The Old Testament lesson for the morning is Jonah, the second chapter, beginning at verse 1 and reading through verse 10. To put this passage in its context, Jonah has been called to be an evangelist to this pagan city Nineveh, and he has resisted that call, and God has been pleased to discipline Jonah, to get his attention in a rather severe manner, and this then is Jonah's prayer from the belly of the fish appointed by God as an instrument of his grace to restore Jonah to his rightful place as the servant of God. 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 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 have been cast out of your sight. Yes, 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 for sake 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. The word of the Lord, thanks be to God, and the epistle is from the revelation of Jesus Christ to John the first chapter in verses 4 through 8. John to the seven churches which are in Asia, grace to you, and peace from him who was, who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the first born from the dead and the ruler over the kings of the earth, to him who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and has made us kings and priests to his God and father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever, amen. Behold, he is coming with clouds, and every eye will see him, even they who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of him, even so, amen. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end says the Lord who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty, the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Please rise for the reading of the gospel. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Matthew, beginning at verse 1. In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying, the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make her fate, his paths. Now John himself was clothed in camels hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan, went out to him, and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, brutive vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our Father. For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones, and even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, thanks be to the Lord. Let us pray together. Lord Jesus, again we give you thanks that you have not left us alone without a word, without a light to guide and direct our steps. Please take this your word and make it live for us by your spirit's power. By your spirit's power, press it into our hearts and souls that by it we might be transformed from one degree of glory into another for your own name's sake. In your name do we pray? Amen. You may be seated.
I love this time of year. I love this time of year that a little song that the kids sang referring to the day of the coming of the holy boy as a day of delight, a day of delight, a day of great joy, a day of grace, a day of celebration. I hope that these next days will be for you a time of celebration, a time to anticipate the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're looking at Jonah, a person from the Old Testament with whom Jesus, the coming Messiah, identifies himself in some unique, very significant ways. Jonah as a prophet had his credentials as a prophet established by a mighty act of deliverance which God performed in this passage, which we've looked at. And in like manner, Jesus, who is the anti-type or the fulfillment of what Jonah is in prophetic form, himself is delivered and his credentials established by a mighty act of deliverance. Jonah is someone with whom we've been living for the last couple of weeks. And when you live with someone for a certain amount of time, you begin to see some nuances and some contours which maybe you didn't see at first blush at an initial reading. I have a friend who has one of these strange pictures with very strange designs and with lots of different color with yellows and oranges and greens and blues and purples and turquoises. And when you first look at this thing, it doesn't appear to represent anything except random design. Well, I guess that's a kind of a non-secreture. That doesn't end random design. I mean, there's no apparent order to this thing. Just a lot of color and patterns. But he says, if you look past the surface of this thing, if you look past the appearance, then a design begins to emerge. And there are contours and nuances which appear. In fact, as you look at this particular picture, the porpoises and the quail and seagulls and palm trees and underwater vegetation and the cave and clouds all begin to emerge from what was apparently a random association of patterns and design.
Strange thing has been happening for me anyway. As I've lived with Jonah for the last couple of weeks, a picture has emerged for me. A picture which finds its final fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the coming Messiah. But it seems to me, as I look again and again at Jonah, the picture which emerges is the picture of the God of grace, the picture of the God of unspeakable grace, unimaginable grace, even unnerving and surprising grace. What are these first words which Jonah utters from the belly of that fish? I cried to the Lord because of my affliction and he answered me. I cried to the Lord because of my affliction and he answered me. Now, I've mentioned to you before in previous weeks that Jonah is one who knew his songs and that the language of this prayer finds a parallel, almost all of the phrases find parallel in the songs. So when Jonah found himself in an extremity and needed words to express his condition and his desire, he used the words which had been pressed into his mind and into his soul over years of hearing. He prayed the songs. And so when you look at this particular phrase, it may not be particularly surprising to you because it is a phrase which emerges from several of the songs. I cried to the Lord because of my affliction and he answered me. Purely and simply, he answered me. But think about the background to that particular plea and that particular cry. And think about the ending of this particular chapter, God does hear and God does answer and God does deliver Jonah from his extremity. And if you think about the background to the plea and the outcome of the plea and the plea in the context of the two, it ought to stagger you and surprise you. Think about Jonah for just a minute. Ask yourself the question, why does God deliver Jonah or why does God deliver anybody at any time? Is it because Jonah has particular credentials in the ministry and because Jonah has particular successes in the ministry? Remember first Kings 14, verse 25, Jonah was the prophet who prophesied the extension of the borders of the northern kingdom under the reign of Jerobo on the second and the prophecy came true. And it was a time of great optimism and hopefulness to use contemporary kinds of categories and pictures. Jonah was a success story as a minister and evangelist in his day. His work was fruitful. His church was growing. People were joining. People were becoming Christians. He had credentials of success in the ministry. Does God respond to Jonah because of his credentials? Or maybe God responds to Jonah because he does know his Bible, the fact of which I've already alluded. Take this prayer of Jonah and compare it with the songs and you will see those phrases all throughout his prayer. He knew his Bible and he knew it well. He knew it inside and out. And what is more, he knew his theology.
