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We have read in our text a most remarkable and unique recorded prayer. Has there ever been a circumstance quite like this since? Has there ever been any other prayer launched toward heaven by man from the belly of a fish? It is one thing to be cast from a boat into a raging sea in the midst of the storm; it is quite another to become the dinner of a large sea creature! It is one thing to be eaten by such a critter, but it is quite another to survive and be alive within it’s innards. And to stay there for three days and three nights! And yet this remarkable story does not come to us from fables or fictional children’s tales, but rather from the Word of God which states that every word is breathed from the will and breath of God. The same volume that teaches us about salvation and the cross and the life-changing power of the blood of the Lamb and heaven and worship and does so accurately and with powerful truth also teaches us that a man named Jonah was swallowed by a great fish and remained there alive for three days and three nights. And Jesus Christ not only believed that it happened but used the story as a representation of how long He would be in the heart of the earth before His resurrection:

Jesus did not say “as it is supposed that Jonah was in the fish for three days and three nights,” but rather “just as he was in the fish for 72 hours, so I will be in the grave for 72 hours.” And so as remarkable as it seems if you believe in Jesus Christ, then you must also believe in the story of Jonah because they are linked in scripture. If you believe in the resurrection of Christ, then you must believe that not only was Jonah literally swallowed by a great sea creature, but survived and three days later came out on dry ground! You can’t believe one without the other and so as fantastic as it sounds, it must have happened! This prayer of Jonah really emanated from the depths of the sea inside a fish. Jonah took the first submarine dive in human history!

But it was a dive of terror! He did not stay there for three minutes or three hours but rather three days! In the dark, against the slimy insides of a great fish. I can’t imagine the smell. I can’t imagine the claustrophobic notions. I can’t imagine the bleakness of mind and heart and fear that filled Jonah as the realization of where he was set in. He had expected to die, but this was worse than death. He literally could not have sunk any lower. He said in our text “out of the belly of hell, cried I” and it surely must have seemed a nightmarish place of the dead. He probably thought “I just didn’t know that hell would be so fish smelling!”

And yet as unique as this situation is and as fantastic Jonah’s predicament was, I can’t help but think that we are more like Jonah than we would care to admit. The writer of the 69^th Psalm probably never actually got swallowed by a literal fish, but in our other text, he cried out to God for salvation from the “deep” troubles that were swallowing him. He prayed for help from the “pit” that would close it’s “mouth” on him. Miles inland and years later and yet this Psalmist had found himself in a desperate situation and a bad predicament much like Jonah; needing immediate help from God. And so I can’t help but think that despite there being no literal sea or ocean or boat nearby here in Texas, yet many of us have and will find ourselves in a situation in the spirit where we are swallowed up by troubles and consumed by the bleakness and darkness of our situation. We have more in common with Jonah’s situation probably than we first realized. And before I prove that point, let me say that despite the horror of Jonah’s predicament and the anguish of such a position, that really this is a positive and hope bringing story because not only does Jonah live for three days, but he is deposited out of his situation on dry ground to be able to perform the will of God. My mother used to say “all’s well that ends well” and Jonah’s story brings us the good news that despite the worst and lowest and darkest and most remarkable of circumstances, if we will turn to God, there is a way of salvation and deliverance! Such is the good news of Jonah’s predicament.

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I always believe in getting the bad news first and then receive the good news at the last, so let’s first talk about what Jonah did wrong. And, unfortunately, we are much more like Jonah than we would care to admit. Let us note first that:

The situation was brought upon Jonah largely by his own actions.

It rains on the just and the unjust and there are times that things just happen to us in the course of life, and I understand that and believe that. But, if we were to be honest today, many times we find ourselves in a dire situation because our own actions placed us there. In every life a little rain must fall, but what about the storms of our own creation? Jonah was a victim of his own decision to choose to run from the will and commandments of God. God had commanded him as a preacher to go preach to the heathen Ninevites a message of the necessity of a sudden repentance or else judgment would come upon them. Jonah knew that if the Ninevites repented that God would not destroy them and because of his own prejudices and personal vendettas, Jonah did not want to see them spared! Therefore rather than go preach to them the message of God, Jonah got on a ship heading the opposite direction. It was his direction in the spirit that brought the storm. It was his rebellion that brought the necessity of him being thrown overboard. It was his prejudiced stubbornness in wanting to do things his way that got him into the deep. Jonah’s situation was largely brought upon himself by his own choosing.

