Here's I don't think that I will ever forget the Sunday morning that I preached in East Oakland At the time it was the largest African-American congregation in the city Needless to say it was obvious to everyone that I was a visitor and The images from that wonderful Sunday morning are still to this day very clear in my mind the ushers were women They each wore a uniform a navy blue dress white gloves gold name plate The deacons I remember them being enormous men in dark suits Carefully positioned on each side of two large offering boxes Notting their approval to parishioners who would come to the front of the church and deposit their gifts The service that morning went on for an hour and 45 minutes before I even got up To speak then finally the associate pastor got up to pray when he pronounced the amen He then spoke the following words in such deep and hallowed tones That I had to wonder if I'd been transported to Mount Sinai itself. He said The next voice you hear will be the voice of the Reverend Arturo German Azerdia The third Never before had the sheer mention of my name sounded so pompous I I thought to myself why did my parents name me Lou or something like that, you know I stood up in my seat and climbed the stairs into a wonderful pulpit that extended out toward the congregation I took a deep breath and Said a bit nervously Please open your bibles to the book of Amos and As soon as I had spoken those words I was met with a reaction. I'd never experienced before a Little gray haired old man down to my right yelled up at me Prince He shouted Prince the word And I I thought to myself. Well, yes, sir That's what I'm here to do, you know, and so I took another breath and begin to read my text and Interspersed throughout the reading were more shouts of the same thing preach read on Amen preach the word only now they were not coming at me from this one little old man down on my right They were coming at me from everywhere in the sanctuary and from all kinds of people Men and women and children were involved in this now Admittedly I found myself a bit of nerve, you know up until that time. I'd only preached in white non-pennacostal churches Where most people regarded as a politeness to the preacher to be quiet during the sermon Not because they're hoping to hear the voice of God mind you, but because they want a few minutes of shut I'd to stay awake for the 49er game later in the afternoon But that was not the case with this church It seemed that every phrase that came off my lips was immediately met with these Rapid fire responses that were coming from everywhere and simultaneously Preach on amen keep going and you know I'm so easily stimulated and distracted my head just seemed to be spinning out of control But then I had when I was certain was a flash of brilliance nearly under divine inspiration I thought, you know, maybe if I speak louder they'll stop So I began to speak louder But the opposite happened they didn't stop they they got louder and I got more frazzled Then I had a second idea Maybe if I speak faster they won't have time to respond So I began to speak faster But rather than shutting down they seem to take it as a challenge and so they got faster along with being louder a man preach talent keep going Everything inside of me wanted to stop and say would you please leave me alone? I'm doing the best I can To this day, I don't know how I got through that sermon and for weeks after that I had nightmares You know of getting up to preach and hearing this cacophony of response preach the word amen It was without question one of the most memorable experiences. I've ever had a Happy and wonderful experience And it was there an Alan Temple Baptist Church That I first heard a phrase. I'll never forget One of the church members had been arrested the night before and as the pastor told the story it became evident that this Had not been the man's first encounter with the law but the most recent of many prior experiences And when the pastor Finished finally with all the sorted details He then said to the congregation in words that were permanently etched upon my mind that day He said brothers and sisters Never forget That your arms are too short to box with God never forget that your arms are too short to box with God and And as though on cue everybody said amen Because everybody in the place understood exactly what he meant That's the phrase that's been bouncing off the walls of my mind over the last couple of weeks because that's what this story is all about Jonah has sought to defy God Only to discover that he is overwhelmingly outclassed That his arms are woefully short This story is a showdown between God and a man who dared take God on I can illustrate it for you very simply my friends if you were to cut out of this story all of the material related to Jonah's Defiance and God's response to that defiance with what would you be left the first two verses of chapter one and Verses three through ten in chapter three. That's all Now to be sure in those few verses we discover God's desire to save people beyond the boundaries of the nation of Israel He is love for them His desire to fulfill the promise that he made to Abraham centuries before but when consideration is given to the Totality of this story the totality of this inspired material It becomes very plain that at the heart of this story is a man's foolish attempt to outmaneuver God a Man's foolish quest for autonomy and how it is that human defiance is Inevitably made forced To surrender to God's sovereign purpose in this case sadly so By the means of great pain and humiliation