Jonah believed in the sovereignty of God and in his extremity, if you look at verse 4, Jonah recognizes, or verse 3, I'm sorry, Jonah recognizes that it isn't the pagan sailors who have bound him up and cast him into the sea, but it is God himself. It is God himself who has ordered all of the affairs of Jonah's life. It is God himself who executes his purpose in Jonah's life and you go back to the first chapter and hear Jonah confessing that he fears God the Lord of Heaven and Earth. He recognizes that the one true God has the ability to steal the storm, to silence the waves and that if those crewmen will just do what he says, God will respond because God rules over all things. His theology is good. Does God rescue Jonah because his theology is good? You know the rest of the story. You know that Jonah resisted again the call of God. You know that Jonah was disobedient to the call of God. And this serious intervention in Jonah's life was necessary for God to get his attention and get him back on course. Jonah has all of these credentials. Jonah has all of this knowledge. Jonah has all of this information all nicely systematized and ordered in his mind. But Jonah is like you and Jonah is like me. He is a divided man. I've used this line before. I don't know where it comes from. It's been attributed in my hearing to Archbishop William Temple who said in describing Jonah and describing you and describing me. I am not a man. I am a civil war. A Jonah's track record is not particularly good. You work your way to the end of the story and it doesn't get any better. When I was growing up as a kid I used to watch like many of you did. Leave it to Beaver and Donna Reed and all of those shows and you know how there was always a happy ending to the story. There was always conflict. Beaver was always in trouble. Eddie Haskell was always doing something wrong with a smile on his face. But there was always a resolution of everything at the end. There was always a happy ending. I grew up thinking life's not really like this. You read through the end of this story through the end of the book of Jonah. Jonah doesn't get any better after this act of deliverance. We've asked the question is God redeemed Jonah because of what he was or had done in the past. The answer to that clearly is no. Well this God from this moment in time hearing this confession of Jonah, hearing this crying out for deliverance. Does God see in Jonah some pivotal change, some essential or core change in attitude and look down the corridors of history and say well I know that Jonah is going to respond better in the future and so I'm going to deliver him in the present. Folks, Jonah is not any better in the future than he is right now or than he was in the past. Think of what has happened in this man's life. He has been abandoned. The word that is used in verse 4 is the same word that is used to describe what happens to Adam and Eve after their rebellion. They are cast out. They are banished from the presence of God. It is a strong word with all of those connotations of judgment. And as Jonah considers his situation in these verses, he sees himself in the pit of Shio. This never-world, this place of uncertainty and shadows and doubt and confusion. And in verse 6, I went down to the moorings of the mountains and the earth with its bars closed behind me forever. He sees himself in this moment as being imprisoned with no way of escape. Folks, the fat lady is singing in verse 6. It is over in his judgment and yet he cries out to God and God responds. Does God respond to him in this moment because of what he sees Jonah doing in the future because of improvements because he cleans up his act because he somehow becomes more deserving.
The answer to that is an unqualified no. Jonah never gets it right. He experiences this great act of deliverance himself. His life is saved. He is lifted up out of the pit. He goes to Nineveh. He preaches the gospel to Nineveh. The city is saved and Jonah is infuriated by it. Chapter 4, verse 1, It displeased Jonah exceedingly and he became angry. Jonah never was able. It appears to extend a forgiveness he had received to those Ninevites who had heard him and his people in the preceding decades. He never got to the place where his own personal sense of hurt and anger and resentment toward the Ninevites was assuaged and healed by the grace of God,
and delivered him not because of what he was, not because of the fact that he would do better in the future, but God delivered him for the same reason he delivers anybody at all at any time. That is because it is his own good pleasure so to do. Apart from any merit, past, present, or future in any object of his redeeming love, who properly should come to this table this morning? For who is this table? Folks, it is for sinners. It isn't for people who have the eyes dotted and the tees crossed, the Pharisees and the Sadducees of our own day who rest and glory in their own righteousness and their own standing, their credentials. You heard the words of Jesus addressed the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees. He called them a brute of snakes, of vipers.
It isn't for people like that. It isn't for people who pray well. It isn't for people who know their bibles well. It isn't even for people who over the course of the last five or six or four or three or two, or maybe just one day have prepared themselves in some way to gather about the table of the Lord. Up in Indiana, rural Indiana, the northern Bible belt is you're driving down secondary highways every once in a while. You'll pass a billboard with this faded paint on it which says, prepare to meet your maker. Think about that. What does that prepare to meet your maker? What does it mean? Does it mean I put on my best suit of clothes? Does it mean I polish up my manners? Does it mean I clean out the dirt from under my fingernails? Does it mean I clean my hair? Make myself presentable? It's purely and simply that I acknowledge who and what I am in the midst of my confusion, in the midst of this civil war which rages in my soul on both sides of which there are great casualty. What was the condition which led to Jonah's deliverance? Simply that he cry out the table of the Lord Jesus Christ is for those who recognize who and what they are that they are empty, that they are like Jonah confused. This war raging in their souls they come to the Lord Jesus again pleading with him for mercy again and his was true with Jonah so it is true with us that God of grace emerges and is pleased, is pleased to show his mercy to those who come in that way. The table is for those who would cry out, come more Jesus, come more Jesus, cleanse me and forgive me of my sin. Let us pray together. Lord Jesus, you know us far better than we know ourselves and you know that we are like Jonah and though we look good on the outside there is this war raging on the inside in each one of our lives. Forgive us that we engage so frequently in pretense, falsehood. Forgive us that we don't engage enough in reality, the honest acknowledgement of our condition, our utter and desperate need that I thank you Lord God of heaven and earth that you have once again in this life of Jonah painted a picture for us of your grace that you extend your grace to fools and rebels sinners such as ourselves and I pray you O God that in these moments each one of us would be forthright with ourselves and come to this blessed table to be reminded of the sufficiency of the work of our Lord Jesus and glory not in ourselves but in his perfect righteousness given freely to us. I pray that there are any here who do not know you and do not know the liberty and joy being linked and united to Jesus Christ that you would wrestle them to the ground pierce their hearts give them eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to embrace your grace expressed in the Lord Jesus and now over here the prayers of your people is together we confess our sin.