm on the sea, partly as punishment for Jonah's rebellion and his fleeing, seeking to flee the presence of the Lord, but also in his mercy to bring Jonah and even these pagan sailors to repentance. Jonah had given lip service to God. He had said that he feared God, but we saw that his fear was simply empty words.

He had no real fear of God, and by the end of the chapter it's actually the pagan sailors who are truly fearing the Lord and even making vows and offering sacrifices. Jonah instead is tossed overboard as almost a substitutionary sacrifice to to quiet the storm in order to secure essentially salvation for these sailors. The storm abates when Jonah is thrown overboard and Jonah takes the place of these sailors as it were and seems to die so that they do not die. And so when we get to the end of chapter one or verse 16 of chapter one, Jonah's been thrown overboard, the storm ends, and if we don't know the rest of the story we can think, well that's it, Jonah's a goner. But that's not what happens.

We look and there's so much more to this story. So verse 17 reads, now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." And so this is our first point, the fish. So we're going to talk about the fish for a minute. Let's get some basic facts down. When we think about the story of Jonah, when anyone in the world around us hears the name Jonah or the story.

Immediately the image comes of a fish, a gigantic guppy that swallowed this man in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. And you can see that imagery in paintings and drawings of this, what almost looks like a goldfish or something blown up to massive proportions that swallowed this man. So, we have to ask, well what does it mean that this, what is this fish? It might seem like it's kind of a silly question. What's a fish?

But that's actually a legitimate question we have to ask. Jesus in Matthew 12 for 40, if you're reading the King James version, it says he was swallowed by a whale. If you're reading that same verse in the New American Standard, it actually says the sea monster, which is actually a probably a better translation of the Greek word Matthew uses there. So what was it? Was it a whale?

Was it a fish? Was it a sea monster? Some Jewish commentators even said Jonah was swallowed by the Leviathan. So what what was it that actually swallowed him? And I've read several commentaries argued that was a kind of a shark in one commentary got so specific to say it was a dogfish Which is a really silly name because it's obviously neither a fish or a dog It's a shark and and I thought that was really interesting because it's a dog fish the Hebrew word here for fish is actually dog.

You're saying dog with a Boston accent or something. But it's fascinating because this word in Hebrew, it's translated as fish, but it's a general category of creature. It's basically a catch-all term for something that swims in the ocean. It swims in the water. So I've seen people go to the mat over, was it a fish?

Was it a whale? Was it a shark? We don't know. Just like in the, when we read the Old Testament, we see that their categories of creatures don't always line up with our modern scientific understandings. You'll see critics trying to discredit the Bible by pointing out that the Old Testament calls bats birds.

Well, what else would an Old Testament Israelite consider a bat? It's a flying creature in the sky. It's like a bird. Just because they didn't have the same categories of classification as us doesn't mean that they were any less intelligent or that their story is automatically myth. They just, they had a different way of considering animals.

So when we see that it's a fish that swallows Jonah, we shouldn't have a specific creature in mind. We shouldn't argue about it. The text simply doesn't say what it was. It's a fish. It's a swimming creature.

Something in the ocean swallowed him and then spit him back out. But for simplicity, I will not say it was a whale, I will not say it was a shark, I will not say it was a leviathan, I'll just call it a fish because that's what our translation says. Now there are two basic ways to understand this fish. First is the traditional interpretation that the fish is a vehicle of God's mercy, that Jonah was in danger of drowning and he's rescued by the fish. And that is the majority interpretation, both today and throughout church history, I believe.

But there's a second interpretation that has existed from the beginning, but it's a minority. And this interpretation says that the fish was actually a continued expression of God's judgment. The fish was not sent to rescue Jonah, but to kill him, or at least swallow a Jonah that had already died. And so in this interpretation Jonah is already dead or he dies in the fish. And this view is a minority view but it's actually pretty compelling.

It's argued that the storm, if it's an expression of God's anger and his wrath, it needs a sacrifice to be appeased because without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins, there is no forgiveness, there's no abatement of God's anger if there isn't punishment meted out on another. So that's one argument that because the storm ceased, Jonah must have died. Also as we look in this chapter, there's much talk about the grave. Jonah says he cried out from the belly of Sheol, the belly of the grave, that all of God's billows and waves, this imagery of all the water just washing over his head and him sinking down to the depths of the mountains. It sounds like he drowns and that the earth with its bars, a picture of death itself as a prison or perhaps a city with a gate closing behind Jonah so that he cannot escape death.