God wins Righteousness prevails It's as I've told you before my friends God is always the hero of every Old Testament story You always need to make sure that when you read these stories you're reading that You're reading those stories with that perception in view and that's the case with the story here the major player in this story is God not in Jonah God is the principal actor Have you noticed by the way that his is the first and last word in this story? That's no accident Have you noticed the frequency with which he is mentioned the name the Lord capital L. O. R. D. Yahweh Is used 25 times God is used 13 times Lord God is used once that's 39 references to the deity in a book that has only 44 verses And have you taken notice of the manifold displays of his sovereignty that appear throughout this story in chapter 1 verse 1 It is the Lord who initiates this word to Jonah Jonah is not a self-commissioned prophet He is divinely appointed by the sovereign will of God go call out In verse 4 it is the Lord who hurls a great wind upon the sea In verse 6 it is the captain who reminds Jonah that the purpose of God cannot be manipulated by the prayers of men Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not perish In verse 14 the sailors defined their circumstances as the pleasure of God In verse 17 it is the Lord who ordains a great fish to swallow Jonah in Chapter 2 verse 3 it is the Lord it was the cause of Jonah's distress in verse 9 Jonah declares that salvation is of the Lord in verse 10 It is the Lord who commands the great fish which in turn responds in obedience In chapter 3 verse 1 it is the Lord who initiates his word to Jonah a second time In verse 9 it is the king of Nineveh who acknowledges that forgiveness is a prerogative of God He may or may not exercise it in response to repentance In chapter 4 verse 6 it is the Lord who appoints a plant to grow up over Jonah in verse 7 He appoints a worm to ruin the plant in verse 8 He appoints a scorching east wind to blast Jonah into a kind of near death experience of sunstroke
Jonah's arms are too short to box with God It reminds me of the proverb that says there is no wisdom No insight no plan That can succeed against the Lord And Isaiah the prophet writes the Lord Almighty has sworn Surely as I have planned so it will be and as I have purposed so it will stand for the Lord Almighty has purposed and who can Fort him his hand is stretched out and who can turn it back His arms are too short to box with God and My dear friends my dear brothers and sisters This is the reason why this story ought to compel your interest It's because the man in this story is just like you That is to say if you are a Christian this morning Jonah is like you in the sense that he belongs to God Jonah is not an unbeliever Jonah is not an idol worshipper Jonah is not the follower of a false God or the rejector of all gods if you would allow me to employ the language of the New Testament Jonah is a saved man a Man who has placed his faith in the one true and living God and moreover He's not been a mere passive follower of this one true and living God He's been known by all to be a person who has served this God with great faithfulness But now you see at this moment in his life when God's revelation does not meet with His approval he says no and We've been attempting to call this what it is Not a midlife crisis
Not the consequence of a man who was the product of an alcoholic home or abusive parents He's not made an unwise choice because the demands of life are so overwhelmingly stressful that he can't cope. He is defiant In fact this story beloved at least in part is designed to shock us By showing us how obstinant a human heart can be a heart I would remind you that has been steeped in biblical truth and is rich with covenant privilege After nearly 20 years of pastoral ministry I think I can say with some measure of credibility that some of the most defiant people I know Have been some of the most biblically informed people that I know
We're not beyond this friends. This defiance is not foreign to the people of the Bible It's certainly not foreign to me. I'm certain that it's not foreign to you We can sin just like this We who have known God's grace we who have enjoyed the blessings of covenant fellowship We who have known the deep satisfaction of Christian obedience? How does it happen? We're beguiled by our residual sin
And we say no to God one time and what do we discover? That it gets easier to say no the next time and easier yet the third and Before we realize that we're ensnared in defiance six months of past eight months of past a year has passed And our pride will not allow us to repent We sing it beloved. I take this to be the standard experience of authentic Christianity Prone to wonder Lord. I feel it Prone to leave the God I love
However If we truly belong to God His sovereign purpose for our lives will not allow us to prevail in our defiance We discover from the story of Jonah that God has the universe at his disposal and that he will use it when necessary To put his children back on the path of covenant faithfulness Even when doing so requires a chastisement that is severe Or is in a case of Jonah a Chastisement that may even bring us to the Press of death itself
God says to Jonah go 500 miles north east to Nineveh Jonah sets out to go 2000 miles southwest to Tarshish One thing leads to another as you know and Jonah is thrown overboard into the raging sea To be sure it's a bad end for Jonah, but his defiance has become so severe that he would rather die than obey God Pride makes a man stupid. It makes a man foolish