Don’t be surprised when going the opposite direction of God’s Word brings about hardships and storms in your life. Rather be surprised if going against God’s command and will for your life does NOT bring the storm! Most Bible scholars believe that the 69^th Psalm that we read as our other text was written while the Jewish people were in captivity in Babylon. If so, then we have the remarkable coincidence that the psalmist that used such language about his problem “swallowing him” was also in a situation that was the result of their own disobedience to God’s Word.

The Word of God is truth, and as such it applies to our lives whether we know what it says or not. Very few of you if anyone has ever sat down with that thick book entitled the US tax code and read it’s entirety, but your ignorance of the tax code does not mean that you do not have to pay taxes, or that your income is not judged according to those principles. An even better analogy is that the law of gravity is truth upon this earth, and whether you understand it or not it is active in your life. Indeed it was active before men even discovered it!

Too many people seem to think that the Word of God is only active in their life if they are aware of what it says. They think that “ignorance is bliss.” And yet even if they don’t realize that they are violating the Word of God, doing so brings them into the depths of dark predicaments. The Word of God is a law unto itself and mankind is governed by it’s principles whether they choose to believe it or not. And so many of our deepest and worst moments in life, were sadly brought upon ourselves by our own actions that violated the Word of God. It’s not that God sets out to punish those who go against His Word in everyday life, but rather that the Bible is the result of an all-knowing God revealing to us what will bring hurt and what will bring blessing. Sin is simply a fancy word for things that God knows will hurt and destroy us and cause pain, and so He warns us ahead of time. Sin hurts God because it hurts us and we are God’s prized creation made in His image! It’s not a set of rules and must dos, but rather a blessed way to live!

And so we are more like Jonah than we would care to admit, because the majority of our darkest dilemmas are the result of us running from the plan of God and doing what we would desire to do rather than what God has directed for our lives. If you would take an honest inventory, the worst storms in your life were not brought on you by God or the devil, but rather by your choosing to disobey God’s voice.

But the good news of Jonah’s predicament was that God answered his prayer and saved him out of it! It was every bit his fault and yet God delivered him out of the situation of his own making! I’m preaching to someone here today that like Jonah are being swallowed by the anguish and darkness of a situation that your own actions have brought upon yourself. And with that realization, there is a little voice from Satan that tries to slip into your mind that says “don’t bother God because you got yourself into this one, and He’s not interested.” There is often a condemnation that comes into your life when you are being swallowed by the deep depths of your own creation, and that condemnation whispers “there is no hope because God warned you and rejected His commandments, therefore He will not help you.” But to those voices I speak the good news of Jonah’s predicament! And that good news is that his story proves that even if you are in the darkest pit created by your own rebellion and your own stubbornness, yet God will not forsake you! If you will cry out to Him, God is able and willing to deliver you from that deep trouble! His mercy is such that even when our dilemma is our fault, still He reaches out to help us!

Lest I leave anyone out, let me remind you that there are people under the sound of my voice who are in hardships and predicaments that were NOT brought on by your sinful actions or disobedience to God’s plan. I am preaching to some people that you are like Job enduring a trial/test, or who perhaps the rain is falling on the just and the storm is blowing on the righteous. I realize that not all dilemmas are a result of sin, and yet if you are such a person you can still find good news in Jonah’s predicament, because if God will respond to the cry of a backslidden, rebellious preacher who is at the bottom of the sea and deliver him, then how much more will God be faithful to those who have been faithful to Him?! Take heart today, because He has heard your cry and He will deliver you and save you and He will not forsake you and He knows exactly where you are! God will not be more merciful and gracious to the rebellious than to His faithful followers! And so even if you are in a situation that your actions contributed nothing to, you can be encouraged today from the story of Jonah, that if God responded to him, then surely He has heard your cry!