So there's all this imagery here of Jonah dying in chapter two, so much so that even the weeds are wrapped around his head and he goes down to where the mountains are moored. And so all this language points to, or it seems to point to, one going down to the realm of the dead in bodily form. And then Jonah is raised from the pit, according to verse six, and this is often used to solidify the connection between Jonah and Christ, that Christ literally rose from the dead, Jonah must have literally been raised from the dead. And I've debated this in my mind for months. Went over the book of Jonah in my Hebrew class last year and this has been one of the big debates in my mind ever since.

Did Jonah actually die? And after several months, I have to say I am tentatively coming down on the side of the traditional interpretation. I don't think Jonah actually died, but I'm not going to argue with you about it, okay? So, but that's the perspective I'm going to take in this, that Jonah did not literally die. The fish was an expression of God's mercy, And I think that because this language that emphasizes death and the grave so much here in chapter 2, this is in a psalm.

And Jonah is praying this psalm and he's pulling all this imagery from the Psalter, from the book of Psalms. And we see almost word for word these phrases occurring in other Psalms where David did not literally die or the psalmist did not literally die. He had a very close brush with death, but he did not actually die. And so this language, as vivid as it is, I think is more of Jonah saying, my life flashed before my eyes, or I was as good as dead. I don't think Jonah is saying that he literally died and was raised from the dead.

And so, how do we understand this fish? I think this fish is a vehicle of God's mercy. Jonah was in danger of physically dying, of drowning in the sea, and God rescued him in a very unconventional way, but God rescued him through this great fish. And look at, back at verse 17, the important thing here, now the Lord had prepared a great fish and the other versions will say appointed. What exactly does that mean?

Jewish midrash, essentially Jewish commentary, some of them would argue that at the creation in Genesis 1, God made a special fish that kept growing and growing and that was the fish he had prepared from before creation to swallow Jonah. I don't know if I'd go that far, but in God's decree we know that he planned this. God has ordained all things whatsoever come to pass before the world was even created. So there is a sense in which God had appointed this fish before the world began. But the key here is this was not happenstance.

This was not just Jonah lucked out God appointed this fish for his rescue just as God sent the storm God now sends a rescue God sent his judgment and his punishment. Now God sends mercy. He's seeking to bring Jonah to repentance. And so God sends this storm and then he rescues his prophet. He's teaching Jonah a lesson and God is doing everything in his power to teach this lesson and to bring his prophet back to obedience.

And now when you say that, well Jonah was swallowed by this fish and it was God's mercy and Jonah survived these three days and three nights in the fish, you can hear the skeptics already. Well, how is that possible? How could a man survive three days and three? That's not physically possible. There's all the pressure and lack of food and whatever other arguments they want to bring up.

But The primary point is people will point to this and say, well, you cannot believe this book. It's clearly a myth. A man can't survive in the belly of a fish. And my answer is, you're exactly right. A man can't survive in the belly of a fish.

That's why it's a miracle. That's why it's amazing. That's why we should be amazed at what God did here, because it can't happen unless God intervenes. We should be Christian about our thinking. We should be supernatural in our thinking that God can do things that are not normally possible.

And quite frankly, if we're truly Christian and truly have a Christian worldview and Christian thinking, the Book of Jonah is not the most unbelievable quote-unquote thing that we believe. You want unbelievable? I believe a Jewish carpenter 2, 000 years ago was God in human flesh and he died for my sins. And the fate of every man, woman, and child who ever will live depends on what they believe about him. That's unbelievable.

Jonah and the story of the fish, that's nothing compared to that. So let's be Christian in our thinking about this. Let's not give ground to the skeptics when we have no reason to. So that is the the fish. We don't know what it was, but I believe we can see that it is an expression of God's mercy, a picture of his salvation being brought to Jonah to rescue him from what would be certain death.

So secondly, the crisis. Now, after having been thrown into the sea, Jonah is in danger of drowning. That is the fundamental crisis, the distress that Jonah mentions, the affliction rather, in verse 2. I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction. This is the immediate problem.

He's in the sea and he's going to drown. Now when he says that I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction and he answered me, he's beginning this psalm, the psalm of thanksgiving, acknowledging that God has already answered. And I think the way for us to take this is that Jonah has probably, when he was thrown into the sea, cried out to the Lord in some way, even as something as simple as, Lord help me. And God heard it, and God is answering it. And so this Psalm of Thanksgiving is a psalm of thanks to God for answering his previous prayer that's not actually recorded.