What Jonah fails to reckon with however is that God has infinitely more ways of confronting him than he has of defying God And that now becomes evident as the curtain to act two opens on this story again God is the major player had we the time beloved this morning. I could show you how the very literary structure of this chapter is Intentionally designed to point us to Yahweh. It's a beautiful Artistic thing the design behind this chapter suffice it to say however in the interest of time God's prominence in this scene is made evident in three definitive expressions Here's the first The Lord God is the author of Jonah's distress He's the author that the cause the source the originator of Jonah's distress Verse 17 in chapter one and the Lord notice the capitals. This is that Glorious covenant name for God Yahweh Appointed or ordained a great fish to swallow up Jonah And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights Now my friends you read that last little phrase and you know very well Huh that from the gospel accounts that phrase three days and three nights? You know that this experience on the part of Jonah was a profound foreshadowing of the death burial in resurrection of our Lord Jesus Now I'm not going to go in that direction This morning. I'm going to try and exercise a bit of self-restraint and save that for the final message in this series The sign of Jonah as Jesus refers to it for the time being however What is imperative to see is that this great sea monster has been ordained by God himself God has appointed him Jonah wants to kill himself God wants him to go to Nineveh therefore he appoints a great fish to swallow him Notice the word there. That's a very interesting word in the Old Testament to devour to to swallow It always carries with it negative connotations not simply by the way to carry Jonah around in his mouth But to swallow him I would remind you that at the end of chapter two Jonah is not very spit out of the whale's mouth He is vomited out He's in the belly of this fish and yet According to God's design The great fish has swallowed Jonah not to eat him But to shelter him to protect him It's served as a highly unusual submarine Devinely appointed to rescue Jonah from his subterranean predicament now I need to tell you friends perhaps to your disappointment I'm not going to spend any time whatsoever telling you what kind of fish this was Whether or not it was a whale The point is the Bible doesn't tell us and it's highly unlikely that Jonah himself knew Are we to assume you know that he caught a glimpse of it as it turned back to the sea after vomiting him out on the shore? Oh, yes, Jonah says I think that was probably a sperm whale You know after all the sperm whale has a large enough throat cavity to swallow a man. It's no point in this Moreover, I have no burden to prove the historicity of this business It always amazes me frankly that Christians pander after science So it's to lend credibility to the Bible Well in 1914 off the west coast of South America a Spanish fisherman was spotted by a sperm whale and lived in its belly for three days Isn't that neat? Tasted implication well, we can sure feel better about the Bible now
It's a miracle By definition beloved a miracle is an act of God that defies Replication our explanation You realize friends how that when we try and prove a miracle scientifically we are knowingly perhaps do the very same thing that the liberal does We lend too much credibility to the scientific process and not enough respect to the sacred text Now you may say to me do you really believe that it's possible for a man to live inside the belly of a fish for three days? To me beloved It's not any more fantastic than a man being raised from the dead after three days. That's the miracle I mean the fact is you eat a believe it or you don't I'm not going to try and prove it to you. I believe it. What's more? I believe that the covenant Lord was behind it We're told that which means there's purpose in it and That's what I want us to think about we spend so much time obsessing about what took place inside the fish that we often miss What was going on inside of Jonah which is what this is all about and that's where we're brought Is chapter two opens then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish saying I Called out to the Lord out of my distress and he answered me Out of the belly of she all I cried and you heard my voice Oh my friends for the first time in this story the man of God prays Don't forget back chapter one verse six how he had ignored The ironic exhortation of the ship captain Arise sleeper get up and call upon your God and Jonah does nothing of the sword It's like we said a few weeks ago Bent on defiance you can't pray Kenya not freely Not openly not with liberality
What is it that breaks Jonah's defiance? He tells us My distress I Called out of the Lord out to the Lord out of my Distress of but what does Jonah mean hereby distress? Well, notice the parallelism in the next phrase. This is how Hebrew poetry works out of the belly of She all I cried There is that old Hebrew word that about 95% of the time means the realm of the dead
Why did I cry out to God because I'd entered the realm of the dead as it were he had come to the inevitable conclusion That he was about to die It's interesting to note that in the Bible to see is often pictured as something violent and chaotic life-threatening Jonah had every reason to believe at this moment that he was a dead man He thought he was glad to die And when he faced the reality of it, it set him in a panic It took something beloved of that severity to bring his defiance to an end. It's it's as it were the Old Testament counterpart to Luke 15 the prodigal son eating with the pigs to bring him to a place of Recognizing his defiance and And what I want you to see beloved is that in this prayer he rightly identifies this as Chastisement from the hand of Yahweh his covenant Lord. We saw in verse 17 It was the Lord who appointed this great fish now look at verse three For you cast me into the deep into the heart of the seas and the flood surrounded me You say no wait a minute