Coming back to those who have been disobedient and are now suffering the consequences, let me say this: God will let us sink awhile. He will let us go through the storm a while. He will let us be flung out to sink in our despair of our own creation. He does this first of all to let us learn that His word is true and that leaning on our own understanding will not save us. He does this also to -- like Jonah -- so that we will have time to think about how much better it would be if He were involved. But He does this most of the time because we -- like Jonah -- often have to be convinced of the utter hopelessness of our situation before we turn to God for help! The other thing that Jonah did wrong was:

I don’t why he waited so long to turn to God. Maybe he was believing the lie that God would not help him from a predicament of his own creation. Maybe he still thought that he could get out of it alive. Maybe he would have rather died in his rebellion rather than obey the voice of God. Whatever the reason, we don’t find Jonah praying one time when the waves started getting big. In the midst of the gale, Jonah does not call on God. When the sailors fling him overboard into the depths of the sea, Jonah does not pray for help. After the fish has swallowed Jonah and he is in the belly of the sea creature, he does not at first cry out. The scriptures record a startling revelation:

Did you catch that? “Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights. THEN Jonah prayed!” He did not turn to God until after 72 hours in the fish! I am reminded of Pharaoh telling Moses in Exodus “I’m sick of these frogs, tell your God to take them away,” and Moses asking “when you do you want them to leave?” Only to have Pharaoh respond “in the morning.” In the morning!? Why would you choose to spend one more night with them? Why choose one more night when God can deliver you now! And so it is with Jonah. I want to scream at him: “it’s been twelve hours now, twenty hours now, why are you waiting so long before calling out to God?” What is it about human nature that we would rather spend another night in the worst of circumstances rather than admit that we made a mistake and need God’s help!? It took three days before Jonah called out to God Almighty in repentance.

Here this preacher: don’t be like Pharaoh; God will deliver you from your plague of sin right now, so don’t choose to spend another night in the pain and agony of knowing that you are not right with God! Don’t be like Jonah: Why wallow in your predicament another night or another week or another year while it just grows worse and worse when God would hear you right now!? Why must you wait until the sin has grown and like leprosy has spread throughout your family and destroyed your life before you finally admit that you need God’s Word and help? Why do people so often get themselves into a mess and then make it worse by continuing to live according to their own understanding when that was what got them in it in the first place? People who call 911 for a splinter yet tend to rather wallow in their spiritual pain and spiritual suffering rather than admit that they need help and to call on God! Learn a lesson from Jonah’s mistake: Call on God early! You don’t have to wait for the seaweed to be wrapped around your head and the pressure of the deep pushing in before you call out! Call on Him at the first sign of the storm! He will deliver you! He will respond! IF you will call!

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We have spent far too much time on what Jonah did wrong and now must turn to see what it is that Jonah did right! If we are more like Jonah in our situations than we would care to admit, then let us be like Jonah in our response, because despite the negative circumstances, he did what it took to get out and be delivered! A past of wrong can be saved by a present of doing right. And so we find that Jonah did good in that:

Better late than never! Sure it had been three days. Sure he had been stubborn in his rebellion and reaped the consequences. Sure he was hard headed, but he did call and he called before it was too late. I don’t know what the lifespan of a man in a belly of a fish is, but Jonah had to be getting close to the end, and despite the lateness of the hour, he cried out to God!

How many people have died in their sins simply because they thought “what was the point since I have lived my entire life for myself, what is the hope of calling out to God now?” Don’t get me wrong: we shouldn’t plan to wait until another day. Don’t plan to “one day” get things right with God because today is the day of salvation! We have no promise of tomorrow! But if your “today” finds you after a life of sin and hardships and pain and yet you are breathing today, then by all means it is not too late to cry out God for His mercy! Don’t deceive yourself and because of the lateness of the hour neglect to call on Him! Saved at the end is better than not saved at all!