That's how I take this. That Jonah when he was thrown overboard he prayed for God's help and prayed for God's rescue and he answered by sending the fish and so this psalm is thanks to God for saving him from death by drowning and so the crisis the the affliction that he is talking about was him in danger of drowning in the sea. And we see that language throughout here. You cast me into the deep, into the hearts of the seas, and the floods surrounded me. All your billows and waves passed over me.

Verse five, the waters surrounded me even to my soul. The deep closed around me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. Verse 7, when my soul fainted or when my life grew weak, I remembered the Lord. So he was on the verge of death and he remembered the Lord and my prayer went up to you into your holy temple.

This prayer, this psalm of thanksgiving, He is thanking God for having heard and rescued him. God could have left him to die. God could have said, no, you wanted to see what it would be like to be out of my presence, your will be done, Jonah. And he got a taste of that in being thrown into the sea. And I think that's what Jonah's getting at when He says, I've been cast out of your sights.

It's like God said, oh, you want to be out of my presence? Here you go, right into the sea. But now Jonah has seen the affliction, the danger, and the distress of being truly out of God's presence, truly under his wrath and his judgment, and what does it do? It softens Jonah's heart. We don't read that Jonah ever prayed.

Remember that the pagan captain rebuked him for not praying. But now Jonah prays. His suffering has drawn him to God. And this is such a key lesson for us to learn. Does our suffering, does the crises that we endure, do these things harden our hearts and push us further away from our God?

Or does it make us draw near to Him because He is the only one who can rescue us? That's the perspective we need to take. That's the perspective Jonah takes here. Now, we know the rest of the story. Jonah doesn't live this out perfectly.

You get to chapter four and you're like, Jonah, what is wrong with you, dude? But here, at this point, Jonah has seen his sin and he knows that only the Lord can rescue him. His only hope is to turn back to the God he has run away from. That should be the perspective we take. When it's either a trial or a difficulty in our life, or it's our own sin being found out, or even just the conviction of God on our souls because of hidden sin, whatever it is, we must not let it harden us, but let it spur us on to drive us back to Christ.

And I love how here in at the beginning in verse two or sorry chapter two verse one Jonah prayed to the Lord prayed to Yahweh his God. It doesn't just say the Lord God. He prayed to the Lord his God. Despite everything Jonah has done, despite God sending the storm, The Lord is still Jonah's God. There's a problem in their fellowship.

Jonah is rebelling and God is bringing him to repentance, but he still is God. And so, Maybe you're here today and there's difficulties and God feels far. Maybe you can't feel the joy of the Lord like you used to, but God is not going to let his people go. He does not let Jonah go. And we see that testimony throughout Scripture.

God does not let his people go. He holds on. He is your God and he holds you fast. And we see that here. Jonah still has the Lord as his God.

And so he's been thrown into the sea, the crisis, the affliction of death, impending death, causes him to seek the Lord in prayer. And contrary to what we might expect from chapter 1, the Lord hears him. And we see that repeated. He says, I cried out to the Lord, this is in verse 2, because of my affliction and he answered me out of the belly of Shaol I cried and you heard my voice and Then in verse 7 I remembered the Lord and my prayer went up to you into your holy temple." God hears the prayers of his saints and their distress. It may not seem like it, but he hears.

He hears his people. He is a God who is not far off. He is a God who is close at hand. And so that's our, that's the question we must ask ourselves. Do our trials, do our, the crises that we go through, do they spur us to prayer, do they spur us to worship, do they cause us to want to go closer and draw closer to Christ.

So that is the crisis. So lastly, the salvation. The salvation. I'm going to read 8 and 9 and 10. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy, but I will sacrifice to you.

With the voice of thanksgiving I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. So the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. And so God has has literally rescued Jonah by sending the fish. He rescued him from drowning by sending the fish.

That I believe is the the deliverance that he is first thanking the Lord for. This is a psalm of thanksgiving. He's thanking him for the rescue, I believe, through the fish, but he's also anticipating a greater deliverance. He said in verse 9 what I just read, I will pay what I have vowed. I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving.

I will pay what I have vowed. And he mentions the same thing earlier in verse 4 in similar language, yet I will look again toward your holy temple. And so Jonah is thanking the Lord for this this rescue by the fish, but he's looking forward to an even greater salvation, an even greater deliverance, where not only is he going to be rescued from drowning, but now he's going to be rescued from the fish itself. He's going to be able to go back to the temple. He's going to be able to offer sacrifice.

He's going to be able to worship God with the people of God. So Jonah has been spared death, but he looks ahead to an even greater salvation where Jonah will live and be able to worship again in God's temple with God's people. And he draws an interesting contrast in verse 8 with those who are idolaters. This salvation that has been accomplished and this salvation that he looks ahead to has reminded him of how foolish it is to follow the idols of the nations. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy.