hard. We read it last time the sailors through Jonah into the sea had Jonah's own request no less But my friends Jonah now was looking beyond the human instrument you see he can see the signs He can read the fingerprints. He knows who's behind all of this. This has Yahweh's M.O. written all over it It is a case of sovereign pursuit. He has tracked me down. He has found me. He has cornered me I could remind you that Jonah has already acknowledged in chapter one that the storm had come about because of his disobedience He'd already acknowledged that Yahweh was the Lord of the sea Did you did you see the pronouns verse three for you? Cast me into the deep into the heart of the sea and the flood surrounded me all your waves and your billows Past over me and then you see He feels dreaded what this may mean Then I said I am driven away from your sight It's It's very much like Isaiah 53 when the prophet says in the mouth of the suffering servant I have been cut off out of the land of the living It's a way of speaking about death I'm driven away from your side from your presence and then in the next line But whatever there's a bit of a textual problem in the original It can be translated in one of two ways it can be translated as it is here Yet I shall again look upon your holy temple although the idea is in the midst of my Experience of death my death like experience there is gonna come a day when I'll look upon your holy temple That seems to me to be all together out of the character of the immediate context here It can also be translated as a question How shall I again look upon your holy temple the RSV the NRSV Both translated this way then I said I am driven away from your sight. How shall I again look upon your holy temple? He knows death is just moments away It is this dread this panic this frenzy that one feels and the experience of drowning Have you ever felt those few brief moments those few brief seconds of fear? That you have to get to the service of the water, but you can't the terror of what will happen if you don't the gasping and the choking and your lungs screaming for oxygen I Mean that is a terrible thing. That's the stuff of nightmares He knows he's gonna die It is beloved the Merciful Chastisement of God the Merciful terror authored by God and the amazing thing is Jonah suddenly realizes the implications of What he thought he was prepared to live without I'll never again be able to offer you Sacrifice in the temple. I'll never again be able to join with the people of God as they climb up the hill of Mount Zion ascending to that place of corporate worship singing your praises It's the anticipation of being cut off from public worship that breaks his heart You know beloved. It's interesting when we're defiant We're so quick to leave the people of God So quick to devalue the significance of corporate worship and I want to tell you something beloved if you have eyes to see This is something that will become plain to you Defiant people end up being solitary people They end up alone Not simply because they are so unpleasant to be around but because for defiant people The joy of other Christians is like salt in a raw wound It's just Jesus and me. I don't need to church. I don't need the experience of corporate worship Jonah was sure he was beyond it. Jonah was sure he didn't need it that he could live without it I'd rather die than obey God and then he experiences the rod of his father's affliction and what happens in what he believes To be the final second of his life this proves to be the one thing that Jonah fears losing most of all I'll be cut off from that place of corporate worship the waters closed in over me to take my life The deep surrounded me Weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. You see those verbs the waters closed in The deep surrounded weeds or wrapped about my head. I
Went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever It's the inescapability of death
Perhaps you've not experienced it literally. I hope you haven't But if I was a betting man, I would bet that most of you have known this kind of thing figuratively in other kinds of ways The severity of God's loving chastisement in response to your defiance That comes at you so strongly, so powerfully, so profoundly That it seems as it were that you are on the very brink of death itself The psalmist speaks this way beloved in this very kind of language He writes I am counted among those who go down to the pit I am a man who has no strength like one set loose among the dead like the slain that lie in the grave Like those whom you remember no more for they are cut off from your hand You have put me in the depths of the pit in the region's dark and deep your Rathwise heavy upon me and you overwhelm me with all your waves It is a terrible thing this chastisement of God whether the waves are literal or figurative
Is that there is great hope? When you know that the covenant Lord is the author of it I don't know how long it took But at some point in time Jonah realized that his presence in the belly of this great fish was not where his life would end But that it was God's appointed means of delivering Not only was the Lord God the author of Jonah's distress Secondly now the Lord God was the deliverer of Jonah's life Here's the pivot point where the prayer turns Middle of verse six yet You brought up my life from the pit Oh Lord My God The God with whom I am in covenant relationship You brought my life up from the pit When my life was fainting away I remembered the Lord does that mean he just suddenly Have the thought of God run through his mind no again the parallelism in the next line tells us exactly what he meant And my prayer Came to you into your holy temple. You see the flow of this beloved you called I Defied you chastised I prayed You delivered Beloved as the children of God let me tell you When our covenant Lord is the author of chastisement Take great delight in the fact that it is always with a view to deliverance