And if there is someone here that your situation has gotten worse and worse and worse and you have continued leaning to your own understanding and tried everything within you, whatever you do don’t let pride keep you from turning to God even though you are at the deepest point of despair! In order to be saved, you must first admit you need for salvation, and so don’t wait too late! Even if the predicament is dark and desperate and all your fault, call out to God!

Do you realize that the fish in the story was not a part of the judgment of God but rather of His mercy? God let Jonah sink a ways, but then -- knowing that the deep would drown him and destroy him -- sent the fish to preserve Jonah in the deep. I’ve heard people complain about their desperate situation and circumstances and yet it never dawned on them that the very fact that they had breath to complain was because of the mercy of God! I’ve heard people whine about having to live through hardships, and yet the fact that they were still alive and breathing in it was a testimony to the mercy of God! Sure they were in a desperate place, sure it was uncomfortable and dark, but at least from the belly of the fish, Jonah could still cry out to God! If it had not been for the fish then there would have been no breath three days later for Jonah to pray with!

If you have had to live through your situation of your own creation and you have had to endure some things and feel as if you are barely surviving at the depths of your predicament, then before you gripe to God, remember that the breath that you have to gripe with is a blessing from God and a testament that God has kept you alive in what could have swallowed you and been your demise and yet God has provided a way that you would have a time and a space to be able to call upon Him! It’s time to stop grumbling and griping and to call upon Him! Stop complaining about the smell, Jonah, and breathe in through that nose so that you can cry out to a God who was merciful enough to give you time to think about it! Whatever you do, no matter how long you’ve had to deal with your situation, be like Jonah and cry out to God Almighty!

He prayed believing that God would hear him.

James wrote “the effective prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much” (James 5:16). It is not just a matter of crying out to God, but how you cry out to God! Jonah said:

This is said before Jonah is delivered from the predicament; he prayed fully believing that God’s mercy reached further down than even the lowest hell that he could find himself in! I have heard some people pray that it was very obvious that they did not think that God heard them. And I have heard others where you could tell from their manner of prayer and by how they spoke that they were praying fully convinced that God heard every word. What is your case today? Have you believed the lie of hell that you have sunk too far for God to be able to hear you? Have you believed the lie of the past that you are beyond the reach of His ear and saving hand? Is your call to Him just a futile, faithless gesture of religion or are you convinced that He hears every phrase and every word and reads your heart along with your words? How are you calling on Him? Your method of prayer and attitude towards it reveals much about your belief in His ability to save you!

I have heard people say “I don’t know how to pray” and I respond to that “you are not fully convinced of your need for salvation, if that is your excuse.” It is true that you may not be able to pray eloquently, but it is not the eloquent prayer that accomplishes much, but rather the effective prayer. To a desperate soul who is drowning and calling for help, their call can be effective without being eloquent. No person caught in quicksand cries out “oh, please someone come to my rescue and reachest out thine hand toward me before I sink hither in this pit of bondage.” Nobody cries for help eloquently, but instead they say “HEEEEEEYYYYYYYY, HEEEELLLLLPPPP!!” It’s not pretty, but it’s effective. I have seen people come and pray a prayer of repentance and yet it was obvious that they were not: 1. Convinced that they were in truly great danger of being lost and 2. Convinced that God actually heard them and responded to them and He probably did not as a result! It doesn’t matter your eloquence of prayer as long as you pray believing that God will hear you!

He could not see God or sense His presence, and yet Jonah cried out to God in faith. “What do you feel, Jonah?” “I feel the belly of a fish.” “What do you see, Jonah?” “I see nothing but darkness.” “What do you hear, Jonah?” “Nothing but the sounds of the deep mess I’m in.” “What do you feel like?” “I feel all alone.” And yet despite what all of his normal senses were telling him, Jonah prayed:

He is saying “I am in the worst of circumstances and yet I will seek you God!” The temple was where the presence of God dwelt and Jonah could not feel God and yet he was saying “despite what I feel, I am looking for you to show up!” “Despite what my circumstances appear to be, I will reach for you.” “Despite there is no visual or sensual proof that You are here, I will reach for you!” Oh, that we would get the revelation that God responds to our actions even if we do not feel anything or not! Oh, that we would get the revelation that even when we feel that we are far from His presence that really we are very close! Like Job, Jonah could not see God working, but he knew that God was there and as such he acted on what he knew rather than what he felt! He later said:

Despite what he felt, he knew that God would hear his prayer! How many times do we pray and decide whether or not God will perform it based upon what we “feel at the time?” If we feel “heebie jeebies” then we think that that is proof that God has done it! But I have had people healed of cancer and the like when I prayed and I did not feel a thing! We should trust in what we know rather than what we feel! Our emotions will lie to us but God’s Word will never lie! Which brings us to what else Jonah did right:

Jonah quoted the 42^nd Psalm when he said:

You will never be able to stand upon what you know is true in the Word of God if you do not know the Word of God! Jonah was able to get beyond his feelings and reach out to God expecting mercy because he was able to find scripture to match his situation. When you are in the darkest of situations and are at your last wits end, do not rely upon feelings but rather find you a promise in the Word of God that fits your situation and make up in your mind to stand pat upon that promise! If the Word of God promises deliverance, then it matters not what the situation looks like nor how hopeless you feel, you can reach out in faith toward God’s dwelling place knowing that He will be true to His Word!

The ‘LORD’ refers to “Jehovah God” and in particular how God had revealed Himself from the time of Moses onward. When his mind grew weary and worried and when he became stressed out because of his situation, he remembered what God had done in the past and realized that He will not change!

Can I remind someone here today that it is normal for human minds to get overwhelmed by situations and grow faint and weak?! It is great that some can be like Noah and preach truth and righteousness in the face of constant adversity for many years and do it without a fresh word or interaction from the Lord, but most of us cannot. The natural response for us is to get frustrated and flustered and aggravated and discouraged when we are in the constant companionship of trouble. Our soul, our mind, tends to faint and grow weary at the constant struggle.

But I have a Word from God for you today! It is normal to grow weary in your mind, but whatever you do, don’t give up. When your soul faints within you, remember the Lord! Remember how that He has always kept His children and delivered them! Remember the mighty acts that He has done throughout scripture. Remember that He has delivered you before and has not brought you this far to fail you now. And most of all, remember that He heard Jonah! If he will respond to a backslidden minister in the judgment of his own making, then God will respond to you! When your mind gets faint, remember the Lord: how that He is merciful and kind and loving and that He changes not! Be strengthened from the memory of the past and that God is still with you!

Jonah prayed:

He is still in the belly of the fish and has just began to pray and yet he says in the past tense “the Lord heard me.” Belief is belief that God will hear you. Faith is the belief that He has heard you although nothing seems to have changed immediately. Faith begins to state what God has done before you even see proof of it’s existence. Jonah says “ the Lord heard me” before he is even out of the deep! And then we come to this:

Jonah began to thank God for deliverance and salvation even before he was delivered. And so we finish this message with a revelation about true faith: it always leads to praise and thanksgiving to God before the blessing is received! If a person truly believes that God can give them the Holy Ghost, then they will have no problem praising God for it before it has even come! Those of you who are caught up in troubled situations listen well: It wasn’t until Jonah’s faith reached the place that he could thank God in advance for his miracle, that he received his miracle. Thanksgiving is the key to the miraculous. But not just praising God after the fact, but before it has actually happened! If you will praise Him for deliverance ahead of time, then you will be able to say with Jonah: “Salvation is of the Lord!” The end of Jonah’s predicament was:

When Jonah spoke to God and cried out to Him fervently and prayed the scripture and strengthened his mind with what God had done in the past and then began to praise and thank God for his deliverance, his speaking to God caused God to speak to his situation and Jonah was delivered!

The bad news of Jonah’s predicament is that we are often in situations more like Jonah than we would care to admit. The good news of Jonah’s predicament is that if we will cry out to God as Jonah did, our Lord is no respecter of person and will save you from your deep and distressing dilemma! The good news of Jonah’s predicament is that God will even go to the depths of the sea to save someone who will call on Him with faith! May we likewise do so today!