And I love how the New King James translates this. Those who forsake idols, literally the the worthless vanities. This is actually how the Hebrew reads, and it's a reference to how useless and worthless idols are. They can do nothing. The idols, The gods of the nations are nothing but it's the Lord who made the heavens.

Think of chapter 1, the sailors, they're calling each man to his own God, and their gods did nothing, But it was Yahweh who did something. And now it's Yahweh who's answering Jonah's prayer. It's the true God who can have mercy. It's the true God who can save. The idols, They can accomplish nothing.

They are worthless. They are vanity. They are pointless things to put your hope in because they do nothing. They can do nothing. They are nothing.

The idols cannot achieve the salvation that Jonah's looking for. Only the true God can do that. Those who regard or follow these worthless idols forsake their own mercy. If you've read much in many commentaries, one of the Hebrew words that you've probably heard at some point is chesed, often translated as loving kindness or covenant loyalty or mercy or just love. It's kind of a broad term and that's what we have here.

Those who follow idols, they forsake the only source of true mercy. They forsake the only source of true love and loyalty. They forsake the one, And I actually love that the New King James capitalizes the M here. They forsake mercy himself. Cuz there is only one God who can truly have mercy.

And it's the true God who made all things and holds all things together. The God that Jonah has run away from, the God that he's now appealing to, the God he's now desiring to worship again, that is the only God that can truly have mercy. But the idolater, the one who turns to a God of his own imagination, he cannot get mercy. And so all of this builds to really the crescendo of the psalm, the last line of Jonah's prayer, salvation is of the Lord. Salvation belongs to Yahweh.

And this should be the creed that we all love so much. Salvation belongs to our God. Salvation comes from the hand of our Lord. This statement that he ends his prayer with should be the creed that we rest in, that we love so much. It should be the comfort of our souls when we go to bed at night and when we wake up in the morning and when we consider all our difficulties and just the normal pains and problems of the world, we should remember salvation is of the Lord.

It's the Lord who saves. Our works cannot do it. Jonah could not save himself from drowning. The sailors could not save themselves from that storm, and none of us could possibly save ourselves from God's judgment. Each one of us have played the role of Jonah.

We have run from God. We have sought to get away from his presence, either intentionally or just by nature, because we are fallen sons and daughters of Adam. We have sought to flee the presence of the God who made us, but salvation is of the Lord. And that same God that we are fleeing so often, he is the God holding out that hand of mercy. And just as Jonah was in the fish for three days and three nights, we have the one who was truly salvation itself, truly mercy itself, who was in the earth for three days and three nights.

And he came out of that grave conquering death, conquering sin. And now to everyone who will repent and believe, he offers that mercy, that true salvation that we need. That one who is greater than Jonah, who fulfilled all of these things in the ultimate sense. The one who can bring mercy, mercy greater than we can imagine, the Lord Jesus Christ who died for sinners and was raised to bring salvation. Have you trusted him?

When your own sin accuses you and you see how far short you fall, when you see that you like Jonah should have been swallowed up in the belly of death, have you run to Him? Have you gone to Christ? Have you confessed your need of Him? Your need of Him. All this imagery, we could apply it to ourselves, the storms, the flood, We see it in the Psalms over and over and we can apply it to ourselves.

We could all be swept away in God's judgment, but there is one who gives mercy and grace, one greater than Jonah, the Lord Jesus Christ who died and offers salvation to all who will repent and believe. Are you one of his today? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this picture of salvation.

Lord, we do thank you that Though each one of us have been like Jonah and spurned your laws and run from your presence, we rejoice Lord, knowing that you are a God of mercy, a God who sends salvation. We thank you that that salvation has come in our Lord and that through his work you freely forgive sin. Lord as we consider this story and what you did with this prophet, God keep us from being so focused on the side issues, but may we be amazed again that you are a God who has mercy, a God ready to forgive. And Lord, may you use that knowledge to draw each of us closer. If there is any here, Lord, may you draw those who are here, who do not yet know you.

May you draw them to yourself. May you extend your mercy and make them your children. Make them your sons and daughters. But thank you for your mercy. Thank you for your grace that you give us every day.

And as we look ahead to this week and the trials that may come, we pray, Lord, that you would give us help and may we be comforted knowing that you have appointed all these things for our good and for your glory and Lord may it all drive us more to your throne to that throne of grace. In Christ's name we pray, amen.