Chastisement is not God's opportunity to vent his frustration It is always with the aim of restoration His discipline is not punitive his discipline is remedial. There is a mercy in the misery This right here may perhaps be the most profound illustration of Hebrews 12 in all of the word of God For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and Chastises every son whom he receives for what son is there whom his father does not discipline if you are left without discipline Which all are participated then you are illegitimate children and not sons He disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness For the moment all disciplines seems painful rather than pleasant But later yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it and you see friends I think that this is what's now becoming clear to Jonah in the belly of this great fish I would remind you that as it begins to pray about his own deliverance Expecting his deliverance he has not yet been expelled from the from the belly of this fish onto the dry land He praised this prayer and the very tenor of it is deliverance as assumed Notice the contrast that he establishes verse 8 those who pay regard to vain idols for sake their hope of steadfast love Those who worship idols there they're they're wasting their time their their spending their energy and feudal pursuits and My friends here. I want to remind you the Jonah is not talking about people like the sailors in chapter one or the Ninevites in chapter three you'll notice he speaks of God's steadfast love That's a word you ought to remember from our study in the book of Ruth That is one of the richest words in all the Old Testament. It is that Hebrew word Cassandre God's Covenant love for those with whom he is in covenant relationship You know who Jonah's talking about here? He's speaking to his own people Many of whom had turned away from Yahweh in spiritual horde them and it had taken up idle worship that's a double Of Hosea is all about Hosea was a contemporary of Jonah up in the northern kingdom saying to his people for safety idols And Jonah is saying here in the belly of this great fish to give yourself to these lifeless Nothings is to cut yourself off from the love of Yahweh and In fact, my friends Jonah at this point may in fact be thinking of himself because his radical defiance revealed his own idolatry The object to which everything else had bowed down in his life Was his own stubborn will in contrast he says But I with the voice of Thanksgiving will sacrifice to you What I about I will pay Have you ever experienced the delivering power of God if you have You'll know it Because the instinctive response is worship When you appreciate the magnificence of God's delivering grace God's saving power No one has to tell you to worship It's the natural disposition of your mind and heart have you been forgiven you want to praise Has God delivered you from sin in its consequences this thing becomes your passion and friends I think the Converse is also true whenever you come alongside apathetic worship It is almost always a lack of appreciation for the saving work of God That's why we talk about salvation around here so often It's the thing that fuels our praise and when you spend all your time in church then talking about things like how to be a happy employee Then all of the people who are up here leaving in worship need to jump on their heads just to get you motivated That's why these churches do this you see But when you put before the people of God the magnificence of God salvation in Jesus Christ what's the instinctive response I want to say thank you
it fuels praise In anticipation of his deliverance Jonah promises praise and worship and moreover did you notice he pledged the pang of vows And I'm inclined to think beloved that whatever Jonah means by this In terms of the acceptable expressions of temple worship for example the offering of sacrifices It also implies his vow To obey the commission to which God had called him at the outset of this story This is how we know the chastisement has served its purpose Defiance is replaced with a fresh resolve To obey it's not grudging It's not resistant It's not double-minded It is an enthusiastic commitment to wholehearted obedience
God is the major player in this story He's the author of Jonah's distress the deliverer of Jonah's life finally thirdly He was the conqueror of Jonah's defiance He was the conqueror of Jonah's defiance and how do I know this not simply because of the promise of future worship and praise and obedience But because of this final exclamation Jonah says salvation belongs to Yahweh What does that phrase mean? It means two things It gets it exclusivity and it gets its sovereignty first of all and Most germane to this story Salvation belongs to the Lord means that Yahweh is in charge of salvation He's the one who decides whom he will save and how That salvation is his domain Salvation is his area of authority Salvation is his possession to dispense in this realm He alone makes the decisions Jonah does not get to decide who hears the gospel Jonah does not decide the future of the Ninevites Jonah does not refuse the prophetic task because he doesn't like the audience to which God has called him Salvation is God's domain. He calls the shots. He determines the outcome and when he saves He then alone deserves the praise He has saved Jonah when Jonah least deserved it now it is for Jonah to declare God's word to those who just like him are not deserving of it Like Spurgeon says He had learned great theology in a most unusual college
Salvation is the the Lord and as if to illustrate this very declaration Verse 10 says and the Lord spoke to the fish And it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land Salvation belongs to the Lord He's in charge of salvation it speaks of his sovereignty secondly this little phrase gets at his The exclusivity of this salvation it means frankly beloved that there is no other savior but Yahweh That he is the only Savior Salvation belongs to Yahweh it extols his position as the soul Savior in other words the source of salvation is exclusive Which means then for us a couple of things it means first of all that the God who saves is not the God fashioned by post-modernism Postmodernism says God whoever you want him her or it to be is fine because after all we now know that all Spiritualities ultimately lead to the same place Moreover this means That this God is not the God who is now being fashioned by our present political expediency After all we're being told that the God of Christianity the God of Judaism and the God of Islam is one of the same God But what do we discover beloved when we read the Bible? That the God of both Testaments has revealed himself most fully as the father of our Lord Jesus Christ This is obviously not the God of Islam and though it is to be sure the God of the Old Testament It is not the God of Judaism if the God of Judaism does not identify him in the fullness of his revelation is the father of the Lord Jesus Christ If Salvation is your concern this morning then you must read the Bible in all of its exclusive political incorrectness Salvation is of Yahweh the God of the covenant who is revealed himself most fully in his son Jesus Christ No man has seen God at any time the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father He has Explained him
Salvation belongs to Yahweh In fact friends, let me remind you, huh? Let me remind you of something After he had been conceived an angel came to Joseph one night Two concerns were on the angel's mind The first was the origination of Mary's pregnancy Don't divorce her Joseph What's been conceived in her Is the miraculous doing of the Holy Spirit? The second concern of the angel remember the name of This supernatural he conceived child You'll have other children Joseph plenty of opportunity to select names But for this child the name has been picked by heaven It corresponds to the purpose of his coming So what's his name? You're to call him Jesus By the way, do you know what the name Jesus means?
Salvation He longs The Yahweh the God who saved Jonah is the same God to this very hour who saved sinners like you and me Salvation belongs to him There are no other gods in whom salvation is found in Definitive exclusivity Jesus said I am the way and the truth and the lie No one comes to the father except through me The Apostle Peter when speaking about Jesus said and there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name But her heaven given among men by which we must be saved salvation is of the Lord It is found in Jesus Christ alone and how has Jesus Christ definitively saved sinners by Experiencing the abandonment of God as had Jonah He prayed this prayer as it were This was his prayer Jonah says I am driven away from your sight and what did Jesus pray? My God my God. Why have you forsaken me? Like unto Jonah All the chastisement he endured was authored by his father He died on the cross. He spent three days and nights in the belly of the earth and then the same God who authored his Punishment proved to be the deliverer of his life and His sovereign command Jesus was thrust forth from his tomb God conquering deaths Defiant that's the message that this table proclaims It's the ancient testimony of a defiant prophet Who had met with divine deliverance My arms were too short to box with God
Salvation belongs to Yahweh It's his to give away And I know it Because when I least deserved it He gave it to me The enshrouding blackness in gulps my being Alone afraid My mind a whirlpool ever inwards towards an eternity of intolerable pain I used to reach out a hand into the black unknown in hope But my soul was torn from me and I hoped no more It was like a pit Unfathomable depth, tortuous groveling, my tears the only sound in the impenetrable darkness I remember that pit and the fear and the hopelessness of an eternal agony of mind and the soulless wandering in uncharted desert Now I find myself at this oasis this unlooked for harbour this refuge I did not deserve this gracious act to pluck me from that all-powerful deep I had no hope But turning back along the path I came I see a gracious hand in a loving smile I see a guiding light and feel a protecting wing Nestling in your warmth my cold heart has thawed The blackness of my soul has blossomed into a million blooms My tears have turned to jewels and my bitterness to honey, but I remember the pit Keep me, O Lord Safe and the refuge of your wings
Would you bow your heads with cringles?
Our Father and our God you are so exceedingly wonderful people like us People like Jonah You are merciful You pursue us when we wander as our hearts are prone to do You are the author of the flictions that Arouse our attention You were the one who delivers us from them You were the one who in the end conquers our defiant hearts And we long for that day When no longer will defiance be an issue for us Until that day, however We steadily come back to what is represented before us in these elements The all-sufficient sacrifice of your son, Jesus We love him We realize that there is salvation found in no other source And we pray now, O Lord and God, that as we partake of these elements It would be mindful of your great act of rescuing us from the very clutches of death itself We do love you this morning In the name of your Son, we pray, amen